“Behind the Content” is a LinkedIn and HubSpot collaboration inspired by the popular VH1 series, “Behind the Music.” “Behind the Music” took storytelling to a whole new level by lifting the curtain to reveal a fascinating look at artists’ personal lives and the journey that led to their most compelling and well-known works.

Here at LinkedIn and HubSpot, we thought it would be fun to apply this concept to the marketing world by interviewing the masterminds behind some very clever campaigns and getting the real story behind the content. The idea was to explore their inspiration and share it with the world. What you hold in your hands, or more likely on a screen in front of you, is the how (and why) behind some of the most innovative pieces of content in recent memory.

Get ready to hear the stories “Behind the Content” as we enter the minds of some of the web’s coolest content creators. From big brands to agencies and even individual designers and developers, this eBook sheds light on the content creation process from all corners of the web. From inspiration to execution and finally measuring success, “Behind the Content” walks you through these groundbreaking campaigns from beginning to end.

We hope you find these stories as informative and compelling as we did. In sharing these stories with the world, we expect the insights gained will provide inspiration to take your future campaigns to a new level. And without further ado, here are the stories— “Behind the Content.”

A Dramatic Surprise on a Quiet Square

Kris Hoet - Duval Community Managing Partner, Digital/Change Architect, Duval Guillaume

In order to launch a new high quality TV channel in Belgium, TNT needed to think out of the box. By adding a bit of drama to an average town, they did just that.

Where did the inspiration for the video come from?

"It came from the brand’s baseline: we know drama. We translated that into ‘We realize that when you add some drama to daily life it gets more interesting (when you’re a spectator)’. And that’s how we started creating. This video was one of the ideas that we presented, and the rest is history I guess".

Can you provide a quick walk-through of the creation process and the time frame that was necessary for creating the video?

"When we present ideas it’s really only the core idea, which means that it isn’t developed yet into details. The details come together after the client made the decision to continue with the idea. After that, it’s all about developing the idea, working it out in detail, finding production partners, location… all without storyboarding. The message is clear but there’s no script. Because in the end, you know the stunt you want to pull, you know the kind of footage that you are looking for, but it’s only after you see all the video that was shot that you can start creating the final product. We didn’t work that long on this one, I think 2 months at the most—including only 1 day for the shoot which allowed us to do the whole scene about a dozen times."

What are your key learnings/takeaways from the content and how was it received?

"There were quite a few takeaways. One was that you need to stay committed to the idea, as there were several moments throughout the whole process it looked like it wasn’t going to work. Another one was about the speed of the viral impact. Literally 2–3 hours after putting this video online it was generating several tweets a second and even though one of our other campaigns (Bikers for Carlsberg) had done about 25 million views only a few months before that, the sharing rate at which ‘Push to add drama’ was shared was just stunning. Still, even 2 years after launch, the video averages about 10,000 views every day."

What does success look like? Did it meet and/or exceed your goals?

"The key success elements were very local, but the global buzz made some of that happen. The campaign was picked up locally by every major broadcaster, every newspaper or radio station, not once but twice. The first time after the video was released and a second time shortly after when the first results of the virality came rolling in. Several millions of views after only a few hours can do that to a campaign ;-) We had to make sure people in Belgium knew this new tv station was launched so we definitely made that happen. The fact that the campaign gathered more than 50 million views worldwide, over 4 million shares and was shown on tv from CNN to Japanese television only added to that. It still is the second most shared commercial of all time according to Unruly Media, and we’re still quite proud of that."

Economic Impact

Dennis Goedegebuure, Head of Global SEO, Airbnb

To better understand the economic impact of their users, Airbnb worked across departments and gathered detailed research and data on 8 major cities around the world. This material was used to develop an interactive infographic which can be viewed perfectly on all mobile devices.

Where did the inspiration for the campaign come from?

Over the last 2 years, Airbnb has been working with an external research & consulting firm to map out its economic impact.

Airbnb’s guests have an impact on the local economies of a city’s neighborhoods. As Airbnb listings are more spread out over a city, the Airbnb guests bring more tourist money into neighborhoods which usually are not often visited by guests of the city who typically stay in a hotel. The data shows that 76% of the Airbnb’s you can rent in these 8 cities are actually outside the main hotel districts. 

After conducting 8 studies of several large cities around the world, the Economic Impact content piece we launched was aggregating the metrics from the 8 studies.  The graphic design work was done internally, where the interactive page was built by a partner, copypress.com.

Can you provide a quick walk-through of the planning/creation process and the time frame that was necessary for orchestrating it?

