One on One with PwC's Tom Craren

Senior executives are becoming immune to traditional marketing. Marketing consultants tell us that to pierce through the white noise of corporate communication, firms should consider "content marketing." Instead of more traditional marketing, providing valuable insight and perspective in a blog or electronic newsletter can serve as a more effective door opener. One of the best examples is PricewaterhouseCoopers' "10-Minute" series. For almost three years, PwC has boiled down complex thought leadership into small electronic pieces an executive can read in about ten minutes. To learn more about PwC's marketing efforts, Consulting's One-on-One sat down with Tom Craren, the firm's brand strategy and thought leadership leader. His team of 20 writers produces between two to three 10-minute pieces each month, along with more detailed white papers.

Consulting: When and why did you change marketing approaches?

Craren: We've been doing our 10-minute series since October 2007. What caused us to launch it was that we thought that a lot of the thought leadership we were reading in the marketplace was too self-serving. Clients in the c-suite don't have time to read white papers. And most of the material was on very technical topics and used a lot of jargon. The pieces in our 10-minute series are never allowed to go over 1,800 words. And if someone wants to dive deeper, there's more content behind all of the pieces. But we don't require they read more up front.