Standing out in a sea of content
Content is a powerful brand building tool. You might think that’s good news. We disagree.
Your takeaway for 2025
Standing out with content requires more than just producing more of it. In 2025, brands must focus more than ever on quality, relevance, and having the courage to truly differentiate themselves.
While anyone can create content, few do it well.
In 2024, the global content landscape has grown exponentially. Creating content in various forms is easier thanks to AI-powered writing assistants, automated video editors, and one-click design tools. And yet, audiences engage with very little of it.
This convenience of producing content has led to a sea of sameness, making it harder for truly original messages to stand out.
So, how can your brand's story not just reach, but resonate with the right audience in this saturated content landscape?
Genuine content
At iO, we have identified three essential ingredients for content with impact: authenticity, relevance, and distinctiveness.
Authentic content aligns with who you are. Brands often make the mistake of communicating what they want the audience to believe - which often backfires. Allow your audience to draw their own conclusions by showing who you are through your content: ‘Show, don’t tell.’
Relevant content focuses on the audience's perspective, not your own agenda. A lot of content fails because it prioritises the message the brand wants to convey rather than what the audience is open to hear.
Distinctive (or original) content stands out. Even if content is both authentic and relevant, it can still be extremely dull. Have the courage to do something new, something different, something that deviates from benchmarks or best practices. In the competition for attention it is worthwhile being original.
When conducting a content review with colleagues, take a moment to assess: is this story aligned with our brand and is it truly authentic? Is it relevant to our audience and does it truly stand out in the way we're telling it?
Next steps for 2025
All content should originate from a single idea and a unified vision. This means starting from a single briefing and insight to develop one idea, and ensuring that throughout the execution, everything aligns perfectly so that the target audience receives a consistent message. This implies that the format idea in content uses the same core elements as the TV commercial and the message on a billboard.
When every touchpoint, from PR to video content, from billboards to commercials, reflects this core narrative, your audience receives a cohesive brand image – and you build your brand with content.
The next concrete step towards 2025 for creating compelling content is to develop a clear and unique ‘core story’ for your brand:
Start with deep customer insights—a problem your target audience faces that your brand uniquely solves.
Craft a clear narrative that ties the challenge to your solution and shapes your brand’s story.
Summarise this story into one or two paragraphs, or a single, powerful phrase.
Create content, preferably a serial format and integrate it across all channels with the same twist: a joke or something that sticks.
Use this core story as the foundation for all your content, advertising, and communications.
Then, use this core story as a filter for all your content creation efforts.
Dive deeper into content
Discover how to leverage content, advertising, PR, and all the other tools in your brand tool kit to build a powerful brand. Read our free (Dutch) e-book ‘Building brands with content’ written by Aart Lensink (Managing Director iO Campus Utrecht).
At iO, we create content that sticks and shapes your brand experience. Our experts advise, plan and create photo, audio, text and video content. Learn more.