When you think of first responders, you might imagine disaster relief services like police, firefighters, medical personnel or the National Guard. But there’s another breed of first responders that’s largely invisible, and whose contributions are easy to take for granted: the coders whose skill and creativity power the tools that bring relief to those affected by disaster.

In collaboration with IBM Originals, Media.Monks produced a feature-length documentary film, Code & Response, that examines the ambition that drives several members of the global coding community to develop new, first-responder solutions amidst a backdrop of natural disasters that have grown in strength and number—and stand to become even worse in the future.

The film features four projects around the world, each tackling disasters that may have seemed far away and abstract to viewers before watching, but that are all too real for the coders and their communities. “We wanted to raise their profile in the culture’s discourse,” says Elisa Thomas, Content Strategist at IBM Originals. “To do that meant going deeper into their motivations and allowing their stories to unfold in a way that couldn’t be done in a two-minute clip. We wanted high-production value and time to do it right.”

And it looks like those stories have resonated with viewers; running the film festival circuit, Code & Response has taken home a few awards, like Best Documentary at International New York Film Festival and a Gold Award for Best Feature at the Southeast Regional Film Festival. A writer from The Next Web called it “the single most touching, inspiring documentary I’ve seen this year.”

Bringing Ideas to Life

The documentary’s acclaim offers a great lesson on what brands can achieve when they marry creativity with authenticity; despite its being made by IBM Originals, the brand doesn’t insert itself into the narrative. Instead, it focuses on the everyday people bringing their innovative (and important) ideas to life: for example, an offline mesh network that lets people communicate when normal connections are down, or drone scouts that identify SOS signals with image recognition technology.

“The point isn’t about the brand in the story, but telling a good story,” says Heather Hosey, VP Client Engagement at Media.Monks, who worked on the project. “IBM was pushing to tell a good story without promoting themselves, which is so different among what others do.”

Celebrating coders and letting them tell their own stories does more than demystify tech to a general audience. For developers, the stories can be inspiring. For those with the motivation to make something, too, IBM’s larger Code & Response initiative—including its “Call for Code” contest, local events and a resource platform for self-learning—is there to support them.

“When we titled the film, we didn’t expect it to become the title for a greater IBM initiative,” says Joe Esposito, Creative Director at IBM Originals. “Code & Response is now a $25 million, four-year IBM initiative to help bring these new open source technologies and solutions into the world. We hope the movie bolsters that commitment.”

An Authentic Connection to Community

The film owes much of its power to distilling complicated technology into relatable, human stories. “We didn’t want to typecast, so we featured normal people who are very passionate about their work,” said Hosey. The secret to surfacing up such powerful stories lies in embedding the creative team directly within the community: “We went to them, rather than ask that they come to us, and that yielded a better output,” says Hosey.

This meant digging deep and building contacts at IBM’s hackathons on a local level—easy enough if you’re profiling a single one, but requiring a bit of dedication when your focus extends across the globe. This led the team to meet with Pedro Cruz, one of the film’s subjects, who won first place at IBM’s Call for Code in Puerto Rico for DroneAid, his drone scouting project. Subalekha Udayasankar, also portrayed in the film, was a finalist in the global Call for Code with Project Lantern. But the team wasn’t interested in just the winners. Their drive to unearth the most compelling stories brought them in touch with Kenji Kato, who participated in Fremont, CA with a wildfire tracking system; and WOTA, a team of Tokyo-based engineers who developed a water circulation system that provides access to clean, running water to disaster victims.

Keeping Goals Aligned

This investigative style of digging into the trenches ensures the story doesn’t get lost in the tech. Instead, the process authentically weaves in the impact that the coders have made on their communities through their work, aligning well with the film’s goals of challenging the way audiences look at developers and inspire its community of developers.

“There are so many archetypes for developers in the media—mostly, they’re wearing hoodies in basements, hacking companies for some sort of monetary gain,” says Thomas. “In reality, many are incredibly thoughtful and passionate people who use their skills to help people. And they do so with such humility and sincerity.”

Hosey emphasizes the importance of ensuring everyone is on the same page early in the process. Film is a big endeavor, incorporating several players: brand leadership, the creative team, the production team and more. “Assessing all company priorities—creative and business—ahead of time is key to building a better story.” she says. “There will always be many players, and it helps creative and production to understand all those angles to set up a successful story.”

For IBM, the film not only brings to light the impact that coders have on their communities—it serves as example of how we can work together to build a better future. “IBM has always taken a progressive stand about building a smarter planet and we have thrived for more than 100 years because we focus on the shared success of business and society,” says Christopher Schifando, Creative Director at IBM. “By putting smart technologies to work in the hands of coders, we can invent new ways to help first responders save lives and create lasting and sustainable change.”

It takes close trust and partnership to align the narrative with what the creative team wants to convey and the results that leadership wants to achieve. The Media.Monks team worked alongside IBM throughout the film and production process, and the shared vision of the project kept the team focused and energized. “Our tagline was ‘One team, one dream,’” says Hosey. “What kept us all going was that it was a really cool project.”

