The trickle-down economics of content marketing

“And the challenge for brands, if only for reputational reasons, is to ensure those at the bottom of the trickle are not exploited.”

Because the majority of brands have a good track record of not exploiting people, don’t they? Especially the banks.

Pay peanuts in an unregulated economy (not just publishing) and you don’t just get monkeys, you get desperate people who have no options. And cf recent OECD inequality study reporting “executive pay” compared to employee earnings. Trickle down? “Trickle” denotes a much more benign and sustainable flow than is apparent. Begrudged crumbs from the table.

How many people do we really need clipping the ticket?

How many people will still find a way to clip the ticket in 5, 10 and 15 years time?

Native advertising, murky waters.

Perhaps the actual challenge for brands is that not be seen to be exploitative?
It’s the very nature of the industry, indeed all industries involving creative content of any sort these days, to exploit some poor bastard that will work for a pittance and ‘exposure’.

In time eventually writing algorithms and basic AI will replace almost all commercial journalism, PR and communications. We’re already seeing this happen now in the US with sports reporting and its only a matter of when, not if, this puts entire strata beneath the trickle out of work entirely.

It’s perhaps a bleak future but a future never the less.

This is wrong. We don’t pay 14c a word for branded content, we pay much more. The incorrect rate was offered to Ms Spicer, as I explained yesterday.

@Ian McClelland. Yes, Ian, I read in the other piece that the incorrect rate was offered. How about The Guardian does a piece on writers and photographers being exploited (or allowing themselves to be exploited for “exposure”) to address this. Perhaps you could get my spouse to write it … over 12 years ago that spouse was paid £300 for 1000 word features by The Guardian UK. When said spouse gave up freelance journalism two years ago the rate was the same. I gave up being a photographer for similar reasons. We are all culpable in this but some of us have a louder voice to call this out. It’d be great if you at least speak up.

With all these intermediaries clipping the ticket (and adding little value) it indicates that the content marketplace is ripe for disruption. An auction-based “cost per word” model would work well here.

@Monkey are you really suggesting that capitalism is the problem here, through your use of the phrase “regulated economy”??

to breathlessly describe modestly paid content creators as “desperate people who have no options” while citing an OECD inequality study is a bit over the top isn’t it, Comrade?

ex-journos and flaks aren’t really panning for blood diamonds in the alluvial plains of Africa, are they?

for one hundred years the super-normal profits derived from the rivers of gold supported inefficient media organisations and disproportionately fat salaries for writers

there’s 6 billion people in the world and nearly every one of those with internet connectivity fancies themselves as a content provider, so you might say that digital publishing has pricked inflated journo salaries and forced a death spiral for content marketing, in which laid-off writers keep adding to the pool of laid off writers, bloggers, ex flaks and everyone with a keyboard and webcam

this is simple supply and demand in action

“The incorrect rate”, eh?

So, obviously The Guardian pays some people 14c a word, but not high-profile people who might make an embarrassing fuss about it? Is that about it?

@sammy capitalism is a problem. Not as big a problem as the alternatives, though. Still a problem. And market regulation happens everywhere. Just how much is socially acceptable? Sustainable? You make good points. And thanks for considering me your Comrade, mate. I suppose description is easier than prescription. And I guess the latter is futile. Now back to work for my diminishing returns.

@Leon I’m not sure if this is what you suggest (or @sammy if this is what you advocate), but there are freelance auction sites where journos outbid each other to write articles, and the ‘winner’ sometimes gets the princely sum of about $4 for 1000 words (they’re often dominated by writers based in India but not always). That’s the global economy for you.

Great story, Tim. Surely a more ‘enterprising’ student would have sent this job offshore and taken their own cut of the action. Joking aside this trickle-down scenario highlights problems with transparency in content marketing that need to be addressed.

@sammy.. Had to kick myself, thought you were talking about freelance photographers! On second thought just substitute ‘pro. photographers’ for ‘content provider’; no-one seems to know the difference in the blizzard

@CALarmer … There needs to be a shift from an “output” mentality ie. I wrote 250 words to an “outcomes” mentality ie. my words changed someone’s behaviour. The India example that you have provided is only a short-term problem until there’s a mechanism to attribute measures of quality such as conversion effectiveness, engagement, sales, donations, etc to the article.
The goal will be to identify “high ROI” writers (even if the payment terms are denominated in cost per words). eg. typical CPCs on Adwords reflect the economics of that respective category and, in many cases at a significant premium thanks aggressive bidding by bigger players. A consistently high “ROI” writer will be able to command a premium CPW.

