Biography
Arjun Basu is the Senior Vice President, Content Strategy for global content agency Bookmark Content. Starting in print, Montreal-based Basu was editor in chief of Air Canada’s award-winning in-flight magazine enRoute from 2001 to 2007. Since then, Basu has led Spafax’s global content efforts across various channels and has become an expert in the marriage of strategy and content. His motto? “Content without strategy is just stuff. And the world has enough stuff.” He has spoken at conferences in Canada, the US and the UK about content strategy, is not shy about telling the content industry what it’s doing wrong, and loves when a good plan comes together. He is also the author of two books, most recently the novel, Waiting for the Man.
Speech Topic
Make Good Stuff: There is too much content in the world. That’s a given. And a lot of it is bad. It’s easy to just say make your content “good” but more importantly, one must ask “why” the content is necessary. Consumers are platform agnostic; they want content in any form as long as it’s convenient to them. And this leads to another harsh truth: consumers are selfish. They don’t care about your brand, only how your brand makes them feel. So where does content come into this equation. How does one create a content strategy that the consumer cares about, that meets marketing and branding objectives and that works? What do you measure? Does ROI have a place in this discussion at all? What about quality vs quantity? All content costs money. The best strategy, refined after asking some tough questions, ensures your content is made of the “good stuff.”
