What ‘Good Content’ Actually Means in 2026

Written by Kurt Cavadias, Partnerships Director

Sunday Treat has been shortlisted for Standout Content Agency of the Year at the UK Digital Excellence Awards – we’re genuinely so, so excited, but rather than spend 900 words telling you how brilliant we are, we thought we’d do something just a bit more useful.

We’d like to talk about what we actually think good content means. Because in an industry that loves to overcomplicate things, we think the answer is simpler,  and more fun, than most people admit or would like to think. 

The Problem With “Good Content”

Ask a marketer what good content looks like and you’ll get ten different answers. High-quality production. Strong SEO. Consistent brand voice. Authentic storytelling. Data-driven. Human-led. Always-on. Run and gun. 

All true, but they’re also describing a checklist, not a philosophy.

There are tons of examples of content that answered to a brief but fell completely flat, and also examples of scrappy, unexpected ideas that cut through in ways you couldn’t predict. 

The difference, almost every time? One team was finding the fun whilst the other was just finding the finish line.

We often say that finding the fun isn’t just about the output, but also about the process; the pre production meetings that actually get people excited. The on-set atmosphere that puts any nervous talent at ease. The Slack thread(s) that makes post-production feel collaborative rather than combative. When the process feels good, the work is better, and you really can tell in the final project.

Find the Fun

Our ethos is simple: Find the Fun.

That doesn’t mean every piece of content needs a punchline, but it does mean that inside every brief, no matter how dry, technical, or “serious”,  there is a more human version of that idea waiting to be found and subsequently brought to life.

When King approached us to create a vodcast series for Candy Crush, you might think that sounds like an easy brief to nail…. And on the surface, it absolutely was – Candy Crush is a beloved, joyful, inherently fun brand. The fun is already there. Job done… right?

Not quite. Because the real challenge wasn’t making fun content about a fun game. It was bringing that sense of fun back to the people who make it – to the developers that live inside their product. They know every mechanic, every update, every design decision (don’t get them started on the fish…). What can get lost, over time, is the perspective of the person who just opens the app on their commute and genuinely just loves Candy Crush.

Our job was to help the King team close that gap to help them articulate what makes Candy Crush matter to real people, and turn that into something worth watching. The podcast became a bridge between the passion of the people behind the game and the joy of the people who play it.

That’s the version of “finding the fun” that we’re most proud of – the one that takes a bit of digging, is collaborative, and is as fun in its planning stages as it is in final product.

What the Industry Gets Wrong

There’s a tendency in content marketing to mistake production value for quality. More budget. Better cameras. Longer copy. And bigger distribution.

But audiences aren’t sitting around waiting to be impressed by your spend. They’re scrolling past (literally) everything that doesn’t immediately feel worth their time.

You probably know where I’m going with this, but the brands that win aren’t always the ones with the biggest budgets. They’re the ones who understand that attention is earned through relevance, warmth, wit, and specificity all of which you can’t buy.

That’s what we try to do at Sunday Treat, across every format we work in – social and short-form, long-form editorial, video, and everything in between. The format changes, but the philosophy doesn’t.

What This Nomination Means to Us

Being shortlisted for a UK Digital Excellence Award matters to us because it’s peer recognition. For a team that genuinely cares about the craft of content (and making sure we’re all enjoying it), this kind of recognition hits differently. At the end of the day, content production is a job for many, but it’s our job to make that process as fun as possible, and glad that we’re being recognised for it. 

A Note on the Awards Process

“From pre to post you guys were incredibly communicative and professional, full of ideas and ready to take on feedback and criticism in an upbeat manner which always set everyone’s mind at ease.” – Client at King

We’d also like to thank the Don’t Panic team for making the entry process genuinely easy and giving agencies the platform to shout about their successes!

Come Find Us

If you’re curious about how Sunday Treat approaches content, or you’ve got a brief that needs a little more fun injecting into it, we’d love to hear from you.

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Sunday Treat is a full-service content agency shortlisted for Standout Content Agency of the Year at the UK Digital Excellence Awards 2026.

Written by Kurt Cavadias, Partnerships Director