Why brands can do better journalism than publishers
With access to deeper customer insights brands are in a better position to tell compelling stories to customers than many publishers, argues Lauren Quaintance.
If you work in a marketing department just about anywhere you will have heard that brands are the new publishers. There’s no need to pay traditional media companies for eyeballs anymore, apparently. Brands can connect with potential customers by creating content themselves. Trouble is, very few marketers know much about how to create stuff that people actually want to read.
Quaintance
A recent survey suggests most marketers think this is the path to riches; 78 per cent of CMOs surveyed last year agreed that custom content is the future of marketing.
Any stats on how many guests pay to have the Four Seasons magazine delivered?
Spot on, where many brands get content wrong is by selling too hard. And the big publishers are going to fundamentally struggle with content and the line between independent journalism and advertising. Red Bull is another company that does this well, their magazine is excellent.
No stats on subscriptions, unsurprisingly, but they claim a readership of 750,000 in total and it’s US$50 a year to get it delivered. Point is it’s good enough that you’d consider it.
Great overview of content marketing Lauren. It’s important for brands to understand that the “source” of their content is vital and they need to use credible writers that can also get deeper into the brand and find the real, reader worthy story.
What utter twaddle! You must be… oh, there it is… you ARE in the content marketing industry. Because only someone in the industry would be capable of deluding themselves to such an awesome extent.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s good that you believe this, given that’s what you are selling, but surely no one else does? Surely we are capable, as professional marketers, of admitting that content marketing is advertorial by its very nature, and therefore automatically, and in all possible ways, inferior to actual content that doesn’t have a brand agenda.
The internet is full of awful content. Content Marketing is adding to the awful. That it works is more of a reflection on the people reading it, than the brands producing it.
Just wasted 2 minutes of my life reading this shamefully self promotional ” useful story”. I think i prefer going back to the publishers who use their “tummy compass”.
TH, if you define content marketing as advertorial then you’re exposing yourself as not a ‘professional marketer’.
Savvy marketers are creating content that’s not about their product but about something their target is itching to watch / read / know. It’s not awful content. It’s often award-winning content that successfully competes with mainstream films and publisher editorial to win audiences and accolades. Chipotle “Scarecrow” is a good example.
I’m with you TH. Come on Mumbrella, didn’t realise you were allowing job pitches by individuals trying to get gigs. TWADDLE
Couple of points:
1. How is a story about the Syrian civil war or the shark cull or asylum seekers all about brand connection?
2. Your description of the fate of all those journalists (myself included) who lost their jobs as “luckily” leaves a lot to be desired!
3. If the content happens to be critical of a particular brand/product (ie Italian tomatoes illegally dumped on consumers in the guise of in-house brands by the supermarket chains) then will such content be aired?
Didn’t she make it quite clear she wasn’t talking about the serious news journalism (ie syrian war, refugees etc?)
“Luckily, there are literally thousands of journalists in Australia who have recently been released from the ethical shackles of major media companies”
Wow. Just wow. What an awful, heartless and ethically bereft thing to say.
Ethical shackles!
FOX, you’re exposing yourself as someone who drinks the marketing cool-aid, and makes big fat assumptions about those of us who don’t.
The internet throws forth so much content on a daily basis that it absolutely boggles the mind. Some of it is produced by professional journalists, most of it is not.. Most of it is awful, some of it is not.
This article is peddling the fairy tale that brands can easily compete with and be noticed in amongst this flood. And in the vast majority of cases, that is flat out wrong. There is already a long, long, long tail of mediocre brand-produced content gathering digital dust on the internet.
There are exceptions no doubt, and one or two really high profile examples are usually enough to carry the delusion that this is possible for all. Actually it’s not. Most brands will fail.
To argue that brands can consistently provide better content than journalists is just silly, and it damages the credibility of the person saying it, and the website publishing it.
TH
I’ll say this slowly, so you can follow.
The point of the story is that if the content is produced BY journalists FOR brands, the content can be as good or better than that produced by Mastheads, whatever the format.
And given that there are a lot of journalists who currently don’t have a job, the skill-set of coming up with interesting, relevant, stories i.e. content are still highly marketable.
Understand?
I say, I say, I understand it just fine (but thanks for your concern), I’m just not buying it. But I might be wrong. Good luck.
Isn’t the Michelin guide branded content? World’s best known restaurant guide
Used to be called copy writing. But now it seems to be fake journalism. Does anyone think the readers will not notice?
Stir Fry – in my opinion, it’s not copy writing, it’s content creation and they require different skill sets. We don’t often hear about journalists and copywriters swapping roles, and I contend this is because they require different skills.
As a marketer who has recently embarked on a program of work that actively leans on insights to generate interesting and engaging content (written by journalists), I found Lauren’s post useful and interesting. With our agency partners we’ve created an ad campaign (primarily using digital, social & PR), to distribute the content widely, increase site traffic and promote our products in a useful, contextually relevant way; and we’re delivering great results.
For me, the key outtake from Lauren’s post is marketers and comms professionals was there are further use for the insights we collect to drive brand preference and interaction. I’m an advocate for content marketing as part of a broader communications strategy.