"There was a large amount of time invested in these 8 studies for the different cities. The content for these studies has been bundled in a printed version of the report.  For the Interactive Infographic we could recycle the existing data and outcomes of these studies, which made the timeline much easier to handle. "

"As Airbnb is designing for mobile first, the Infographic would need to be able to be consumed on any device. The majority of the time went into making sure the different graphical elements aligned perfectly on any screen size or device. "

What are your key learnings/takeaways from the content and how was it received?

A piece of content like this Economic Impact Infographic needs to be a team effort across the different departments. For this piece we worked across the following departments to get to the best outcome:

• Government Relations: Conducted the Economic Impact studies
• Communications/PR: Worked with their existing network of media to get an exclusive placement in the Washington Post
• Graphic Design: Aced the design work, and worked with the external developers to get the infographic perfect on any screen size
• Legal: Final approvals of all the data we could share
• Engineering Team: Engineering and deployment of the application on the Airbnb stack in a timely manner
• External Vendor: Copypress, as a partner in building the application, and giving feedback on interactivity in HTML 5; social media team who pushed the content onto several social media streams for extra amplification
• This content piece was not supported with additional paid social media, which is a takeaway for the future. The time for free social virality is over, where it has become a pay-to-play on social for the extra amplification of engaging content. 

What does success look like? Did it meet and/or exceed your goals?

"This particular piece of content has reached the goals we had set out, both in the social engagement, as well as the media attention we got.  As the content has been designed as evergreen content, we could still push this particular piece of content over the next couple of months using paid social amplification, and reach new potential customers or influential decision makers in the 8 cities we analyzed, or in other cities around the world."

The First SlideShare Infomercial

Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer, MarketingProfs

The crazy sleep schedule of a new mom, combined with too much latenight TV, brought about a one-of-akind infomercial for the B2B Forum.

Where did the inspiration come from?

"The inspiration for the World’s First SlideShare Infomercial came from Corey O’Loughlin’s then-newborn son, Colin O’Loughlin. Corey was a new mom last spring, and so as a result she was awake at odd hours—some of it spent watching lots of bad late-night TV. So the inspiration for the SlideShare Infomercial came from her watching actual infomercials. As I talk about on stage all the time, this is one case where we looked to analogy instead of example. What’s new in your industry is new—for all content marketers. We took the idea of an infomercial and spun it for a B2B audience with this mash-up."

Can you give me a quick walk-through of the creation process and the time frame that was necessary to create the SlideShare?

"Sure. Corey was actually visiting her in-laws in Boston, so we scripted and storyboarded this out in a rare in-person collaboration in my family room last April. Script development took about two hours of back and forth; then Corey gave me a shot list (for my photos) and we approached various influencers to get their participation. Once we had all the assets in hand, it went quickly; generously, I’d say it took a day in total. But honestly it was probably more like 5–6 hours."

"Of course, what I’m not counting here is any of the broader strategy work that this piece of content fit into—because it wasn’t a oneoff piece of content, but a piece of a larger story of the B2B Forum as a different kind of B2B event."

What are your key learnings/takeaways from the content and how was it received?

"Look for universal or shared knowledge points and experiences. (Like everyone knows how cheesy an infomercial is) and play off them."

"Take a risk once in a while—and trust your gut when you do. Not everyone we asked agreed to participate, and some people didn’t say as much, but clearly thought it was a dumb idea. Others thought it was just flat-out unfunny. But Corey and I thought it was fun and funny—so we trusted our instincts on it. It might’ve failed—God knows some of our stuff does—but we had a creative hunch it was a winner."

Have some fun. Some people approach content development like it’s a root canal. We approach content like it’s Happy Hour: we get really psyched up for new projects like this! Also, we drink. (I’m kidding.) (Or am I?) :)

Have a great collaborator! Corey is brilliant.

"Everything doesn’t have to be superpolished to be worth while. The value of content marketing is not measured by the hours it took to create it—you can safely ignore that metric!"

What does success look like? Did it meet and/or exceed your goals?

The expressed goal was this: We created this piece to reach our audience’s audience— to create some momentum and reach new (including some influencer) audiences. Sharing stats were solid for the SlideShare and blog post we wrote on it, and it generated some great buzz for us. But a surprise for us was that it sold FOUR tickets to the B2B Forum within the first few hours that we could attribute to the SlideShare. I guess some people really wanted that ShamWow.

I Can Has UberKittens

Jen Joyce, Community Manager, Uber

Uber wants you to hop into an SUV full of snuggly cats during your morning commute. Too good to be true? We aren’t kitten around.

