Using Shorthand since 2019, MINT creates scroll-stopping sponsored content for PerthNow and The West Australian, delivering consistently high page views for advertisers.
Seven West's commercial content studio, MINT, builds immersive sponsor stories quickly and simply, in a way that delights readers, delivers traffic, and keeps client brands coming back for more.
Todd Pascoe is the graphic designer for the team and Jacinta Houzer is the creative operations manager.
While they offer a range of sponsored content products, it's Shorthand that they use to build bespoke features and immersive stories.
"We like to apply it where we can," says Pascoe.
"Any sort of visually-led webpage that we need designed, we'll use Shorthand," says Houzer.
The MINT team builds two types of partner content with Shorthand. The first is called an immersive. These are designed especially for the client's campaign, with all the creative elements of the brand and its message, under the relevant Seven West masthead. These often include multiple stories as a series, built using Shorthand's Projects offering.
"Showing previous work we've done on Shorthand is quite a big selling point for our business."
One example is 'Perth's Bite Club', a hub of articles showcasing venues and cuisine around the city.
The second is called a feature article, which is normally one page with imagery and text.
The editorial team at Seven West also has access to Shorthand, and they're "looking to expand their capabilities", says Houzer. "So there are use cases across the business."
Delivering results
MINT's immersives are so successful and reliable that Houzer says "The product speaks for itself".
"For each immersive we guarantee a minimum of 20,000 page views and then for feature articles it's 10,000 page views," she says. "Depending on the content, they [can] really smash it out of the park, so sometimes we get more than that."
These strong results help with winning repeat business from clients. "They're happy with the outcomes; they come back."
"For each immersive we have minimum guarantees for page views, so it's great when we exceed these and are able to report back to the client with over delivery."
Pascoe reflects on one particular immersive series produced for a WA mining company that was celebrating a milestone birthday.
"We put a lot of effort using Shorthand to produce a celebratory history hub about them. We are unbelievably happy with the look and feel of the final result.
"It definitely increased our positive relationship with that company," he said.
"It really had quite a positive impact, with that relationship, with our advertising department."
"The process was so smooth. There was no stress in the design side of things, there was no stress with the client. We hit design deadlines early, which I'm feeling had a lot to do with Shorthand's capabilities, and how quickly we could execute the final design."
Repeated success
The MINT team's fantastic designs and approach to partner branding have become a hit with clients and readers — and a strong source of repeat business.
Members of the sales team send prospective clients links to previous work to give them an idea of what it can look like. "Showing examples of what we've done on Shorthand is quite a big selling point," says Pascoe.
"What we produce on Shorthand is one of our higher tier products… One way we get clients on board is showing them the visuals."
Once a client has booked a story or a series, Pascoe designs a 'custom skin'. "Essentially a mini brand guide for that piece of content. We'll give them the visual direction, the colours, the fonts, we'll do a short mock-up of what the immersive would look like if we produced it, to give the client an idea of visual direction."
And it works.
"Usually that mock ends up being very close to the final build," Pascoe says.
Houzer says the evergreen nature of the team's immersive content is an attractive point for clients. "It's not like a social media post that you might only see for a short amount of time; that website will exist forever."
Ease and speed
With heavy workloads, media and creative teams need tools that can keep them moving fast.
Shorthand, says Houzer, is "Very easy to use and intuitive. We can load the brand's elements in."
"I think I picked it up in a day when I first started working with it," says Pascoe. "The interface is not hard to pick up. We use minimal coding here and there."
Reliability and service
Shorthand's reliability means MINT is able to prepare mockups and final designs simply and with confidence.
"Producing an immersive with Shorthand hardly ever goes off the rails," says Pascoe. "Design elements generally don't shift or change; it's not as unexpected as, say, other products, which can have a lot of factors involved."
And, in the odd case where the team might need a bit of help with a visual or layout issue, the Shorthand team is happy to jump in. "It's always been fixed in a timely manner, so that's good," says Pascoe.
"What we produce on Shorthand we consider a higher tier product."
With client feedback and changes a necessary part of the production process for any piece of great partner media, it's handy to have a product that can be changed and iterated cleanly.
"Shorthand's pretty airtight compared to a lot of other programs that I've used", Pascoe says.
"You don't have to keep this eagle eye on whether things are going to look the same the next day, or if you've changed a bit of code and things have shifted out of place."
"It's very sophisticated in that way."
Perfecting the process
As he gets even more confident with the platform, Pascoe has been implementing his own coding. "I really like the option to put your own HTML into the design," he says.
"I like to shift things up two nudges, or tiny bits, I use code for that really, or changing line heights, or changing text."
He's also getting faster and learning the beauty of restraint. "When I first started using it I thought 'I want to put all these effects and animations and features into one project'. Over time, I've gone 'No, just let the design breathe a bit. Maybe one or two'. It's become second nature because we use it a lot."
One favourite Pascoe mentions in our chat is '40 things to do in Perth this summer', designed for Destination Perth, the city's department of tourism. Perth, the city's department of tourism.
Tips for other publishers
What are the MINT team's tips for other Shorthand users?
"Trial and error," says Todd. And Shorthand comes in handy here too. "You can try something, if it doesn't look good, you can take a step back, you can add something else in."
"I always have two windows open, the backend where you build it, and the preview. I'll just continually refresh both, while I build."
