The transformation from a focus on creative excellence to content excellence is due to the boom in the use of social media, which resulted in an advertising environment which is both dynamic and interactive (Smith, 2013). This enables companies the opportunity to engage consumers in many of their advertising campaigns through interactive communication, which has evolved to become what is now called “user-generated content”, or content that is generated voluntarily by consumers (Loh, Tan, Lim and Soh, 2017). Therefore, marketing communication has now include user generated content which has since not only generated traction, but also overtook content generated by the respective companies due to the large amount of content contributed by these consumers. Coca-Cola for instance, has entirely embraced the content excellence approach from its previous creative excellence with its Content 2020 strategy (van Borin, 2012).
This new trend is built on the popularity of social media, with users constantly demanding for “fresh content” which creative excellence has failed in satisfying due to the timeline needed to create content (Loh et al., 2017). An emphasis on content excellence that is based on engaging and moderating the huge number of user generated content each day, will provide for the type of dynamic storytelling that was formerly impossible without social media. User generated content and consumer responses will as such, control the storytelling and can impact the consumer buying behaviour in this new trend (Linderlof, 2014). This is starkly different from the focus of creative excellence, where advertising agencies are usually hired to produce creative content.