Marketing Growth Conversation: Matt McCue of The Creative Factor
Matt McCue is Founder and Editor of The Creative Factor, a publication and content studio focused on leading creatives and the creative profession today. The team’s focus is on the minds and methods shaping craft, careers and culture. Matt has worked as a writer and content leader for publications that include Fortune, Fast Company, ESPN, Wall Street Journal (to name a few), and he led content on the brand side for companies that include Adobe, Xerox and Industry Dive. He also published a book, “An Honorable Run.”
In conversation with Matt, we touch on the process of building out a publication and studio business, exciting wins with franchises like “How I Work,” and broader career lessons in making the shift from journalism to brand content and beyond.
Highlights from the discussion below:
In making the shift from journalism to brand content, Matt uncovered the value of building more evergreen content libraries with long-shelf-life, rather than prioritizing newsy stories for in-the-moment view. Doing so helped him maximize the engagement and stickiness across customer journeys for the long term.
Building The Creative Factor as a publication from scratch was a daunting process at the beginning. Anchoring on repeatable and consistent publishing routines and formats – such as “How I Work” - have helped foster audience and even create a cross-platform presence that feels a lot bigger than what might be possible for a startup team.
In connecting with many creatives, Matt has found that routines are often what fuel their day-to-day energy. From a trend standpoint, the role creatives play in modern business is often as strategic problem solver. While The Creative Factor didn’t expect to be covering so many design thinking and strategic problem solving stories, they speak to the evolution of creatives in business and marketing.
For Matt, marketing drives growth by fueling engagement and relationships across the customer journey. By giving customers and prospects a reason to keep coming back, brands almost always win.
The best piece of advice Matt often comes back to is from his college track and field coach, who advised his team to be people of character. As a marketer, Matt still sees this as a critical truth. Marketers have to work together, build trust, work through problems. Having people of character on your team makes all the difference in planning and execution. And from a brand content perspective, building trust and honoring the perspectives and expertise that subjects put forward is critical to recruiting a healthy pipeline of great story opportunities.
Explore the inspiring content at The Creative Factor. Here’s an incredible “How I Work” article with Arianna Orland of Meta, and here’s another with Wright Thompson of ESPN.
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