Four months ahead of its January 2022 debut, GO! Magazine was solely an thought.
The content material materials supplies group at Pega thought {{{a magazine}}} could match efficiently as a pure extension of the model’s worthwhile Future of Work content material materials supplies promoting and advertising advertising marketing campaign.
No one on the group knew journal publishing, nonetheless that didn’t cease them.
Two weeks after they pitched the thought, GO! Magazine moved ahead. Impressively, the group stayed on schedule and printed the digital and print variations of the now award-winning journal as deliberate.
“In hindsight, it was ridiculous and crazy, but amazing that we managed to do it,” says Nick Lake, senior director of world selling and promoting and advertising at Pega.
That daring content material materials supplies mission was thought of one in all many causes Nick was not too manner again named 2022 B2B Content Marketer of the Year.
GO! Magazine is the publication the tech world didn’t perceive it wanted, in accordance with Pega’s Content Marketing Awards submission. Topics lined in the inaugural situation cowl themes important to the model and its potential prospects: automation journeys, IT unicorns, citizen builders, uncover methods to steer higher, inclusivity in the workforce, decoding the bias of AI, and Pfizer’s frictionless drug-development mission administration system.
GO! took prime honors for finest new publication design and finest frequent design. The mission furthermore earned finalist honors for finest new print publication, finest frequent editorial, and finest distribution of a know-how publication. The group’s Tech Trends 2025 report earned a finalist nod for finest use of distinctive analysis in content material materials supplies selling and promoting and advertising. Future of Work earned finalist mentions for finest B2B branded content material materials supplies promoting and advertising advertising marketing campaign and finest built-in content material materials supplies selling and promoting and advertising program (print/digital).
But the GO! story started fairly a couple of years ahead of its quick-to-market debut.
Taking a brand journalism launch from idea to published in four months felt ridiculous, crazy, and amazing, says @NickLake1 via @AnnGynn and @CMIContent. Click To Tweet
(*120*)In the start
When Nick joined Pega 4 years in the earlier, the corporate didn’t have a devoted content material materials supplies selling and promoting and advertising program. “We had a lot of content, but we didn’t have any kind of structure or process or governance around it,” he explains.
It fell to Nick to develop a program and address the problem draw again. His first step? Conduct a content material materials supplies audit. He discovered Pega wasn’t totally completely totally different from many corporations – a number of the content material materials supplies produced didn’t get used.
Under Nick’s administration, that’s all modified. Content doesn’t get created if it doesn’t serve a goal. And that goal should align with Pega’s strategy and messaging.
“The quality of an organization’s thought leadership content is the most visible representation of the brand. It’s what potential clients make decisions based on,” he says.
By organizing and organising a strategic content material materials supplies group, Nick helped others in the corporate acknowledge how important content material materials supplies is to the enterprise. It acts on account of the gasoline to vitality the model’s go-to-market packages.
And Nick’s carry out? “Sometimes, my job is to be a creative person. And sometimes it’s to be a traffic cop (to the rest of the organization),” he says.
A strategic content team is critical to business – it’s the fuel that powers go-to-market efforts, says @NickLake1 via @AnnGynn and @CMIContent. Click To Tweet
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(*120*)Pega challenges the standard
Powering the corporate’s selling and promoting and advertising isn’t a simple feat. The model’s low-code, AI-powered decisioning and workflow automation platform competes for patrons in route of high-profile, big-name producers with larger budgets. “As a challenger brand, Pega needs to do things differently and show up differently,” Nick explains.
At the equal time, the content material materials supplies market is noisier than ever. “The pandemic was a massive wake-up call. Organizations had to accelerate their transition to digital marketing,” Nick says. “The bar has gotten higher over the last couple of years.”
So Pega adopted a test-and-learn mentality to assist it zero in on content material materials supplies that breaks by means of the noise. “We’ll try things. If they don’t work, we’ll fail fast. But if they do work, we’re going to double down,” Nick says.
One of the group’s first tries obtained proper right here in the form of Pega’s Future of Work report, primarily based completely on the corporate’s distinctive analysis. When that labored efficiently, Pega spun off gated tales centered on house of curiosity audiences with the Future of IT, Future of Operations, and Future of Marketing. This fall, they’ll add the Future of Customer Service to the content material materials supplies ranks.
These aren’t your common state-of-the-nation tales, which cowl what’s occurred or occurring as we talk. Instead, they illuminate what 3,000 senior managers and frontline IT workers say they rely on will occur – and what to do about it.
The Future of Work content material materials supplies promoting and advertising advertising marketing campaign works efficiently, attracting the audiences Pega values and incomes good engagement from these readers.
(*120*)Go for GO!
The success of Future of Work gave the content material materials supplies group the credibility to attempt GO! Magazine, which is localized for six worldwide areas.
Meeting the daring launch timeline took collaboration and creativity in draw again fixing.
Nick employed a contract managing editor with journal expertise (and a gaggle of world-renowned journalists on the prepared) to info the content material materials supplies. She shortly put her connections to work on the journal’s carry out tales.
These tales embrace interviews with many Pega consumers. “We wanted to make sure that we had a great voice for clients through this magazine,” Nick says.
But the group knew that each one work tales and no pleasing would make GO! a uninteresting research. So the journal furthermore consists of horoscopes and completely totally different gentle content material materials supplies (like uncover methods to make a stress ball).
An in-house ingenious group created the content material materials supplies’s sturdy seen id. They furthermore developed a thematic design system so every web net web page unfold could match by itself digitally and movement collectively for the print journal.
Creative expertise alone acquired’t get {{{a magazine}}} from thought to publication in 4 months. Nick credit score rating Pega’s selling and promoting and advertising mission supervisor (Kate Sutherby) for guaranteeing all of it obtained proper right here collectively so shortly. “We needed someone with that really robust set of project management skills to help us hit that deadline,” Nick explains.
(*120*)Putting the content material materials supplies to work
Moving the needle on model consciousness and engagement by means of content material materials supplies is solely half the job. Nick acknowledged the necessity to allow salespeople with the content material materials supplies, too.
GO! Magazine’s data-driven views on what’s occurring and the place the market’s heading give the product gross sales group a method to showcase the Pega distinction in shopper conferences.
“Hopefully, those clients or prospects are more inclined to work with us because they see we’ve got insights to bring to the table – a more consultative approach,” Nick explains.
Pega opted to print 1,500 copies of the inaugural GO! Magazine to be used in product gross sales conferences. “It’s about getting the magazine into the hands of salespeople and sales enablement kits … If you’re physically giving it to them, it’s a visible reminder of the brand and the strength of the brand,” he says.
It furthermore distinguishes Pega’s content material materials supplies from many rivals’ all-digital methodology.
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(*120*)Powering forward
Building a strategic content material materials supplies selling and promoting and advertising program at Pega wasn’t an in a single day success. But it’s been impressively fast. From the strategy utilized only some years in the earlier to the four-month GO! Magazine launch, Pega is discovering its content material materials supplies not solely is used but it surely certainly definitely’s a key differentiator in a crowded market. It furthermore stands tall contained in the group.
“What started as a team to create content and a structure around that content is now a hub team in the marketing organization. We’re the engine house,” Nick says.
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Cover picture by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute