Over the last few years, big Australian brands are beginning to realise the benefits of producing and hosting content on their own websites, rather than just on ‘rented space’ like Facebook, Twitter, and Medium, where they are subject to each platforms’ publishing conditions.
Already, a stack are infiltrating the market, creating content for their ‘owned channels’, including Bupa, Red Bull, AWOL by Qantas, and GE. In fact, over half of B2B marketers say they will increase their spend on content marketing in 2016.
This is where Cognitives fits in. Ordinarily, a $100,000 – $500,000 website for a client would take about three months or more to create. Using Cognitives, the cost is reduced to $50 and takes a fraction of the time to finish.
CPO of Cognitives, Tom Spencer’s passion and motivation for the company derives from renowned media thinker Clay Shirky’s concept of ‘cognitive surplus’, or the shared, online work and contribution that enables the business models of Wikipedia, Uber and Youtube.
Spencer believes ‘cognitive surplus’ to be the New Design Resource of the world – consider the size and scale of Wikipedia, a platform created by networked, non-employed citizenry on a global scale.
As a company, Cognitives is adamant that when people, businesses, community organisations choose to express themselves through content, whether that be video, photography, articles or a mix of all of the above, it shouldn’t be a ‘one to many’ push it should be a ‘many to many’ conversation.
In other words, businesses should be able to maintain a vibrant online community and “harness their Tribe”. There is no longer a need for businesses to tell their story on a network someone else owns; Medium is a networked media product not owned, rather rented, by its authors, for example.
Backed by media industry bigwigs like Alan Kohler and Leanne Graham (ex-Xero global executive) – as well as a large privately owned media group – Cognitives already has some big names onboard and media customers, including a strong strategic partnership with AAP.
With the current media market ripe for the taking, Cognitives is also in the midst of raising another AU$2,000,000 to accelerate its high-scale global channel partner strategy, targeting design agencies and corporations. The additional capital will help grow its current base staff of five people to 47 by June 2020. All existing investors have followed on and have taken a large portion of this capital raise already.
Using Cognitives, companies can create pixel-perfect, custom-tailored websites that feature built-in CMS and SEO tools and many other advanced functionalities. The functionality available through the Cognitives platform is the first of its kind in market, making enterprise-level technology available to businesses of all sizes globally.
“Cognitives wants to be the global standard platform for websites bred for today’s social web and the power of citizen contribution,” Spencer said.
“It is no longer enough to build static websites for clients, these websites need to be alive with live streaming & moderated social content, have the capacity to allow brands, customers or employees to co-produce content on a platform in a controlled way and give the brand/business a way to measure the performance of their publishing endeavours with in-platform analytics – without costing an arm and a leg.
“As a partner, Cognitives provides the technology platform to allow AAP Pagemasters to provide enterprise grade web solutions for a fraction of the cost they would otherwise be. Additionally, AAP have negotiated an in-platform AAP content service offering & digital newsroom services for all brands/businesses that use Cognitives-powered websites to help brands and businesses commission content and provide services to help them run their Cognitives-powered content publishing websites.”
