We think differently about content
We see content as a business investment, an asset, and a competitive differentiator for every organization regardless of size or mission. Like any investment, it should be performing.
We help you extract results out of your content.
In our digital economy, content is the driver of engagement. Before people experience your product or service, they experience your content. Every visitor or customer to a company’s website, mobile app or other channel arrives with high expectations. They want a satisfying return on their time investment.
The Digital Content Supply Chain (DCSC) is the carefully engineered system that predictably and profitably delivers a satisfying content experience to your employees, and prospects and customers. That’s a system you want to get right. And that's what we do.
Performance-driven Content Mechanics
About the practice
Content Mechanics is a content strategy consultancy that combines data-driven human insights and AI to identify and fix gaps in product and service support content. This directly enhances brand perception, improves digital UX, strengthens employee experience, and elevates the critical customer experience (CX).
About the name
Content Mechanics is founded on a few fascinating parallels with Quantum Mechanics, namely, that matter—light, for example—consists of particles, but it also exhibits wave-like properties. Neils Bohr called this the “duality paradox.” There’s a similar duality paradox with content that Content Mechanics seeks to harness for the benefit of its clients. Content is widely viewed as a packaged unit of information—an ASSET—often expressed as a content type (article, podcast, product guide, video, etc.). But few see content as an EXPERIENCE that is carefully crafted to move people emotionally to transact. Content Mechanics solves this either/or paradox by demonstrating that content is both asset and an experience. When skillfully applied, we believe the Asset-Experience Duality of Content Mechanics is a competitive differentiator.
About the founder
Barrington "Barry" DeLisser is the consultant behind Content Mechanics Consulting. He has been immersed in the mechanics of content for over 30 years, first as a journalist, then as a technical writer, and for the last 25 years as an information architect and content strategist for large IT and Cloud services enterprises, a digital agency, and a User Experience consultancy. As a seasoned content strategist, Barry brings deep expertise building and optimizing enterprise, product marketing, and customer support content for performance at scale. He is skilled at aligning content initiatives with business strategies and operations to secure expected ROI for the client and the enterprise. He thinks differently about content. He sees content as a business capability and a competitive differentiator for every business that spends money on content to reach and retain customers, investors, partners, and employees, regardless of size. He brings a practice management approach to his content strategy. Like a law or medical practice, he believes his and his client’s success is accelerated by the skillful application of three practice maxims.
Practice maxims
“To be of any value, to be successful,
you must be the sum of what you do,
what you see and believe,
and what you will advise.”
TESTIMONIALS
Three words describe Barry - passionate, focused and ethical. I have worked closely with Barry for many years and I realized something early on - Barry can take apart any data and put back information together like a simple puzzle. He is a true information architect; his brain works like a graph database. As he starts looking at content, he immediately starts categorizing them, and with every piece of information, the graph gets arranged and re-arranged. In the end, you get this data model that clearly states the intent of the user and a perfect user experience that the users needed without them specifically asking for it. His focus is incredible and I was able to observe his passion and cheerfulness for many months when he worked with international teams where calls would start at 5 am and the day will go until midnight. While most of us got cynical and tired after long days, he still had the energy to crack jokes, keep everyone engaged and ensure we accomplished our goals. He is a great teacher, coach, and a mentor, always willing to teach and learn without any ego or pretension. It was a privilege to work with him and I would love to work with him again in the future. S. Kumar - LinkedIn
I had the privilege of working closely with Barry when I led Digital Marketing & Systems for the AWS website. The site’s hierarchy—or lack thereof—with tens of thousands of pages, often felt like navigating a labyrinth. This was further complicated by the frequent product launches, which required adding more pages, exacerbating already complex IA challenges. Barry’s deep expertise in IA helped him quickly develop a clear understanding of the issues. He created a compelling vision for improving the website, focused on high impact changes. He consistently demonstrated an exceptional ability to adapt to the constraints of tight deadlines and hard parameters presenting thoughtful, actionable recommendations to marketing stakeholders that balanced long-term strategy with immediate needs. Barry’s pragmatic approach allowed us to achieve quick wins and incremental improvements that significantly enhanced the customer experience. Barry is not only an expert in IA ,but also a consummate professional. Always positive and thoughtful, he has a collaborative demeanor, is solution-oriented, and has a rare ability to distill complex concepts into relatable analogies and stories that inspire and help bring others along on the journey. His passion for teaching and ensuring others grasp the "why" behind his strategies is one of his most remarkable qualities. Anyone paying attention will be smarter after leaving a meeting with him. Barry’s intellect, professionalism, and collaborative spirit make him an invaluable asset to any team. I highly recommend him and sincerely hope our paths cross again. Laura P. - LinkedIn
