‘The Very Latest, Modom’ The British Commercial Gas Association, the Gas Light and Coke Company and Content Marketing in Interwar Britain.

Event details

Content marketing involves the creation of creative content by organizations to engage and develop relations with consumers and stakeholders. One distinct aspect of content marketing is its emphasis on its history to legitimize and promote its practice in the present. However, despite this stress on its historicity, there has been to date no detailed historical study of content marketing. This article seeks to fill this lacuna by examining the use of content marketing by the British gas industry in the interwar period (1918-1939). During this period, the gas industry faced fierce competition with the entry into the UK energy market of electricity. Gas responded with the development of an integrated marketing and branding strategy based on the creation of pioneering and creative content. The gas industry produced a broad range of content that included print, music, films, showrooms, exhibitions, cookery demonstrations and public housing. This paper will provide a detailed historic case-study of this content marketing campaign, which will demonstrate the extent and sophistication of content marketing in the UK a century ago, and will investigate the claims of contemporary content marketing regarding its history and legacy.

Dr Michael Heller

Reader and Division Lead in Marketing, Brunel University London