6 Brand Storytelling Tips From Conde Nast

As a brand whose bread and but­ter is con­tent, Conde Nast is in a unique posi­tion to weigh in on brand­ed con­tent. The media com­pa­ny can lean on a long her­itage in the con­tent busi­ness and may the­o­ret­i­cal­ly have a leg up on con­tent novices, but, like many brands...

Lisa Lacy By Lisa Lacy. Join the discussion » 0 comments

As a brand whose bread and but­ter is con­tent, Conde Nast is in a unique posi­tion to weigh in on brand­ed con­tent. The media com­pa­ny can lean on a long her­itage in the con­tent busi­ness and may the­o­ret­i­cal­ly have a leg up on con­tent novices, but, like many brands, it must still find a way to pro­mote itself in the bold new dig­i­tal era.


Even a con­tent brand must cre­ate brand­ed con­tent. That’s the case with Conde Nast, whose vice pres­i­dent of cor­po­rate part­ner­ships, Josh Stinch­comb, was on the “Sto­ry­telling: The Dig­i­tal Expe­ri­ence” pan­el dur­ing New York’s Adver­tis­ing Week.

Stinch­comb shared his con­tent exper­tise and tips for oth­er brands look­ing to get in on the con­tent game.

Tip 1: Don’t Focus So Much On Data That You Lose Sight Of Everything Else

Data with­out cre­ativ­i­ty is just noise,” Stinch­comb said. “There is a risk of being too focused on what the data tells us what we think some­one wants that we lose serendip­i­ty. We have to cau­tion against over­re­liance on data in terms of con­tent cre­ation.”

In oth­er words, brands should still go with their guts if there’s a par­tic­u­lar piece of con­tent they think will res­onate even if the data doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly tell them it’s the right thing to do.

At the same time, Stinch­comb said Conde Nast looks at what seg­ments of audi­ences are con­sum­ing what con­tent on its sites and takes that insight to cre­ate new, unex­pect­ed con­tent.

Data is inter­est­ing in terms of con­nect­ing the right sto­ries with the right peo­ple,” Stinch­comb added. “A lot of data we use to think of how to con­nect back to seg­ments of audi­ences.”

Tip 2: Utilize Visual Content

Stinch­comb cit­ed the rise of the image-based web thanks to ubiq­ui­tous cam­eras as anoth­er great source of con­tent.

Images are pow­er­ful,” he said. “We’re see­ing that become a big­ger and big­ger fac­tor in the sto­ries we tell. A her­itage can be built on pho­tog­ra­phy for a lot of brands that aren’t used to telling sto­ries.”

Tip 3: Consumers Are Consuming Content, Not Collaborating

For his part, Stinch­comb said the notion of col­lab­o­ra­tion is “over­stat­ed.” He con­ced­ed there is an oppor­tu­ni­ty for per­son­al­iza­tion, but notes con­tent mar­ket­ing remains most­ly a giver/recipient rela­tion­ship.

Most peo­ple are con­sumers, not cre­ators,” he added.

Tip 4: Proceed With Caution And Preserve Brand Integrity

There are some advan­tages com­ing from being a lega­cy busi­ness in this space,” Stinch­comb said. “There’s cash flow, con­tent infrastructure…there’s a lot we have going for us, but it’s how we mix [con­tent and dig­i­tal that] we take seri­ous­ly…”

As a result, Stinch­comb said his brand may have a rep­u­ta­tion for being risk- or change-averse, but Conde Nast doesn’t want to be cav­a­lier.

We’re cau­tious about pre­serv­ing the integri­ty of our brands,” Stinch­comb said. “There’s a huge oppor­tu­ni­ty for brands like us to lever­age assets that want to do busi­ness with Conde Nast and find­ing the right ways to have these things coex­ist.”

Tip 5: Start With The Editorial

He cit­ed a long­form native piece on Wired for the Net­flix series “Orange is the New Black” as a good piece of con­tent mar­ket­ing.

You have to start with the edi­to­r­i­al. What’s going to inter­est con­sumers? What’s some­thing you can own?” he asked. “That’s the approach we’re tak­ing.”

He added that if a brand is start­ing its con­tent mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy with a prod­uct in mind, it should prob­a­bly just make an ad.

Tip 6: Think Digital Video

In addi­tion, Stinch­comb not­ed Conde Nast is “mak­ing huge bet on dig­i­tal video” and launched 11 chan­nels about 18 months ago.

It’s a huge under­tak­ing in devel­op­ing script­ed, real­i­ty-based, how-to videos, but what we’re see­ing — espe­cial­ly among Mil­len­ni­als – is that’s the pre­ferred way.”


What’s your take on this media com­pa­ny’s per­spec­tive on con­tent mar­ket­ing? Is it use­ful for your own efforts?

Lisa Lacy

Written by Lisa Lacy

Lisa is a senior features writer for Inked. She also previously covered digital marketing for Incisive Media. Her background includes editorial positions at Dow Jones, the Financial Times, the Huffington Post, AOL, Amazon, Hearst, Martha Stewart Living and the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.

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