With the increasingly personalized nature and delivery of digital content, it feels like everyone is in crunch mode. According to the latest SoDA Global Digital Outlook Report, of which MediaMonks co-founder Wesley ter Haar served as editor-in-chief, 63% of client-side marketing leaders say producing and publishing targeted digital content is a major priority for their business—and so is producing that content more quickly.

While producing timely, always-on content is a critical need for organizations, a significant portion of them face challenges in meeting that output. In the 2018 Digital Trends for Creative and Design Leaders Survey, over a third of organizations working to design creative experiences internally indicated facing particular challenges in finding and retaining the right people with the right skills, while 40% cited outdated workflows as slowing their progress. These problems together make a one-two punch that makes it difficult for organizations to successfully develop the stream of targeted content they know they need, keeping it tantalizingly out of reach.

In addition to taking up time, the cyclical nature of the old-agency model isn’t as effective as it used to be. Rather than focus a big idea on traditional media and spoke out from that, standing out in today’s media landscape requires an always-on flow of targeted content across platforms, which altogether builds toward your creative direction. In essence, the new era requires highly relevant content that continues to deliver a consistent message—something that 59% of marketers say they have difficulty with. This requires organizations to seek out new organizational and executional methods.

Learn more ways to achieve more from less.

An emerging solution to this change is the integrated team model. In this structure, we set up organizations with a team custom-built for achieving their specific needs, whether that be access to a dedicated, decorated talent pool; locally relevant content across the globe; fresh content triggers or alleviating the brand studio’s bandwidth. “Organizations are bringing more capabilities in-house at a time where there’s an increased need for content at-scale,” says MediaMonks co-founder Wesley ter Haar. “With integrated production partnerships, we’re able to provide the resources needed to meet the demand for always-on content and relevancy to their audiences.”

An integrated team makes for a simple, scalable way to produce content on the day-to-day while allowing some space for the bigger projects or needs that crop up from time to time. With an in-house setup that collaborates with top talent across the globe, an integrated team functions as an always-on talent studio capable of delivering an unprecedented amount of flexibility and production with a rapid turnaround time not seen before.

Benefits to working with an integrated team include:

• A team of world-class talent custom-built to your organization’s needs
• Direct, immediate access to an agency’s capabilities—even those outside of your pre-defined, day-to-day operations
• A streamlined, efficient workflow with fast turnaround times
• An outside perspective capable of safeguarding your brand

Dive into the Deep End of the Talent Pool

A key benefit to the integrated team model is total access to a diverse talent pool, which encompasses both the skills you need for day-to-day operations as well as more niche talent that you might need for one-off projects or last-minute asks. We house all modern digital trades, which give us the ability to look at client needs holistically before tapping into a varied set of available skills available to accomplish them. “This process goes beyond pure production,” says Louise Martens, Executive Producer at MediaMonks LA. “We can really impact customer journeys as developers, strategists and content creators can work together in a fast and flexible manner.” Whether the team is on-site or operating elsewhere, you might think of an integrated team as stripping away the wall of an agency for unrestricted access to its toolset.

For example, we have one partner whose primary need is to create print-based materials and assets. To meet this need, we set them up with a team of dedicated designers that can easily deliver those materials in a fast turnaround time.  But when the same partner needed an animation done as a one-off project, a team of graphic designers wouldn’t do—which is why we quickly augmented the team with a set of animators who could deliver on that need with the same, rapid turnaround time expected, without the trouble of sending out an RFP to bidders or field resumes from freelancers.

Integrated teams aren’t the same as your typical production partnership, nor is it the same as simply outsourcing work to a body shop. In our integrated partnerships, we’ve seen how easy it is for teams to introduce new capabilities on top of projects after discovering some need—for example, providing copy options after noticing that in-house copy didn’t exactly fit with the visual design. “What’s unique about this kind of partnership is that it’s focused on the long-term,” says Martens. “You see this in the optimization of workflows, but it’s also a matter of deeper brand understanding, which allows us to proactively add to creative ideas.” On the organization’s side, it lets them tackle new and existing problems more flexibly.

Keep it Fresh with Relevant, Timely Content Triggers

Content triggers are the pillar of real-time marketing, ranging anywhere from planned and proactive content to reactive communication. While brands have typically kept to the planned, proactive approach (like brand events or planned campaigns), social media has driven brands to build up their in-house capabilities, as they require a fast pace of production and brand knowledge.

An approach that requires collaboration between several parties can sometimes slow production down, which is why we try to take a leaner approach to everything we do, including project-oriented tasks. Integrated teams serve as one alternative designed to eliminate bottlenecks and allow for the rapid design of timely content triggers, which is critical for how organizations must engage with consumers today.

“Brands are moving from short-term campaigns into programs and ecosystems that are built around always-on content,” says Martens. Because the team works partially in-house and is dedicated to the brand, organizations don’t have to jump through hoops to deliver on the ask. Using the same creative framework for producing assets at scale—beginning with a master template and identifying the variables in terms of content or platform fit—the integrated team model optimizes workflows to deliver relevant content triggers at unprecedented speed.

