Establishing thought leadership by publishing share-worthy content.

Create a whitepaper for people who don’t read whitepapers

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Box has a fascinating purpose—to create the tools that allow people across the globe to collaborate seamlessly. The truth of that vision is that most people run afoul of regulatory or compliance rules, corporate policies and the general insanity of modern existence. Box has built the solution into their software, so the tools fade into the background and you can work how you’d like.

It’s an incredible story, but under the surface, Box wanted to drive greater awareness and prime sales conversations by building deeper connections with prospects. So they enlisted Article Group to create ebooks, slideshares, and whitepapers.

We started by force ranking the most inspirational whitepapers we’d ever read. It was a very quick exercise. The simple fact is that most whitepapers aren’t interesting. It begged the question, what can we make that people will love to read? And how do we make it on a daily basis? Ready, go.

We all agreed there was a bigger opportunity to create long-term value through content.

Think about parties

(and how not to be boring at them)

Like many companies and people, Box tended to talk about the thing it knew best: itself. And having a good story about yourself and your new features serves a purpose, but it misses on a basic rule of human interaction—to be interesting quit talking about yourself.
We worked together to find a range of topics and conversations that focused on the ideas they understood deeply and could invest in.

Let’s own the future

…of work

Once we had our conversations mapped, we could build our publishing and distribution strategy around an editorial calendar. We then constructed a workflow to output 6-10 new stories a week—utilized by the sales team, social team and cross-pollinated with media appearances.
The stories lived online as a magazine-style digital publication called Blueprint, with a range of authentic, shareable posts focused on the same meaty ideas the engineering team was tackling but as insightful, “why didn’t I think of that” stories.
Using a wide range of authors and micro-influencers, we were able to establish Box as a thought leader in how work gets done, and position its point of view as one worth paying attention to.

A by-product of the effort was a sharpened internal process for creating content with more cohesion and structure. Box now had something specific to say, and a content engine by which to share it. And more than just a series of one-off pieces of content, the publication built a body of work that was an asset in its own right.

A bonafide influencer, both internally and externally.

As content started rolling off the virtual presses it became clear—by views and shares—which topics were gaining more traction than others. As we measured what resonated, we further refined our research and writing. We were thrilled to see both Box and Blueprint named as top 50 influencers around the future of work just a few months after we started publishing.

The result was the most successful campaign Box had run to date, which managed to take one of the company’s driest focus areas—document governance—and spin it into a relevant, interesting and engaging content stream.