The rise of brand journalism

Getting rid of the journalists and creating your own content can feel liberating, but may not always be the best option. Alex Blyth reports

Marketers have always found journalists irritatingly useful: useful because they can help get company stories and messages out to potential customers; irritating because they ask awkward questions, refuse to unquestioningly accept marketing messages, and have an infuriating tendency to write what they like without gaining copy approval. It has long been a knotty problem for the B2B marketer.

A few years ago, however, some clever marketers came up with the perfect solution to the conundrum: produce their own content, post it on their own websites and blogs, and use social media to tell everyone about it. It is a simple but brilliant solution many B2B marketers from tech companies such as Cisco, EMC and Gemalto, through to engineering firm Siemens and drinks giant Diageo, are enthusiastically embracing.

This is a major shift not only in the media landscape, but also in the way B2B companies market themselves. A recent report Content Marketing in the UK: 2013 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends from the Content Marketing Institute and the Direct Marketing Association revealed UK companies are now devoting 27 per cent of their marketing budget to content marketing and 90 per cent of them are producing their own journalistic content.

The ones who do it well are finding it a highly effective technique for attracting and engaging new customers. However, not everyone is finding it easy to get right. Many are beginning to realise it is not as easy as they had hoped to do away altogether with journalists, and many B2B marketers are finding themselves on a steep learning curve in the world of brand journalism.
 

Brand journalism explosion
Many believe it was Robert Scoble who kicked off this trend a decade ago when at Microsoft he attracted a huge following for his blog. He is now busy doing much the same at Rackspace, and as Armand David, director at Brands2Life, points out, many other tech brands have followed suit: “Look at Cisco’s ‘Platform’ blog, EMC’s ‘Pulse’ blog, Gemalto’s global blog platform, or all of Google’s communications processes across its entire network of blogs.”

He continues: “In telcos, O2 runs the well-curated ‘Blue Room’. Nokia’s Conversations blog was another early pioneer, and we see this even in FMCG with the Coca Cola Journey site curating a vast amount of corporate, B2B and consumer content.”

Dell, SAP and Merrill Lynch are also leading players in this new trend. US fund management giant BlackRock runs a popular blog – iSharesblog.com – in the US covering mutual funds and exchange traded funds. Even less well-known brands such as Sodexo Prestige are joining in. The contract catering firm recently started producing its own magazine.

“B2B brands are differentiating themselves by producing unique text and audiovisual content their customers will value,” says Petri Rahja, president and COO of global crowdsourcing service for photo and video, Scoopshot. “In doing so they are becoming media companies in their own right. NetApp is a great example of a B2B brand that has embraced brand journalism. A recent article it produced about the iPhone5 became one of the most popular articles on Forbes, with over 125,000 views.”

Marije Gould, vice president of marketing EMEA at Verint Systems, reports that many of her colleagues are now spending time writing content. “One senior executive writes a monthly newsletter including articles around key issues, advice pieces and even an ‘agony aunt’ style column that answers customer questions,” she says. “Many of our team members also write blogs on a regular basis. These offer commentary on key industry issues and corporate news for visitors to the site to digest.”

 

Cut-through
Why are they doing this? To some extent it is simply because new technology allows marketers to circumvent those troublesome journalists. “A company no longer has to rely on traditional media to get its messages across,” says Giles Peddy, group managing director UK at Lewis PR. “Technology means all of us can now publish on our own platforms, and companies are beginning to appreciate the benefits of this.”

He continues: “For example, an IT company is an expert in its field so its views on a relevant, topical issue are credible as are its predictions about the industry. Interested parties and potential customers will seek this information out and they will return to company websites that carry this kind of news.”

Yet there are other reasons. Marketers are struggling to get a return from traditional techniques and even some of the newest forms of marketing are failing to achieve the necessary cut-through: in a recent study, 53 per cent of people told Nielsen they had never seen mobile advertising. The best brand journalism gives a veneer of third-party endorsement to cleverly concealed marketing messages. It is a powerful technique, and one that companies like Microsoft, Dell and Diageo invest in because it works.

Furthermore, brand journalism with its potential for detailed exposition of an issue is well suited to B2B marketing with its complex, extended buying processes. This is becoming ever more pertinent in a world where buyers arrive at a purchase point having already conducted extensive online research.

“The sales cycle is changing. Marketing today is less about pushing products and more about education,” argues Gould at Verint. “The bottom line is the more content you can provide that informs, the more prospects can learn. If businesses can get
to grips with this, they are more likely to drive sales and be positioned as experts in their field.”

A new role for journalists
In January 2013 Mynewsdesk conducted a benchmark study of the content produced by the newsrooms of the top 100 global brands. The report, What’s the Story?, revealed just how difficult it is to get brand journalism right. Thirty five per cent of brand newsrooms contained out-of-date information, 49 per cent provided imagery below a publishable quality, and only 21 per cent offered additional valuable content such as blogs, industry-related news, tips and advice.

Yet for the forward-thinking brands this is an opportunity not to be missed. It was notable the top performing company in the study was Siemens, which at the March 2013 London conference of the Association of Online Publishers revealed it has recruited journalists to help produce its content.

It is not alone in this. More and more brands are finding their senior executives and marketing departments lack the time, skills and experience to produce the sort of content that truly engages potential customers – in the Content Marketing in the UK: 2013 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends report it was by far the greatest challenge reported by respondents – and so they are turning to journalists to help them create it.

Some brands, like Siemens, are hiring them inhouse; others are turning to traditional providers such as PR agencies and marketing agencies, many of which are rapidly adapting their offers accordingly; others are looking to newer service providers such as social media agencies or content marketing agencies; and many are bringing in journalists to train their senior executives on how to produce content that hits the mark.

Striking the balance
Hitting that mark is by no means easy. Gould at Verint Systems offers this advice: “A common mistake is for businesses to focus so much on providing independent and inspirational content and editorial, they forget the key business messages. At the other end of the scale, it can be easy to over plug products and go in for the hard sell. It’s about striking the right balance between speaking with authority on a subject or issue and including subtle messaging within it.”

Rahja at Scoopshot adds: “To maximise this investment, brands must invest in unique visual content to support their articles as this is more engaging than stale stock photography.”

A final challenge is to bring colleagues with you on this journey. As Matt Loney, a former journalist who has set up Working-Content.com to provide journalism to brands, says: “Many marketers and many boards struggle with the concept of being more open, allowing channels to develop for communications that are not always going to be signed off by a chain of command, and the increased transparency that comes with this.”

Feeding the fire of demand
Brand journalism is evolving rapidly. While many expect the main future development to be the increased use of social media, with brands engaging customers to generate content, David at Brands2Life is not so sure. “In my view, the biggest change and trend to this type of business journalism is the increasing access, sophistication and appetite for data journalism,” he says.

“There will continue to be innovations in social media, and brands will always experiment with Vine, or the next Facebook, Pinterest, Quora or Twitter,” he continues. “But delivering the narrative of a corporate story with transparent, well-visualised data will drive more engagement, give more credibility to the output of brand journalism, and be shared and discussed on and beyond any brand-owned venue. All of which drives advocacy and engagement.”

Whichever direction brand journalism does take, the most successful exponents will continue to be those who produce consistently high quality content. As Rick Segal, president worldwide & chief practice officer at gyro, concludes: “Quality and relevance always trumps spam. The temptation is to shovel any content on to the roaring fire of demand. This is counterproductive. The best practice
is to create a heavy flow of high quality, long-burning, incendiary content, not just kindling.”

Want to know more? Read our Brand Journalism: CASE STUDY here 

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