Where did the inspiration for UberKittens come from?

"Well, I love kittens. The idea basically stemmed from a dream of mine to be able to request an SUV and when you climb in there are a ton of little baby kittens climbing all over you for you to snuggle on your trip. Obviously, this would be a logistical nightmare but I wanted to make SOMETHING with kittens and Uber happen..."

Can you provide a quick walk-through of the planning/creation process and the time frame that was necessary for orchestrating it?

"SXSW 2013... I had set up a meeting with Emily from Cheezburger (You know, the famous meme site where all the cat memes live.) and I knew that together, with all of the love we have for cats, we could make this happen! So after many meetings and brainstorming sessions, we came up with ICanHasUberKittens"

What are your key learnings/takeaways from the content and how was it received?

People. Love. Kittens. We just did not have enough kittens to fulfill most requests. The good thing? That means there were not many homeless kittens for us to deliver for snuggles. The bad thing? People were going catnip crazy for them.

What does success look like? Did it meet and/or exceed your goals?

"For some, we made the impossible happen— a little, fluffy, snuggly kitty that actually came to you when you called it. A lil data for you to peruse: In order to fulfill every request for UberKITTENS, we would have needed 217x more cats—5,223 if you want to be exact. That’s about 1,044 kittens delivered every hour."

"#ICanHasUberKittens exceeded our expectations a lot. Six of the kittens chauffeured around were adopted! The shelters saw increased donation—not just as a direct result of our delivering kittens, but as an indirect result of all of people going to their websites and sharing the love. In the end, #ICanHasUberKittens raised a total of $14,268 for the shelters we partnered with. "

"On top of all of that pawsitive (see what I did there?) stuff, 42 major news outlets reported on it (including the likes of CNN, Today, and CNBC) and we saw 20+ million social media impressions. I think that Ben Parr summed it up when he said via a tweet that Uber broke the internet with ICanHasUberKittens. Purrrrrfect."

One Second on the Internet

Steven Lewis, Designer, HTML/CSS Developer

Steven Lewis wanted a new and simple way to present data. His website about the internet, shared on the internet, resonated incredibly well with his audience of—you guessed it—internet users.

Where did the inspiration for “One Second on the Internet” come from?

"As a designer, I notice new ways of presenting information online. I’ve come across a few sites which require a lot of scrolling to get the message. One I remember in particular compared the scale of people to planets and microbes, and required the viewer to scroll to zoom in and out. I also spent a lot of time looking at infographics and videos about the Internet, which I used for research with my team. A big inspiration for this was all the videos and stats I came across that didn’t make much sense to me."

Can you provide a quick walk-through of the creation process and the time frame that was necessary for creating it?

"The time frame was really short. I spent about two days brainstorming and collecting data with a coworker, but the real idea didn’t hit me until after work when I was sitting on my porch, just doodling. I stayed up pretty late that night to build the site. I only stopped because I had some goofy stuff in the Javascript and it was taking forever to load the page. The next morning, one of my other coworkers, who is amazing with Javascript, helped me load the icons in a better way. We then spent another day or so iterating on the page with our team, making it look awesome, and writing the little bit of copy there is. All told, the whole thing was built within a work week."

What are your key learnings/takeaways from the content and how was it received?

"I think one of the main reasons this site was so popular was because it was about the Internet, and we were sharing it on the Internet. That sounds obvious, but it didn’t really hit me until after it was getting shared a lot. Pretty much anyone who came across it could relate to it, because they obviously were an Internet user, and most people came across it on one of the social sites we featured stats from. So it reminded me to really consider your audience, how they will come across your content, what they’re interests are, etc."

"I was also surprised how many people missed that the orange arrows are clickable, and will do all the scrolling for you. It’s a nice surprise if you find it, and I kind of like hearing about people’s fingers getting tired from scrolling, because the point of the site is to help people visualize and FEEL the stats. I hope no one was seriously injured, though."

What does success look like? Did it meet and/or exceed your goals?

For this site, success was just getting some visitors to our page to start testing our new product, so we certainly met that goal. I know I personally was surprised at how well it did. It’s been live for a few months now and it still gets a decent stream of traffic. I actually just came across a video on YouTube that references our page, and that’s awesome to see. And I even get a pretty steady trickle of visitors to my personal site from this page now, so I definitely call that a win.

Culture Code

Dharmesh Shah, Founder/CTO - HubSpot

HubSpot wanted to identify the traits that would make an employee successful in their company. What they ended up with was so much more valuable than a simple list

Where did the inspiration for HubSpot’s Culture Code come from?

