Organizations now create between 21 and 30 pieces of content weekly, on average.
Creating one piece of short-form content can take 18 hours or more. Cross-team collaboration has become one
of the most important processes, but expectations and aligning processes can fall short.
Findings from an Adobe survey released Thursday show that departments communicate across teams
at least once weekly, but talking does not always lead to collaboration. Only 35% of those surveyed, for example, believe their current content creation and delivery process is “very
well-coordinated.”
Adobe surveyed 1,000 people, from marketers and advertisers to creatives and IT professionals, to learn how they collaborate and where they fall short. Nearly all
agreed that during the past few years, content creation and delivery processes have become more complex.
The findings highlight key challenges facing teams today and ways that organizations
can collaborate to drive success.
“Marketers are being asked to produce and deliver way more content than they were asked to do just five years ago,” said Bruce Swann, group
product marketing manager For Campaign at Adobe.
Some 60% of creatives, marketers, and advertisers surveyed want their creative teams involved during production phases, with 32% of digitally
mature organizations using dynamic creative optimization, using some level of automated, dynamic content creation during production. Only 15% of non-digitally mature organizations do the same.
“Reporting is often stuck in silos or teams,” Swann said.
Only 24% of creatives are involved during the stages, while 40% said they want to be involved. One in five creatives
say they receive no feedback at all about content. By comparison, marketers receive more feedback, but it’s not always the insights they need or want.
Some 63% said they want direct
customer feedback, while 49% want conversion metrics and 44% want to know how the content impacts revenue.
Most professionals said it’s difficult to personalize experiences for every
customer, across each channel, for every campaign. Some 59% of marketers agree that it’s difficult to personalize, followed by 53% of brand creatives, 52% of advertisers, and 41% of agency
creatives. They admit that creating a new version across segments and channels is particularly difficult, because changes in audience requires changes in content.
Despite challenges, most
teams opt to personalize content. In fact 59% of respondents say they would rather vary content to target different segments of the market. Some 49% create variations for different digital channels
and 42% update content across different campaigns.
Just 10% of surveyed organizations do not create variations of their personalized content for customers, yet most teams rate their efforts
somewhat low. Less than half of those surveyed agree their companies are completing “very extensive” personalization. Broken down, 37% of agency creatives, 25% of brand creatives, 24% of
marketers, and 22% of advertisers said they do not create variations.
Some 73% of digitally mature organizations say their personalization is extensive compared to just 49% of non-digitally
mature companies. About 56% admit their personalization efforts are key to setting them apart from the competition, compared to just 34% non-digitally mature organizations.
Planning and
strategy helps. About 52% of creative strategists said they are involved in planning and strategy, but 71% said they would like to be more involved. Marketers believe creatives are involved 45% of the
time, 57% welcome more creative involvement. Advertisers, 69%, want even more creative involvement.
“To me the 71% says they’re people on teams with access to data who feel certain
things should be done, but do not have a say in the overall strategy,” he said.