Content marketing moves to centre stage
Last night ANZ launched one of Australia’s biggest branded content plays to date. Mumbrella’s Tim Burrowes was at the launch.
It took a few minutes too long last night for it to dawn on me why there was a jazz band in the corner of the room at ANZ’s Melbourne conference suite. Blue Notes – gerrit?
And what last night’s event did make clear is that the opportunities of that developing subset of branded content, brand journalism, are beginning to dawn on local brands.
The movement – embraced early on by Australia’s big sporting codes – is now going mainstream. As it begins to look less like a fad, the question is instead shifting to that of: how big will it be?
Good to see financial services leading the way in content marketing.
Great article. Thanks Tim.
Very insightful overview of our new ‘digital’ world. Everyone is looking to engage rather than spruik overtly.
We’re all about to realise that distribution, not content, is King.
Ho hum. Another ad this time called BlueNotes. What a waste of money. A dud note that’ll worry ANZ shareholders.
Compare BlueNotes to the brilliant “There are better ways to save money” / “There are better places to stash your money” ads. M&C Saatchi’s straight headlines with bent visuals caught your eye. BlueNotes won’t.
This is ridiculous. There is simply no way that ANZ will be a publisher. If you want to test it: let’s ask what view they might take on a key Budget item; the gigantic cost of tax breaks for compulsory super. Any decent commentator would side with Treasury’s view that the tax gifts must be rolled back. Do we think Blue Notes Cornell (or Guthrie) will be pushing that view?
If it’s not pure editorial, it’s not editorial. Which means it’s advertising. Do we think this is good advertising?
Great article Tim, ANZ obviously see this as a long term play having brought some publishing execs in-house but was there any hint of agency involvement? If so, which types of agency and what’s their contribution? It seems all agencies (creative, media, PR, etc) are making a claim to be the ‘kings of content’ but their credentials rarely extend beyond producing a viral video once.
Also, Ben #2, it’s at least 50/50 – if you have great distribution and bad content, well, we in the industry call that SPAM and it won’t get you very far.
Spinned Out – what exactly constitutes pure editorial? If ANZ was your newspaper’s biggest advertiser do you think they wouldn’t have at least some influence over your reporting. How about the political news organisations like Fox News and MSNBC, pure editorial? Surely not…
Brands typically underestimate what’s required to sustain an editorial focus longterm. After the first flush of excitement with a launch, the harder yards innovating an editorial agenda week-in, week-out become too much of a time suck.
Neil Moore: its easy. Would you pay for it? People buy quality journalism. Propaganda, advertising, sectarian ranting, etc is not saleable except to shmucks. I don’t think anyone actually buys fox or msnbc or for that matter the Australian (which is a commercial debacle).
If advertisers can influence editorial content it is called advertorial. Again, no one buys it.
Neal Moore: If you believe that advertising is the same as editorial then I can hardly respond. It seems to me the ANZ project is marketing, which is in the same species as advertising and certainly not of a kind with journalism.
A lot of fakery is admitted to the notion of journalism, not least by its supposed professional association (which is trying to unionise PRs for a living!). It seems to me that real journalism is more valuable now than it ever was, which is why papers like the FT are growing.
If, for example, ANZ’s Cornell was to apply journalism to his chairman’s interview, he might have asked 2 plain questions: 1. What are the greatest conflicts of interest inherent in your being both an investment bank chairman (Investec) and a bank chairman? 2. How did your board deal with those conflicts?
What a massive suck-up from Tim Burrows. Makes me want to pewk.
Try not to make too much of a mess, Rushdie.
Tim – Mumbrella
I look forward to Bluenote’s coverage and response to Oxfam’s report into Australia’s big four banks and their links to rights abuses in developing countries.