I feel fortunate to have Barry as a peer and a mentor. He is an outstanding user experience professional with a number of important strengths: > Experience: Barry's contributions are informed by his impressive experience in content strategy, information architecture, user experience, and taxonomy development. He is unfailingly gracious about sharing his expertise. > Collaboration: Barry is a valuable contributor to a cross-functional program to align customer-facing content. He is a creative, enthusiastic collaborator who is generous with his ideas. Barry actively shares ideas and approaches from his other projects to allow cross-pollination and to ensure consistency. He provides useful feedback that results in enriched outcomes. > Communication: Barry recognizes the importance of communicating effectively, particularly where some of the concepts might be abstract or the positive outcomes not immediately evident. He uses strong metaphors and creative approaches to gain consensus and to demonstrate the value of his recommendations. > Pragmatism: Barry is committed to creating the right solution for users and to making sure that even incremental work reflects and advances larger, more strategic business objectives. He is also mindful of the business environment and the need deliver tactical results. Kate W. - LinkedIn
Barry is a trusted and dependable colleague, a visionary thought leader, a passionate user experience expert and advocate, with impressive communication and presentation design skills. Barry actively shares his knowledge and experiences from other projects to draw out different perspectives, resulting in holistic, forward thinking solutions. His experience and knowledge of content strategy and architecture were a key asset in defining and implementing governance and information architecture for the OpenText ECM solution at RIM. It has been a pleasure partnering with Barry on the project and on other initiatives such as enterprise Digital Asset Management, and I look forward to more! Seema G. - LinkedIn
I've had the privilege of knowing Barry for many years and working with him on two separate occasions. Barry has expert skills when it comes to content development and management, portal, and web development. He is a strategic thinker who knows how to get outside the box. Numerous people have written about Barry's abilities as a strategist and content guru, but I would like to add something about Barry as a person and what makes him such an asset to a company, as an employee or consultant. Barry's greatest gifts are his character and integrity. Barry stands out in a world of 'what's in it for me' because Barry focuses on the what's best for his company and/or client. When Barry tells you something you can take it to the bank and never think twice about it. If you're looking for someone with great skills who is going to do the right thing for you... then you need to talk to Barry. Scott L. - LinkedIn
I've known Barry for 12 years, as a co-worker, as a manager, and as a friend. He is without reservation the most ethical person I've ever worked with. His depth of understanding of his field, and his unflagging interest in every project, make him a delight to work with and for. He really "gets" what the work is about, and has a true sense of obligation to the client and to the user. His enthusiasm for what he does is infectious, and his capacity for learning and then putting it into practice is endless. I would recommend him with no hesitation at all. Gabrielle B. - LinkedIn
I have worked with Barry both at Macquarium and Macys and continually find myself amazed by his wisdom, his understanding of content structures and how they integrate with an experience and organizational requirements. Barry is one of the most articulate people I have worked with and I would be happy to work with him again. Stephen F. - LinkedIn Author, "Unbundling The Enterprise"
I had the opportunity to work with Barry on a project where I was looking to to consolidate our software product information and WOW. Barry just gets it. Through a few sessions describing generally what I was looking for, Barry mapped out an entire information architecture and site map that now represents the model for how every business unit in our organization can build their portal. Andrew L. - LinkedIn
I have worked as a User Experience professional for over 12 years. 10 of those years have been at Moxie, a modern marketing agency that has accounts with clients such as Verizon Wireless, Coca-Cola, Delta and other national brands. I had the pleasure to work with Barry on our account with Georgia Pacific. At the time, he was our Director of Content Strategy and I was our Senior User Experience Architect. Barry brought his considerable user experience knowledge to bear on creating a comprehensive content strategy for our client. It was a complex project, since we were redesigning one of Georgia Pacific’s brand sites, while adding the new content strategy layer on top of the redesign. Barry had to carefully introduce the client to the benefits of content strategy, since before this project they did not include the practice on their website. Barry also had to teach some of our internal team members (project managers, client partners, designers and developers) about the inner workings of content strategy, since he was the first one to bring this discipline to our agency in a big way. I can remember Barry working endless hours to achieve his goals of excellence, since he wanted the project to have the best possible outcome. We had many hurdles in the project, but eventually we succeeded and had a beautiful new site that included a robust content strategy. This allowed the brand to integrate their new product updates and rollouts into the website in a much more effective manner than ever before. It was definitely a learning curve for everyone, but with great results in the end. What I remember most about working with Barry was his optimism and patience, as he would come up against one obstacle or another placed in his way by either our clients or his co-workers. He just refused to give up until he achieved something he was personally proud of. His integrity towards accomplishing his vision was commendable and something I have rarely seen in my working career. I wish Barry much success and recommend him very highly as a Content Strategist and User Experience professional. Danny M. - LinkedIn
