MARCOM Committee Discusses Content Generation

WashingtonExec last week welcomed marketing and communication executives from area government contracting firms to its latest MARCOM Committee dinner where attendees discussed the topic: “How to Build a Content Generation Machine”.

Linda Odorisio, CGI’s Global Communications Vice President, sponsored the private event held at Maggiano’s in Tysons Galleria.

Guest speaker Kathy Jacquay, the Managing Editor at CGI, discussed CGI’s solutions to harvesting thought leadership to generate a content engine, while Odorisio continued the roundtable discussion and spoke about the IT and business process services provider’s thoughts going forward looking at fiscal year 2014.

“It’s fair to say most MARCOM  leaders are starved for good content,” said Eileen Cassidy Rivera, the co-chair of WashingtonExec’s MARCOM Committee, and president of Cassidy Rivera Communications. “We can’t seem to get enough, especially as we search for creative ways to strengthen our company’s value proposition through digital campaigns, web site enhancements and old-fashioned media relations.”

CGI currently generates content in four different ways, Jacquay said, including among other approaches, partnerships, research, and a formal entity program model — the CGI Initiative for Collaborative Government.

The Initiative is CGI’s five-year-old joint public policy project with academic institution aimed at identifying best practices of collaboration missions by analyzing models of government collaboration with the nonprofit and private sector.

Odorisio said the company is attempting to maintain itself as a bottom-up market-oriented organization to ensure it stays connected with clients at the business level. She said prioritization, maintaining a dialogue and rationalizing at the industry level are necessary in order to ensure the business grows.

Representatives from smaller organizations at the event brought up the concern that their business models are often more top-down in comparison to CGI’s bottom-up approach. Mary Kirkman, the director of marketing programs at Appian, said the enterprise resource planning software company uses social media such as Twitter and blogging in order to promote information. Kirkman said thought leadership is more of a daily process for her than it is for larger organizations.

Other attendees agreed, and spoke up about the importance of providing the community with “snackable” and indirect messaging.

The 2013 WashingtonExec MARCOM Committee Leaders are Alan Hill (Serco), Sheila Blackwell (Decision Sciences) and Eileen Cassidy Rivera (New Editions Consulting). Read about our past MARCOM Committee dinners here,  here and here.