Magda Bugajło: You coined term ‘content marketing’ a few years ago. What has changed since that time?
Joe Pullizi: I think the dawn of social media and search put a lot more emphasis on “how do I get people to interact with me” and I can’t just blindly put interruptions in front of them and have them pay attention to me. That in concert with the fact that anybody can publish today – they either have providers who help them publish or they can publish directly – the third thing is the fact that every consumer has an information gathering device with them at all times. So I don’t need to rely on anybody else to get any information or anything. I can do it myself. So there’s a huge opportunity to build audiences. If I’m a brand today, my first approach would be: How can I build an audience of those people? Because ultimately I want them to do something, and why would you say: “Oh, I’m going to rent somebody else’s channel and go there?” I’m not against advertising, we obviously have to sell advertising as well, but there’s so little focus put on actually gathering audiences. It astounds me. So I’m just seeing the start of this thing, it’s gonna be big. I can’t even imagine how big it’s going to be with so little of resources spent on content right now. We are just at the start.

[In the picture: Magda Bugajło, Joe Pulizzi and Arkadiusz Grochala, marketing communication director in Netia]

M.B.: Content Marketing Institute is now quite a big organization. How do you manage internal communication in your company?
J.P.: We’re a virtual company, which means that our place is all over the United States. So it’s just constant communication with each other, it’s the most important thing. We use a variety of  collaboration tools to work with each other, obviously email, chat, whatever it takes. But I think the most important thing that makes that work is you have to have somebody own something. So you can’t just say: now this team is gonna do it – I completely don’t believe in that. Somebody would have to own that. And because that person owns that, they work on a communication team with each other to make sure they get something done. So we want to make sure everyone in the organization owns something, and if that happens, you’re a little bit more incentivized to make sure that we are going to set up the right processes to make sure it happened.

M.B.: What is most important to you in internal communication?
J.P: Well, besides having really amazing, compelling, relevant content, the thing that’s overlooked the most is consistency. So if I was looking at content marketing and if you would ask me why do most content marketing programs fail, I would tell you: because they stop, or they’re inconsistent. Most brands are out there communicating, and they don’t think that ‘hey, this is over a life time I’ve got to create a relationship, and how do I do that? Outside of my product or service it’s about compelling content‘. So I would say the number one thing is consistency.

Watch the video with Joe Pulizzi talking about his “lifetime achievement” in content marketing

[In the pictures: Joe Pulizzi presents his trophy with Andy Seibert and Magda Bugajło, Arkadiusz Grochala and one of their awards next to Amanda Seales, host of the gala]

Pearl Awards is an award not only for one of the best in communication (which for several years include Aude), but also for a man who has significantly contributed to the development of the industry. This year’s special Caldwell award (the name is not the marketer and the seller but the acclaimed writer and journalist) Content Council gave to Joe Pullizzi and it’s really hard to find a better winner. Founder of the Content Marketing Institute, a major center for research and educational content marketing in the United States. Considered the godfather of content marketing and the industry’s most recognizable person (and not only by his orange suits!;-) The author of three publications, the latest of which – “Epic Content Marketing”  – Fortune Magazine recognized as one of the five business books of 2013, which you have to read.