February 2023 - SUNDAY

How we made the New Boardroom Agenda for ICAEW

We collaborated with the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales on a large multimedia content campaign that’s going from strength to strength.

At Sunday we’re lucky to have several professional membership organisations as clients, and what makes them all brilliant to work with on ‘big picture’ thought-leadership content is that their whole reason for existing is based on a strong social purpose. This means we can create films, podcasts and written content that has immediate relevance for a large audience, even if some of the more technical topics have niche appeal.

Many membership organisations in this country were set up in the latter half of the 19th century as the industrial revolution matured into a series of professions, such as law, medicine, surveying, engineering, accounting. These organisations were needed to record, codify and teach the advances made in each field, so that all professionals would work to the same high standard. They were given royal charters as the governments of the day realised the new and vital role they held, and assured a sceptical public that the company building the new rail bridge in the middle of town or the doctor operating on their nearest and dearest could be trusted.

Start with real life and join the dots

Whenever we embark on a new thought-leadership content series, we begin with real life – with stories and challenges that a lot of people can relate to – and then we join the dots back to whatever message the client wants to convey. This became The New Boardroom Agenda.

With this project, the ICAEW was keen to communicate that the accounting profession has a strong role to play in improving corporate governance (the way in which a company is structured and managed, or ‘governed’), and that the Institute was beefing up the support it provided to the profession, including the creation of a new position, head of corporate governance and stewardship.

In an initiative conceived by the ICAEW content team, we collectively decided to explore why long-term stewardship is vital to good management of companies, and the role that boards of directors play in doing so. Many ICAEW members either sit on boards, work with boards in their day-to-day roles or aspire to sit on boards at some point in the future. With this in mind, we designed a content series around three ‘hero’ films that showcased inspiring board members who think differently and who have prioritised long-term decision-making in managing their businesses. We chose both board members that have broken the mould – such as Karen Hester, chief operating officer at Adnams, who started her career at the brewer as a cleaner and is now an executive member of the board – and those with more traditional careers – such as Graeme Pitkethly, CFO of Unilever, an ICAEW member and holder of one of the most prominent finance jobs in the word – but all with a story to tell.

Alongside those films sits a raft of content including profile interviews, podcasts and a series of articles, as well as a set of in-depth practical guides to help boards – and the management teams that work with them – make the right decisions for the long-term.

So, how’s the campaign performing?

We have had some great results so far. We’ve had more than half a million views of the film content, and have re-energised the ICAEW’s corporate governance community by sending a series of email newsletters and social posts, and have seen a significant uplift in sign ups to the Corporate Governance community compared to the same period the previous year. And we are only three themes into our series of five, so there’s more to come.

Think anew and act anew: the truth behind digital migration

If you’re reading this and you’re over the age of 30, there’s a very good chance you’re wearing a watch. If you’re under the age of 30, there’s a better than average chance that you’re not.

There’s no middle ground. What no one does is to transition from wearing a watch, through a weird half-watch stage, to no watch.

In our office a few weeks ago, I was chatting to Tim (our very brilliant editorial lead on the work we do for the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales) about the brands and organisations – especially membership organisations – that have legacy content sub-brands in their midst. You find them all over the place – in obscurely named website sections or hybrid online ‘publications’. While the content is important for organisations, they only exist because, many moons ago, they were the original content marketing programmes – print publications with their own standalone identity.

There are brands and organisations that are still using flippable PDFs and online magazine formats as some sort of halfway house between print and digital. Some are even spending marketing budgets on designing ‘magazine’ pages that will never be printed and only used as online PDFs. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No. And it’s not Supercontent either. It’s madness. It’s a (dated) technology-led answer to a question that was never asked – a bad experience for audiences and poor ROI for brands.

Agencies and clients articulate these changes as ‘migration’ – part of a plan to reduce one channel (print) while increasing another (digital). Tim’s assertion was that this is, of course, utter garbage. ‘Migration’ only serves the agency – protecting revenues from the ravages of digital-first programmes, it certainly doesn’t serve audiences and rarely serves brands. There are many reasons why print can still be a powerful tool in the marketing communications mix, and we’re big fans at Sunday – from an aesthetic angle, of course, but also because used in the right way print is incredibly effective. But don’t hold on to a legacy sub-brand and let it dictate future content strategy.

If we were starting a content programme from scratch, would we newly create these hybrid sub-optimal platforms? No. “As our case is new, we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves…”, urged Abraham Lincoln after the American Civil War. We too, as content marketers, need to disenthrall ourselves. We need to stop talking about migration as if it’s a linear process, because it isn’t. The challenge is to stop ‘migrating’ programmes and creating watches that aren’t watches. Instead, commit, with conviction and confidence, to something new.