"The early version of the Culture Code deck (written many years ago) was created first to help describe the “people patterns” of success at HubSpot. The deck addressed the question: What are the attributes that make someone more likely to succeed at HubSpot? "

In that version of the deck, we identified the following qualities:

1. Believes in Inbound Marketing
2. Analytical
3. Transparent
4. Craves Change
5. Humble
6. Effective
7. Thinks “Scale”

Can you provide a quick walk-through of the creation process and the time frame that was necessary for creating it?

The very first version of the deck took a couple of weeks. There wasn’t too much to it. We used data from employee surveys and individual conversations with some folks from the team to come up with it.

What are your key learnings/takeaways from the Culture Code and how was it received?

Several takeaways:

1. Writing down a Culture Code is a difficult exercise. It feels awkward. Many people on the team didn’t think it was a good thing that we were trying to write down our culture (felt unnatural).
2. It is important to iterate on the document, as you learn new things and the context of the company changes, the Culture Code will need to change. The Culture Code deck is now on version 17—we update it every couple of months.
3. It should reflect not only the culture, as it exists today, but also the culture that the company aspires to. In this regard, the aspirational portions are very useful, because they help communicate to the team what kind of company we want to be me.
4. It’s imperative that you keep talking about culture—even if it’s awkward and even if it’s annoying for some. There is no such thing as overcommunicating culture.

Would you consider the Culture Code a success? Did it meet and/or exceed your goals?

I’m biased, but yes, absolutely. It has helped on many fronts. It has helped with recruiting— not just by attracting candidates, but by ensuring that people understand the company and what makes it tick. HubSpot’s culture is not perfect for everyone—by writing the culture down and publicizing it, we make it more likely that people will understand whether they are a potential fit or not. The PR value of the Culture Code deck has been a phenomenal success. The deck has now been viewed over 1.3 million times. As a result, it has helped the HubSpot brand get increased visibility across the country and around the world. This has led to speaking opportunities, interviews published in books and just as important— caused other companies to write down their culture too.

It’s immensely gratifying to see that companies are getting value from HubSpot’s Culture Code deck and they shape their own companies.

Our Blades are F—ing Great

Michael Dubin, Founder/CEO - Dollar Shave Club

With no marketing budget, but a great sense of humor, Dollarshaveclub.com is on its way to becoming the go-to company for men’s bathroom needs.

Where did the inspiration for the video come from?

I wanted to write something that captured the frustrations that men face when buying razors.

Like many men, I threw out my razor only when I had to because I hated going to the local drugstore wasting time looking for the sales clerk to unlock that razor fortress. I knew there had to be a better way. We also wanted to incorporate humor in the video because I wanted it to be an essential part of the brand. 

Can you provide a quick walk-through of the creation process and the time frame that was necessary for creating it?

We didn’t have much money to work with when we were making the video, so I asked a friend from my improv days to direct it. I wrote and acted in it. We filmed it in one day at our old warehouse. And with the kind of budget we had, which means no marketing money, releasing the video on YouTube made the most sense.

What are your key learnings/takeaways from the video and how was it received?

It turned out to be the right decision— we garnered so much traffic that our servers crashed. I must have called every single programmer to get our servers back up and running. It also showed us the power of social media. It was and remains an important way for us to communicate with our members.

What does success look like? Did it meet and/or exceed your goals?

The video definitely exceeded our goal. It unexpectedly went viral and has racked up nearly 15M views. But more importantly, it started the conversation with our members— a conversation we are still having with them as we expand our offerings to include Dr. Carver’s Easy Shave Butter, One Wipe Charlies and Dr. Carver’s Magnanimous Post Shave as part of our better bathroom. We want to be the place that guys go to for everything they use every day

The Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide to LinkedIn

Jason Miller, Senior Content Marketing Manager - LinkedIn Marketing Solutions

LinkedIn Marketing Solutions takes the advice of ‘think like a publisher’ to a whole new level. They created the all-encompassing guide to marketing on LinkedIn and achieved an astounding 21,000% ROI.

Where did the inspiration come from?

The idea for The Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide to LinkedIn came from a jazz CD that I had been carrying around with me for a while. The cover art was a mix of illustration and real photos; it was very Mad Men-esque and just screamed “sophisticated.” That sparked the idea of the “Sophisticated Marketer,” which in my mind is a marketer who embraces tried and true classic marketing techniques and mashes them up with very modern digital and mobile—first thinking: a world-class marketer, if you will. I wanted the design to borrow from past nostalgia while bringing a modern twist to deliver the all-encompassing guide to everything a modern marketer needs to know to be successful on LinkedIn. I think we nailed it.