Consumers aren’t fooled for a moment by stories created as branded content. They are all just obvious ads pretending to be news stories and claiming increased engagement. 10 cents a word is overpriced!

@Leon there’s the rub…..there’s no real outcome other than getting it done. I don’t think half the people commissioning this stuff even know why they are, beyond ‘everyone else is doing it’.

Content marketing is the latest digital gold rush and it appears there’s no gold for anyone, but heaps of people are offering to sell cheap shovels.

@jon i love the pic on your website but unfortunately the democritisation of content production has impacted your profession just as badly, if not more severely.

While there are some truly talented photographers and journos, unfortunately these ‘passion’ occupations can be pursued for no reward by millions of content producers who can get their work ‘out there’ now that the wall has come down

if you think about it you’ll realise that journos were a protected species with inflated wages – protected by virtue of their employers dominating the media industry because of media regulation and the expense of physical production

once these are relaxed or removed, the content marketplace has been flooded with material and traditional salaried journos and snappers are just part of the morass vying for attention from readers/viewers

All these people have so much to say for free…

As a journalist I worked for several mainstream media organisations, and I can’t say my salary was ever ‘over inflated’. Quite the opposite. As a content strategist, I’ve seen first hand what happens when companies try to scrimp. Pay a fair price for good writing and that’s generally what you’ll get. Beware what comes back if you don’t. At the end of the day, if you don’t value a contributor’s time, they won’t value your assignment.

Totally agree with @Nicole and astounded by this constant mention of ‘inflated wages’ – who? What? When? Apart from a few celebrity columnists, none of the hundreds of journos I know from 28 years in the industry have been living large. Many of us had second jobs. Different story of course for the editors, publishers, ad execs etc… Whatever your opinion on this, stop making false assumptions.

What we have here is the natural result of a market collapsing. When media was hugely profitable, salaries for writers and others were high. Now they’re collapsing. In today’s world it is all about value and it seems clear that “native” advertising is not especially valuable. Otherwise there’d be no trickle down because the buyer and seller would be locked in on quality control.
ANZ’s caper with Blue Notes is more of a statement about how much money banks have to waste than any indication of its worth.
The fact that The Guardian is playing this game is no surprise as they are so uninterested in the value of content they’d rather lose money every year than charge for it.

I am so glad this issue is getting some attention.

As the owner of a website, I am staggered by the approaches I get from content marketing agencies (and content writers posing as innocent freelance writers) who offer to write a post for my blog out of the goodness of their heart. These emails talk about opportunity and partnerships, but what do I get out of it? The privilege of having their (usually badly written) post on my blog.

Some who have approached me are working for big brands. I am unsure if they are aware of the damage these CM companies are doing to them or do they just outsource and remain blissfully ignorant of how badly the companies they are using are representing them?

Journalists should absolutely be paid a fair rate (which as Tim points out is not 93c for most types of journalism these days) but most people talking about “clipping the ticket” here have no idea what is involved in content marketing.

Someone attended a meeting with the client (probably two or three in fact) to understand their brand values and business objectives, someone made sense of all that and turned it into a brief, someone came up with the editorial concepts, someone engaged a sub-editor, someone got the legal agreements signed, paid the contributor, dealt with the stakeholders, made the corrections, reviewed the analytics and then attended yet another meeting with the client to discuss how they can tweak the strategy.

That’s what agencies (and in-house agencies at publishers like Guardian Labs) do. The idea that is implied by many here that journalists should somehow be paid 100% of the client’s fee for their part in that process is frankly nonsensical.

@Not the Guradian: that all sounds fine but for one bit. The content is the product and it’s creation is at the bottom of your value chain. Crap in, crap out I say.

I hope Mumbrella isn’t going down the path of opening a content agency? Your credibility will be shot to pieces. You cannot claim to be independent, quality journalists if you’re churning out copy with one hand while taking wads of cash with the other. And for the record, blue notes should be held up as what not to do … For many reasons.

If someone’s willing to do it for peanuts, the rate drops.

Of course the quality, expertise, experience and advice that can save you big time in legal fees or lost revenue drops too, so does the industry that teaches and feeds that experience.

But by that time, the media moguls will have built their own space ships and be living on Mars while the rest of the food chain starve to death.