Magazine and digital publisher Future has launched a branded content studio in a bid to drive up its advertising revenue.
Future Creative does not mark Future’s first entry into branded content, which often involves journalists creating sponsored material for advertisers that is then promoted across a publisher’s platforms.
Future said in December that “28% of the group digital advertising is branded content”, and the studio’s new creative director, Verity Fine Hosken, told Press Gazette that this year the company’s content partnership revenues “are up 25% year-on-year”.
Instead Future Creative appears to be more of an effort to more actively promote a service that the company was already offering. The company’s “growth acceleration strategy” announced last year committed to increasing the company’s branded content output, particularly on social media.
Future reported generating £112.8m globally in advertising revenue in the six months to 31 March in its May half-year report, compared with £148.4m in affiliate (i.e. ecommerce) revenue and £130.3m from magazines.
Future Creative counts more than 120 staff internationally, according to a Future spokesperson, and Hosken said she had “inherited some quite large teams of design studio, editorial commercial copywriters and social media experts.
“What I’ve done is I’ve been remaking that team a little bit to reflect the elevation of conceptual creativity.”
Hosken said Future Creative does “everything that isn’t an ‘ad’ ad.
“It wraps around everything from high-value partnerships which will have [for example] bespoke studio-created assets and be on multiple platforms… down through sponsored content, franchises and single articles and advertorial content.”
Campaigns being worked on by Future Creative on so far include “social-first live shopping experiences, short form video content across Tiktok, Instagram and Youtube… newsletter and podcast integrations, influencer campaigns and bespoke experiential activations”, Hosken said.
Asked for examples, a spokesperson pointed Press Gazette toward a sponsored article on marieclaire.com and images visible on the Future Creative website, which includes footage of people filming on a mountain for outdoor equipment business Arcteryx and an unfurling floral CGI arrangement for Porsche.
Future branded content studio has team of ‘editor-influencers’
On its website Future Creative boasts its “community of editor-influencers have their fingers on the pulse of culture” and that it sits “on billions of data touch points across consumer and audience behaviour”.
Hosken said the branded content team works “really closely” with the editorial side: “We will connect with editorial over every single brief…
“I’m not the sole creative owner because there is an editorial voice which is really important, because that’s why people are coming… They will be involved at the creative, ideation and concepting stage.”
Hosken told Press Gazette that Future Creative has launched now because “what people want from media partnerships or content partnerships with media is increasingly so sophisticated, and the level of service that people are wanting from us is creative agency-level, or it’s getting there.
“So it becomes a bit indistinguishable from the job that I was doing in a creative agency where what you’re doing is you’re developing a concept and you’re developing an integrated marketing campaign.”
Asked why, in that case, advertisers might approach a publisher like Future with a branded content studio rather than a traditional creative agency, Hosken said: “For me the interesting opportunity of [doing] it here is because [for] everything that you want to do creatively, you need to find your audience for it. And if you have a really interesting non-traditional idea for a brand that isn’t shaped like a 30-second TV spot or whatever, you just have to figure out how you’re going to get it to an audience.
“And actually the opportunity at Future is that problem is solved because we have over 200 specialist media brands. But specifically they’re passion brands — they’re places that people are going for fun, they’re places that people are going in this very kind of highly engaged, warm, receptive, open, keen mindset…
“Many of the audiences of Future’s brands come to the sites in a mindset of strong intent — so they are primed to buy, and every single hour, Future audiences purchase over £80,000 worth of retail products through our affiliate technology.”
Despite this, she said, Future was “not at the moment massively looking to replicate the [agency] working model of massive pitches, locked-in relationships and long retainers.
“But the agencies are moving away from that anyway — there is more and more business being done on a more agile basis.”
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