This much I know: Lucy Rainer

I’d be a professional cheese taster if I weren’t an account director. And I’d add Cheeseday to the week. Cheese on toast with mature cheddar and a thin spread of Marmite is perfection.

Some might say I’ve got ‘content marketing’ running through me like a stick of rock. I’ve spent my whole career doing it, but Sunday is where I laid my hat seven years ago, or 359 Sundays ago.

My job is to keep everyone happy. It’s a juggling act that requires a combination of diplomacy, patience, tenacity and very thick skin! Outside work I pretend that I like to relinquish control, but who am I kidding? This is just who I am.

I can hula-hoop. I’ve won a competition for it in a karaoke bar.

It would be disingenuous of me to suggest that the travel isn’t what I love most about my job. I just got back from the Caribbean. I’ve stopped telling everyone that it was hard work – I wasn’t getting much sympathy.

I can’t live without tea and cheesy ’80s music – Bonnie Tyler has my heart. I also love a bath. Not necessarily all at the same time.

Why do people use the word ‘literally’ incorrectly so often? That said, I’m guilty of using ‘cool’ far too often. Which is ironic, because one of my favourite activities – having a night in in my pyjamas and slippers – is anything but.

Sunday is a friendly place with talented people doing inspiring work. So many of us have been here a long time and the culture is special. Sunday isn’t just a nice place to work but an amazing agency, too.

Who killed Marilyn Monroe? I read a book recently about the conspiracy that she was killed by the Kennedy family. I’m not very gullible and I’m generally quite suspicious, but I do love a good conspiracy theory.

The brand partnerships I’ve worked on with P&O Cruises are among the projects I’m most proud of. Bringing these relationships – from Gary Barlow to Spanish chef José Pizarro – to life in the shape of inspiring stories has been a real privilege. Making a cup of tea for Marco Pierre White was nerve-wracking, though.

What do you call cheese that doesn’t belong to you? Nacho cheese. I’m terrible at telling jokes, but even I can remember that one.

I’ll never get bored of Miss Congeniality. It makes me feel good, and who doesn’t love Sandra Bullock? Having said that, I would choose Jennifer Aniston to play me when they make my biopic.

Why you should be podcasting

A recent report by market research and analytics firm YouGov confirms that podcasts present one of the biggest growth opportunities for UK media in 2023.

In the UK, 13 per cent of respondents said they would increase their use of podcasts this year. Statista agrees: it believes podcast listener figures are set to reach 20 million by 2024.

Globally, ‘non-linear’ media are driving growth in audio and visual, said YouGov, with streaming video or music, and listening to podcasts, expected to grow faster than linear media such as listening to the radio and watching TV. Research by Edison found that podcasts are gaining ground with all age groups, ethnicities and genders worldwide.

So, what makes the podcast so effective as a content channel? There’s wider reach and better accessibility, for a start. And in today’s time-poor society, where our attention is constantly on many different things at the same time, listening to a podcast allows your audience to multitask efficiently while travelling or carrying out other tasks.

Importantly, podcasts can humanise a brand in a way many other formats can’t. Just like all good content, done well, a podcast builds long-term relationships and a sense of community with its audience, allowing brands to solidify their position as trusted advisers on subjects that really matter to them and help them do their jobs better. Authenticity is key to this, by ensuring the style is relaxed and conversational, and not overly scripted. Naturally episodic, podcasts lend themselves to a ‘series’ format that builds a level of anticipation among listeners.

Our ‘Building the Future’ podcast for The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) is designed to showcase the work of RICS members around the world, as well as engage prospective members and partners with the Modus content we create for the Institution.

The podcast highlights the human side of surveying, revealing the faces behind the concrete façade and the positive contributions they make to the world around us. It’s breaking down perceived barriers to the profession to inspire younger, untapped audiences to consider a career in surveying. To resonate with those younger audiences, we highlight the professionalism of the diverse surveying community through their work – it’s not just about who our contributors are, it’s also about what they have achieved.

We’re lucky to have an engaged Rolodex of potential contributors, from graduate surveyors to the president of RICS, each sharing their professional expertise and insights on the impact of surveying on our environment.

And in a short space of time, it’s paying dividends. ‘Building the Future’ is topping the RICS podcast chart. While engaging an international audience previously untapped through more conventional marketing channels, these podcasts are helping establish Modus as a thought leader and an authoritative voice in the built environment sector.

Building the future: designing indigenous architecture