This speed is thanks in part to an always-on, global talent studio. When necessary, integrated teams can tap into talent from other offices around the world, which means work continues to get done elsewhere even after you’ve closed up shop for the day. “This interaction between an internal MediaMonks Brand Ambassador and our global support network is a powerful mechanic,” says Martens. “These Monks understand the brand experience in-depth and can thus represent its values, aesthetic and tone of voice in our wider teams.” If a team gets a brief at end of day from the partner, they can deliver up to sixteen hours of work spread across time zones to be delivered the following morning, providing quality work within timelines that were once viewed as unrealistic. Say goodbye to feeling like there aren’t enough hours in a day.

The integrated team model is a reaction to the unique challenges facing the advertising industry today. Organizations no longer have to put their brands in the hands of an outside agency to deliver on the ever-increasing demand for relevant content. With dedicated, open access to a diverse pool of talent, they become better prepared to meet industry challenges while retaining complete ownership of their work. “Our experiences have shown us that MediaMonks is used as a lever for the brand to further build their own studio or spend more time on the work that matters most,” says Martens. “Brands are taking back control.”

Plagued with clickbait and an abundance of content vying for readers’ attention, today’s users aren’t likely to spend much time determining whether a given piece of content is relevant. Brands must rebuild trust with users in saturated content ecosystems, while also making a value proposition for the data collection required to qualify more relevant recommendations. Opening content to provide users with the freedom to explore concepts more in-depth is a great way to maintain relevancy while also structuring content for omnichannel experiences.

Creating these experiences requires a continual state of testing, tweaking and experimenting for success—in essence, you’ll never be finished perfecting your recommendation engine or finding new ways to contextualize content. It might also require building a new CMS that is more adaptive and responsive to omnichannel content, something increasingly necessary for brands that rely on outdated content strategies that are siloed to single channels.

Think in Micro Moments

The consumer journey isn’t a straightforward path; rather, it’s a hopscotch across a sequence of brief, frequent interactions. These interactions are “micro moments”—the short flashes of inspiration that prompt users to check their devices (usually a smartphone) for quick bites of information. An example of a micro moment that has stuck is Taco Bell’s “fourth meal” concept—that time late at night in which many of us are craving something to eat, only to discover that few places are open. This moment is defined by recognizing a user need (hunger) and specific context (late at night) and a white space to fill (inform customers that the restaurant is open and ready for their order when cravings strike).

The important thing to remember about micro moments is that they aren’t just a launching point in the consumer journey; they’re frequent and often lead from one to another. When planning out a content strategy, think in micro moments and chart out a journey model that considers the full breadth of interactions users will seek across channels, touchpoints and devices. From there, you can build around those moments to provide a sense of continuity and divert users’ attention from one touch point to another.

Use Visuals to Direct Attention

Using visual cues helps to lead users’ attention and engage them quickly within the micro moments explained above. Users gauge relevance at a moment’s notice, and visuals help to draw in attention at a glance before providing them with the option to dive deeper.

We put this to action in designing and building Viacom’s site, which is a bit flashier and visually appealing than your typical corporate website. Using content to differentiate the brand, the dot-com features a carousel of high-impact images with headlines appended. Once users are hooked by the visuals, further content is recommended for them to click through and read.

For example, a post about SpongeBob’s fan-fueled appearance at the last Super Bowl (and the meme-fueled frenzy that sparked from) leads to another post about memes surrounding the character and his cultural legacy, as well as a year-end roundup of the most beloved digital content related to the brand. Holistically, this content highlights the relevance of Viacom’s sub-brands and IP, offered in a simple and engaging way.

Provide a Sense of Coherence

A key consideration when charting out a journey map or content strategy is to predict user behavior and contexts, then building content around that. When organizing or creating content, consider the questions that users might have, leading them from one piece to another—or to further steps down the sales funnel. This also ensures content recommendations remain faithful to user need and don’t come off as clickbait.

An elegant example of how to build added layers of contextualization allowing readers to dive deeper is Siemens’ Defending Against a Cyber Attack microsite, produced in collaboration with WP Brand Studio. Working with the brands, we helped realize an interactive WebGL experience that illustrates what can happen in a cyberattack in two scenarios. Due to the level of technical understanding required in such situations, it’s not the easiest thing to get across to lay readers. Thankfully, the microsite highlights terms and situations that users can hover over to receive definitions and added context, anticipating likely points of confusion or friction. When finished with the experience, users find a CTA that leads to the Siemens website, where they can check out the products and services that help solve the specific situations and challenges they just explored.

Brands should likewise open up avenues that let readers approach topics or subjects in more detail. This again highlights the need for starting with the top-down, macro view explained in the earlier best practices outlined above. Such a process guarantees the overall content architecture is reactive to the types of information users seek, allowing for more relevant content along a streamlined path to loyalty.