TORONTO, July 27, 2016 – Integrated communications and content agency Felicity [Inspiring Communications] announced today its new signature service offering, The Felicity Content Collective. The result of months of interviews with clients, marketers, media and social creators, The Content Collective acts as a brand’s integrated editorial board, that not only builds a brand’s story strategy, but has the capability to bring it to life.

This series of interviews revealed that brands want to market with integrity and impact, but crave some element of control in doing so. At the same time, many bloggers and other social creators are adopting a “pay to play” approach, commanding fees for brand placement, which benefits no one in the long run.  Transactional content such as this may have a place in an integrated communications plan, but brands need a solid underlying narrative on which to execute it, otherwise they’ll be projecting an inconsistent image.

The solution? An ongoing partnership approach.

“In-reach” as a core brand process

“Amidst all the uncertainty in today’s fragmented media landscape, we heard one constant across the board: The traditional one-way style of ‘outreach’ doesn’t cut it anymore. Rather, ‘in-reach’ needs to be part of a brand’s core processes,” says Felicity founder and president Amy Laski. “This led us to develop the Felicity Content Collective, which embeds a tailored team of stakeholders, influencers, media and creators, alongside our professional content strategists and PR pros, as part of a brand’s core processes.”

So how does the Content Collective look in practice? For a food brand, it may comprise a food journalist, blogger or YouTuber, an up-and-coming chef, and an influential dietitian. Representing the brand side, this could include a member of the marketing team, a regulatory affairs advisor and a communications leader. The Felicity team would guide this Collective through a discovery process, narrative strategy development, and a roadmap for bringing this narrative to life. From there, monthly content calendars would structure the end-to-end implementation across owned media, earned media, social platforms, created and curated content, community management and offline events. The Collective would convene regularly to review learnings, refine the approach and continue to evolve the brand’s narrative.

The Felicity Content Collective is made possible by the firm’s 3 C’s:     

Connections
Enabled by its virtual structure, the Felicity team approaches everything from idea onwards as insiders to the audiences a brand wants to reach. Strong relationships with the most important connections enable engagement in a way that truly resonates.

Communications  
While it’s true that content is king, the way that it’s amplified is key. Having not only the right message, but expressing it in the right way across the right media is what fosters successful storytelling.

Conversations
To manage communications, conversations, communities and challenges in a progressively cluttered landscape, brands require the right combination of sector-specific knowledge and conversation know-how. While it is great to get people talking about a brand, keeping them talking is even more critical.

“Felicity is always looking for opportunities to most effectively and creatively fuel our clients’ business success,” says Laski. “We don’t profess to have all the answers. But we do believe in asking the right questions, of the right people, in the right way, to make a positive impact on the bottom line.”