LONDON: Coca-Cola expects its content marketing strategies to shift towards real-time marketing over the coming year, a leading executive has said.

Speaking ahead of the International Content Marketing Summit, Jonathan Mildenhall, senior vice president of marketing communication and design at the soft drinks giant, told Marketing that this would be a "major trend" for the company.

"We now have the technological ability to respond to the cultural context as and when it is happening," he said. "We will see much more topical content that engages with consumers daily."

He explained that the business was already recruiting the staff needed – including conversation managers, coders, creators, photographers and film makers – and incorporating them into marketing teams "so that we can develop content that is both agile and excellent".

Consumers would, he said, benefit from "fresh and topical" content and conversation. "The benefit for our brands is the same," he added.

From the agency side, Nick Cohen, managing partner and head of content at Mediacom, thought the major content marketing trend was "ever greater inter-connection".

As well as ongoing developments with consumers and media platforms, he anticipated "new kinds of content partnerships" being formed between brands, agencies, media owners and rights holders.

"Navigating that world and building the right connections will be the key to success," he suggested.

Connectedness was also highlighted by Alastair Cotterill, creative strategist at Facebook, but he put the emphasis on internet access via mobile devices and the opportunities this presented for brand building "through content that is discovered and consumed on social/content discovery platforms".

"This will mean designing content that is consumed in-feed within these apps rather than trying to push people to branded destinations," he said.

He also expected a shift towards more video content and greater investment by brands in the quality of that content and in its effective distribution and measurement.

Data sourced from Marketing; additional content by Warc staff