Posts by Arjun Basu

Spafax media won 13 prizes at the recently announced NATJA (North American Travel Journalists Association) Awards, including four gold medals. Air Canada’s enRoute magazine was also named best in-flight magazine. Other Spafax media to win included Bombardier’s Experience as well as Air Canada’s enRoute.com/OnAir e-newsletter.

Golds included:

Best Destination: Travel for London by Kayak by Ellen Himelfarb (enRoute)
Best: Cruises for Into the Blue by Remy Scalza (Experience)
Best Electronic Video, Broadcast: Travel for Will Fish for Food by Micah Donavan (enRoute.com/OnAir)
Best In-flight magazine: enRoute

“The breadth of these awards is striking,” said Spafax Content Director Arjun Basu. “Spafax and its clients were awarded for writing, for photography and for video work. That says a lot about the talent of our employees and the dedication to excellence that we share with our clients.”

Last year, CNN also named enRoute World’s Best In-Flight.

For more on NATJA, and a full list of award winners, click here.

Spafax is a division of tenthavenue, a WPP company, and has offices in Canada, the US, Chile, Malaysia, Singapore, Dubai, Germany and headquarters in London, England.

c_theilr/Flickr.com

2012. Perhaps, if the Mayans were correct, we won’t live to see the end of it. Or, we can just acknowledge that the Mayans ran out of room on their round stone, and keep working. Keep living. (Let’s admit that the Mayans weren’t such great fortune tellers and leave it at that.) So if you look back at 2012, there are a few things that stand out: there’s more content than ever before (again) and content delivery systems are all over the map. And, frankly, a lot of it doesn’t work. (This is not an implied criticism of any form of content, it’s just a fact.) And because most of it doesn’t work, the buzzwords of 2012 – data, ecosystem, “platform agnostic”, context, storytelling – will remain the buzzwords of 2013, or at least be synonyms for future buzzwords, because if there’s one thing that content marketers are good at, it’s coming up with new words for things that already exist. We are as guilty of this trope as anyone, however, so nos culpae.

Let’s be clear: content isn’t evolving. Technology is. And because technology is evolving, our expectations for the delivery of content are also evolving. Content now comes at us in print, on our laptops and tablets and smartphones, via email and snail mail, on our screens and through our earbuds. But storytelling in the service of a brand (and this is true regardless of the reasons the brand engages in content) is as old as cave drawings, and will outlast all of us. One of the themes that emerges not just from the work we’ve done at Spafax over the past year but from the vast amounts of content we read and consume – whether it be print, digital, mobile, video, audio, or in person at events and conferences – is the idea of storytelling, of the need for a coherent plot when creating content, and this demands a coherent strategy. But mostly, successful content marketing demands a good story. All brands have stories to tell but making the public care about those stories is the hard part. That’s the work. It demands a form of connection, and that’s where strategy comes in. And, of course, a good content marketing agency.

The content marketing industry, and the advertising and PR industries also, tries to connect their clients to the public in any manner possible. All well and good. But if there isn’t a good story at the heart of that effort, the connection is bound to fail. A brand only works for us if it does something for our narrative (and not the other way around.) We are all consumers in that we yearn to consume stories that are relevant to us. Stories that make our lives better or easier. That entertain, enlighten and inform. That provide a valuable service.

2013 may see many changes in how the content marketing industry reaches the public. But at the heart of every bit of content is the story. A good story.

See you in 2013.

Spafax media won 11 awards at the Folio Awards, held last week in New York. The Folio Awards honor excellence in all forms of publishing, including consumer, custom and B2B and are the largest awards program in magazine publishing. Awards are given for editorial (Eddies) and art (Ozzies). Spafax honorees (with clients and date) included:

Golds (Eddies):

Best Standalone Digital Magazine, B-to-B: Sparksheet (June 2012)
Custom, Frequency 6 or more times a year, Full Issue: enRoute (Air Canada, October 2011)
Custom, Frequency less than 6 times a year, Single Article: Experience “Into the Blue” (Bombardier Business Aircraft, June 2012)
Overall Online Categories, Best Online Column or Blog, B-to-B: Sparksheet “Return of the Editor: Why Human Filters are the Future of the Web.”

Golds (Ozzies):

Best Overall Design, Custom: IN (LAN, July 2011)

Silver (Eddies):

Custom, Frequency 6 or more times a year, Website: enRoute Online (Air Canada)

Silver (Ozzies):

Best Digital Edition/Digital Magazine Design: Sparksheet (June 2012)

Bronze (Eddies):

Custom, Frequency 6 or more times a year, Full Issue: enRoute (Air Canada, December 2011)

Bronze (Ozzies):

Best Cover, Custom: enRoute (Air Canada, November 2011)
Best Feature Design, Custom, enRoute “Spoke Easy” (Air Canada, March 2012)
Best Use of Photography, Custom, enRoute “Picturing Barcelona” (Air Canada, June 2012)

Spafax media have won more than 600 national and international awards in the past decade, and is dedicated to producing quality custom media providing superior experience and loyalty solutions and brand engagement to clients around the world. Spafax is a part of the tenthavenue division of WPP, with offices in Europe, North and South America, the Middle East and Asia.

We all know about ROI (return on investment) – and as a content marketing company, the ROI of, say, an ad, or an expensive multimedia ad campaign is dependent not just on numbers, but predefined goals. Lately, we’ve been hearing about ROE, or return on engagement. This new metric is borne out of social media but goes beyond “likes” or “followers” – it’s about what you do with this new level of engagement. It demands that you break out the data points and learn things from the behaviour of those interacting with your media. So it’s not just about pure numbers but interpreting what those numbers mean and then doing something smart with that learning.

And now, we think there should be a new metric: ROH – return on hope. Because at the end of the day, not all metrics are measureable, no matter how granular you get in the planning. What is the return on a sponsorship? What do you wish to achieve with it? ROH seems like the most long term tool, preceding ROE (which is long to mid-term) and ROI (which is, ultimately, short term). ROH has a nice ring to it. And may be the most realistic sounding“ return” anyone in the marketing game can aspire to.

Just don’t tell your clients. They, after all, want results.

At  Spafax we see ourselves at the vanguard of content innovation, bringing content to the heart of business enterprise, helping to drive growth and opportunity through the customer experience.

As the customer experience of many client categories evolves into a myriad of touch-points, content plays its part with greater relevance and greater results.

Spafax innovates, by curation, editorial, production, design and scheduling of content, across any medium, channel or technology, wherever our clients can seed enterprise in their customers experience.

- Excerpt from Rise of the Content Enterprise by CEO Niall McBain

The Spafax Journey Cycle: Content on the Go

The Spafax Creative Reel