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Welcome to Spark, a weekly newsletter from Vivace Content. We compile news signals from across the business, financial, and cultural landscape, and spark ideas to help you and your business jump on something new to talk about. Send tips and feedback to [email protected].

Great to be back in your inboxes. As you’ll read below, Vivace is in New York this week. Hit us up if you’d like to meet up for a coffee.

In today’s issue: The most delicious snackable content out there, cruise tourism making a comeback, the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund, and some great looking job opportunities in marketing.

🤿 A deep dive into short-form content

Impressions, views, likes, shares, tweets; it has many names, but when we spend our marketing budgets on media what we’re actually buying is attention. And in today’s attention economy everyone’s eyeballs and ears – from the C-Suite to the high street – come at a premium. Not only that, but the optimal ways of reaching audiences are evolving faster than you can say ‘TikTok’.

According to data from Nielsen, YouTube has pulled ahead of Netflix in time spent streaming via televisions over the last 12 months, “which could indicate that there’s a preference for user-generated videos among U.S. consumers rather than traditional TV shows. Sixty-one percent of Gen Z reported that they favor user-generated content over other content formats.” (TechCrunch)

As the media landscape evolves, one thing remains true: great stories well-told continue to win our attention. For today’s Spark we’ll be focusing on one end of the storytelling spectrum: short-form. Digestible, snackable, ‘bite-size’ branded content that answer the challenge: How quickly can you engage someone and drive your product (or brand) home?

Tune in next week where we’ll dive into the art and science of long-form media, proving once and for all that size does not matter.

60 seconds: The buoyancy of bonds

“I've always been impressed with Vanguard's quality thought leadership and expert insights on investment strategies. This little video webcast excerpt "The buoyancy of bonds" comes in at just over 1 minute in length, but still manages to pack in some useful insight. It's an easy 'between-the-stops-watch' (I've just trademarked that term by the way). Just 6 days after posting this video, Vanguard announced Buckley's planned year-end retirement with Davis stepping up into an expanded role. So, the relaxed confident vibe that comes across in the video has a deeper significance.”
– Ryan

Brand: Vanguard
Agency: Unknown

30 seconds: The ‘F’ Word in Travel

This campaign stood out to us recently as belonging to that rare category of advertising that we have actually enjoyed our podcasts being interrupted by. The creative concept works so well as it manages to be engaging in both short form video and audio – something that not all campaigns achieve. It’s important to consider how your story can play out in purely audible forms, after all the podcasting audience is up to 500 million globally this year (Statista).

Brand: HSBC UK (Global Money Account)
Agency: VML (WPP)

16 seconds: #SliceOfTheMarket

@zachking

Add a little flavor to your portfolio, grab your #SliceOfTheMarket @CAPEX.com #ad

TikTok might not be the first marketing channel that jumps to mind for financial services providers, but trading platform Capex.com partnered with TikTokker Zach King (81.3 million followers) to execute the kind of advert that even your teenagers would be impressed by. With 7.6 million views and counting, it’s far and away their most high-performing video to date and a big creative departure from their previous efforts. It will be interesting to see if they continue in this direction.

Brand: Capex.com
Creator: Zach King

5 seconds: Superb Owl

Reddit was inspired by its own “r/WallStreetBets” community’s disruption of the financial markets to take advantage of the media momentum and stage a similar disruption at the Super Bowl LV. They bought the spot days before kickoff, supposedly spending their entire year’s marketing budget on 5 seconds of airtime. On top of the intense deadline and teeny spot length, R/GA needed to come up with something that would stay true to Reddit’s notoriously tough, anti-advertising user base.

Brand: Reddit
Agency: R/GA

📈 OFF THE CHARTS

📉 VIVACE INDEX

$7,400 – the cost of Jay Shetty’s six-month online success-coaching methodology course from the Jay Shetty Certification School (The Guardian)

20,000+ – the number of young people helped to achieve their potential through Urban Synergy, by connecting them to experience opportunities and mentoring with financial firms (FT)

$1.5 trillion – the sovereign wealth fund of Norway, the world's largest single stock market investor, which again asked its government to consider it investing in unlisted (private) equities (Reuters)

114 million – the number of people who remained forcibly displaced globally by the end of September 2023 (Humanitarian Action)

2,800 – the approx. number of US companies expected to disclose greenhouse-gas emissions and climate-based risks under the SEC’s new ruling (Climate Money Work)

🏙 VIVACE IS IN NEW YORK!

We are proud to be sponsoring the Financial Narrative 2024 Spring Summit happening in New York this Wednesday, April 17th. Registrations are still open and we’d love to see you there! Hit us up if you plan to attend so we can come say hello.

Time: 8:00 AM - 1:45 PM ET
Venue: The Financial Narrative Exchange

📌 BEST OF THE REST

Diversity and inclusion is a supply and demand issue, and needs to be tackled on both fronts. Radical changes are coming to the world’s biggest bond market. What (and who) can stop the endless media layoffs in America? The FT’s Alphaville examined the investment case for the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund adding private equities to its mandate for the first time – TLDR: PE’s “occasionally rough tactics and sensitive target industries are possibly a poor fit for a fund indirectly owned by 5mn highly opinionated Scandinavian social democrats”.

📆 UPCOMING DAYS & EVENTS

• April 17: Financial Narrative 2024 Spring Summit, New York (US)

• April 19-21: IMF & World Bank Spring Meetings, Washington (US)

• April 22: Earth Day (Global)

• May 2: London mayoral contest & English local elections (UK)

• May 3: World press freedom day (Global)

• May 14: 77th Cannes Film Festival (Starts) (France)

• May 20: former president Donald Trump returns to court, Florida (US)

📰 FRIENDS OF VIVACE: NEWS & VIEWS

• MSCI is looking for a commercially-minded, client-centric Marketing Strategy Leader – via Tamas Szarvas, Head of Portfolio Marketing Strategy.

• Luke Manning, Head of the LSEG Foundation, shared the news about Tent Partnership for Refugees officially launching Tent UK last month, which was celebrated by opening the market at the London Stock Exchange. Tent is a global network of companies committed to helping refugees secure employment, through training, mentoring and hiring.

• Keesa Schreane tells you everything you need to know about the SEC's new climate rule in the latest edition of her Climate Money Work newsletter.

• Guardian Life is looking for a looking for someone who thrives on turning complex nuanced topics into compelling customer-centric stories to join as their new Head of Content Marketing – via Melissa Rothchild.

Send us your shout-outs, strong opinions, and headlines to include in next week’s edition.

Thanks for joining us this week. Anything we missed? Something we should include next week? Please send all ideas and feedback to [email protected]. 

Spark is a production of Vivace Content, where we help our clients navigate what to say and how to say it every single day. Get in touch if you’d like to have a no-hassle consultation about how we can help you too. Have a great week ahead, and see you next Monday.