Axiata Group's playbook to repurposing content to stretch your ad dollar

The proliferation of digital has led to marketers constantly needing to create content to feed the insatiable appetite of consumers.  In the last 12 months alone, 83% of B2C marketers created content in the form of short articles, and 61% poured their energy into creating videos. Infographics (51%) were also among the top five assets created followed by virtual events (48%), according to research from Content Marketing Institute.

On the B2B front, marketers mainly relied on virtual events and webinars (58%) followed by research reports (48%) and short articles (48%).

And while the need to create content is widely accepted, the truth is the volume at which it is now needed has led to the exhaustion of marketing talent and burnout. With the need to stay always on, and yet ensure stability in marketing teams, how can brands find the balance?

One possible answer, said Fernie Jasmine Abdul Ghani, Axiata Group's head, group strategic communications and marketing, is to repurpose content. Speaking at MARKETING-INTERACTIVE's recent Content 360 conference, she shared that marketers must make existing content work harder by repurposing them. This will ease the pressures of the churn, while also helping marketers reach new audiences. 

More importantly, repurposing content also cuts down on creative time, given that it is impossible to produce everything manually due to the sheer amount of content needed. According to Fernie, the time spent on creating new content each time is "very resource-intensive", not just in terms of the time but also the monetary investment required:

Every time we create content, we want it to work hard and go as far as possible. We really want to stretch the dollar.

Another key reason for repurposing content is to be agile in marketing. Fernie shared that when content gets pushed out, the Axiata team is often quick to track which pieces and types of content perform well based on data analytics. The team then optimises those pieces of content allowing for insight as to what about the content enables it to trend, dissecting its audience segment and reasons for popularity.

This further enables the team to decide which content to repurpose and optimise to make Axiata's campaigns more effective and obtain a better ROI. 

"We may already have our followers on digital and social media channels. However, we want to reach new audiences and to do so, we have to meet them where they are," she shared. This means that marketers have to go to the platforms where they are consuming content and produce it in a format that matches audiences' consumption behaviour.

Three types of repurposed content

The first type of repurposed content is reformatted content. Reformatted content means taking an existing piece of content in a particular format and editing it for another. For example, taking a long-form video on YouTube and turning it into a bite-sized 15-second video for TikTok.

The second type of repurposed content is recycled content. In recycling content, the brand uses content that was published previously and updates it with current and relevant information. Brands can even contextualise it into a current trending topic before republishing it. 

The third type of repurposed content is added content. Added content is essentially creating various adaptations of a masterpiece content to make it more relevant for different audiences across different channels. One example would be resizing video content for different digital formats, for example, or localising the language or key visuals for various markets. This helps not only reach out to new audiences but also to optimise for search engine, and marketers should consider changing headlines and keywords.

Fernie, who joined the Axiata team in 2016 boasts over 20 years’ experience in the technology and telecommunications industry. In her current role, she oversees a centralised group-level team that manages and coordinates all the communications for local teams in several markets including Indonesia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Cambodia. She shares that having a master communications calendar enables all of the teams to align on the type of content to be produced and the type of messaging to be published. From there, the market level teams can also assess the possibility of "cross-pollinating" these messages. Fernie also shared that while her team provides key brand and communication guidelines, the team does not produce all the content for local-level marketing teams.

Meanwhile, the marketing team in Axiata also has a close relationship with its in-house agency ADA, which is also one of the group's subsidiaries specialising in data analytics and AI. ADA also manages digital marketing for the group from social media to the web. ADA also powers the Axiata marketing team with the right tools, handled by experienced individuals, to support the repurposing of content to match different objectives in various markets. 

"ADA also has teams in each of the markets that we operate in so we constantly have local insights and relevance for each market. With ADA's expertise, experience, and tools, we are able to repurpose content and use them for multiple purposes or in various markets," she explained.  

Guiding principles when repurposing content

While repurposing content might seem easy in theory, the basics of marketing still apply, said Fernie. Content remains true to the brand values and goals. "For example, the Axiata brand is not very light-hearted so we would never adapt our content or repurpose it in a way that is humorous or has slapstick comedy," Fernie explained. 

Moreover, being armed in data is also crucial in choosing the content to be repurposed.

"There is no point repurposing a piece of content if it didn't work the first time," Fernie said. Aside from high-performing content, it is also important to be able to identify content that can be timeless. Fernie added that the repurposing of content doesn't just apply to digital and social assets, but to written content as well. For example, written content can also be turned into a visual or an infographic.

"If you think about it, when was the last time you read a book or an article compared to the last time you watched a video? You would have probably watched a video just five minutes ago. So whenever you have written content, always make it a point to turn it into something visual," she explained.

Finally, it is crucial to leverage the power of technology to aid in the volume, scale, and speed required to push out content. This is where creative automation, for example, comes to play by using AI to churn out different types of creatives based on a master creative.  In Axiata's case, the telco has spent the past five years constantly evaluating creative automation tools. "[Our creative automation journey] has come a long way but still, it's not perfect as there is no perfect tool," she said. It is up to the marketer to set the right parameters to get the results they desire in the end. 

Start with a strategy

While all of the tips above can of course help a brand struggling to solidify its content creation funnel, at the end of the day it is the quality of content that can take you the distance. If a piece of content created is not dynamic or flexible enough, then the good quality outcome will be near impossible.

Therefore, to make your content work hard for marketers, it is important to determine right at the beginning, especially during the creative ideation stage, whether the content will be flexible and has longevity.

Tapping into the creativity of agency partners to help with effective storytelling is such a key aspect of its content creation. Working with the likes of dentsu Malaysia, the main focus of the agency partner is to find creative ways of showcasing the telco's key messages in a compelling and engaging manner, while staying true to the brand value.

Another equally important aspect in content marketing is personalisation, given that consumers these days demand a level of personalisation when it comes to the content they engage with across all touchpoints. "If there is no personalisation, consumers will shut off, and they will not consume that content. As there are plenty of choices available for consumers and they will pick the content that's most relevant to them. So without personalisation, it's hard to even get their attention," Fernie explained.

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