Can you give me a quick walk-through of the creation process and the time frame that was necessary to create it?

The creation process was this: I drafted the core of the guide then socialized it with various teams at LinkedIn including product marketers, directors, senior execs, and global leads from around the world to collect feedback. While that was happening I had help from an agency who conducted interviews with thought leaders in the marketing space; these interviews would be included between chapters of the guide, adding both a unique expert perspective along with third party validation. Once I received the consolidated feedback, we went through a final round of edits, combined the meat of the guide with the thought leader interviews, and worked with a creative agency to design this piece of art.

We then repurposed the guide into many supporting assets including blog posts, SlideShare decks, infographics, 3 webinars, and more. Using LinkedIn to promote the guide along with an email campaign, the results have been tremendous.

What are your key learnings/takeaways from the content and how was it received?

There were several key takeaways from this project. Number one was the focus on relevance and truly understanding what content our audience was seeking. There’s really no more guess work when developing content of this magnitude. Through a bit of research using LinkedIn’s own Trending Content tool, a bit of keyword research, listening in social media, and simply asking our customers—we knew that there was a need for this piece of content to help answer the question “How can I use LinkedIn for marketing?” The idea was to create this “big rock” piece of content to offer useful guidance to our audiences, and then repurpose it into smaller pieces that would fuel our social and demand generation efforts for up to an entire quarter. It worked, and it continues to be one of our top performing pieces of content to date. The other key learning opportunity was around taking this content globally. By involving our team leads from EMEA, APAC and LATAM early on, we were able to regionalize this content for release in several different languages in markets all across the globe.

What does success look like? Did it meet and/or exceed your goals?

The Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide to LinkedIn greatly exceeded our goals and expectations. It’s our number one performing asset and to date has driven over 4 million dollars in revenue, achieving an astounding 21,000% ROI. The guide is now available globally in four different languages and we are updating it quarterly. In addition, we are launching the second guide in the series in Fall 2014 and plan to launch several vertical editions of the guide as well.

Content Loop

Emmanuel Lochon, Heading Brand, Advertising and Web - Capgemini Group

Capgemini set out to provide business decision-makers with relevant and powerful content via their LinkedIn profiles and discovered a new way to let decision-makers share innovative content with their teams.

Where did the inspiration come from?

The inspiration came about from a realization that business decisionmakers are fed with an incredible amount of content across a number of channels and devices. Business and technology leaders may be interested and can only experience a selection of this content. This is how the idea of proposing an added value service of curated content platform came to our mind. We are using our experience working with business leaders across the world to propose a balanced selection of articles about business and technology content that leaders value. In a nutshell, Content Loop is about proposing a service to access the most relevant content from many sources, and even more powerful, to deliver the best content pieces to the discerning business leaders through their Linkedin profile.

Can you provide a quick walk-through of the planning/creation process and the time frame that was necessary for creating Content Loop?

Once we had the vision in place things were pretty straight forward from there on. We put together a core team with LinkedIn, our content partner and our agencies, and within only 3 months we had the set up ready to engage business leaders. We kept focusing on 4 priorities while designing the project, building a content-driven microsite, proposing a unique experience for users based on LinkedIn member profiling, facilitating connection between Content Loop readers and Capgemini Experts and becoming the first B2B technology brand leveraging LinkedIn Sponsored Updates to promote compelling daily stories.

What are your key learnings/takeaways from the content and how was it received?

Content that has a clear message, a point of view, works best. Business leaders are looking for insights, innovations in business models and leveraging of technology. Listicles are also popular among executives who are often hard-pressed for time. Business leaders are looking to share useful content with their teams, the high number of shares that we see on our microsite Content Loop is an example of this very habit. One last takeaway is to make sure to define and follow clear editorial guidelines that allow you to warranty the quality of the content selected and obviously to serve the association with Capgemini brand.

What does success look like? Did it meet and/or exceed your goals?

The number of unique visitors (300,000 users in the first 6 months), shares and time spent on the microsite are all very impressive. However for us the success comes from the feedback we get from the business leaders; our audience. We have had a large number of people from our Content Loop audience who have shared that they trust and value this service from Capgemini and decided to engage with us on our Linkedin company page. We are thus partners to these business leaders, in the technology, business and outsourcing services that we are offering within our group umbrella, and with Content Loop, we enable them to discover content that can help them with their personal and organizational growth. This is the real success for us.