Con­tent mar­ket­ing has become a fun­da­men­tal require­ment for con­sumer serv­ing brands to be excep­tion­al and thrill con­sumers. How­ev­er, it does­n’t often allow brands to engage in in-depth con­ver­sa­tion about top­i­cal trends. As con­sumers have a high regard for, and spent the most time con­sum­ing and engag­ing with jour­nal­is­tic media, is it time more brands start­ed con­sid­er­ing a jour­nal­is­tic approach to their con­tent pro­duc­tion?

In the last decade or so, brands have real­ized the val­ue and impor­tance of con­tent mar­ket­ing as both a vital busi­ness objec­tive, and a key dri­ver for long-term rev­enues.

In this age of mass dig­i­tal media, con­sumer appetite for qual­i­ty con­tent has become insa­tiable. Entre­pre­neur report­ed that Mil­len­ni­als, that core tar­get group for mar­keters, are report­ed to con­sume an incred­i­ble 18 hours of con­tent each day, and brands such as Coca-Cola have acknowl­edged this need, scal­ing their con­tent engines with the goal of pro­vid­ing an expan­sive dig­i­tal con­tent expe­ri­ence by 2020.

Traditional Media Is Still Number 1

It may be a sur­prise to some, that user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent (includ­ing that gen­er­at­ed on social media) is not the most pop­u­lar source of con­sumer’s media con­sump­tion. Nor inci­den­tal­ly is brand­ed con­tent, such as that pro­duced to build pres­ence in organ­ic results, or to spread aware­ness on social media chan­nels.

Accord­ing to Entre­pre­neur’s arti­cle, report­ing on data from Crowd­tap, user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent – which includes social media, pho­tos, blogs, email, and text – accounts for 30 per­cent of mil­len­ni­al’s dai­ly media con­sump­tion. How­ev­er, tra­di­tion­al media – which includes print, radio, tele­vi­sion, and media news – attracts the great­est amount of atten­tion, account­ing for 33 per­cent of what mil­len­ni­al’s con­sume every day.

Much of the con­tent from tra­di­tion­al media sources is pro­duced by jour­nal­ists, or oth­er cre­ative dis­ci­plines such as film­mak­ers, musi­cians, writ­ers, or artists. And at the moment, it’s clear that there remains a divide, between the con­tent brands pro­duce to nur­ture con­sumer pur­chase jour­neys, and the con­tent pro­duced by edi­to­r­i­al pub­li­ca­tions.

The Challenge

When it comes to news, the com­pe­ti­tion is fierce. Brands must com­pete against the main­stream media, as well as estab­lished niche news pub­li­ca­tions.

As this Hub­Spot image illus­trates, rank­ing for news­wor­thy, time-sen­si­tive con­tent won’t have long-last­ing returns for brands in organ­ic search as oth­er types of con­tent:

The Opportunity

The mod­ern mar­ket­ing adage, that “all brands are now pub­lish­ers”, has been wide­ly accept­ed but while many have risen to the chal­lenge of ful­fill­ing the expec­ta­tion of brand­ed con­tent, it’s often with the express aim of tar­get­ing quan­tifi­able mea­sures or objec­tives, and not with the aim of cov­er­ing cur­rent affairs, and mat­ters of busi­ness or ethics, with jour­nal­is­tic dis­ci­pline.

It’s not that brands don’t have a voice con­cern­ing these mat­ters. They most cer­tain­ly do.

So con­sid­er­ing the impor­tance and high regard that con­sumers hold with jour­nal­is­tic media, is it time more brands start­ed con­sid­er­ing a jour­nal­is­tic approach to their con­tent pro­duc­tion?

Benefits of Brand Journalism

While brand­ed con­tent mar­ket­ing ini­tia­tives undoubt­ed­ly serve a cru­cial role in nur­tur­ing con­sumer jour­neys, they often can­not do full jus­tice to the under­ly­ing voice of a brand, and the role and con­tri­bu­tion they make to soci­ety.

White and Gold… right?! #The­Dress #white­and­gold #blue­and­black pic.twitter.com/oNkLaFxYCS — Xbox UK (@xboxuk) Feb­ru­ary 27, 2015

A case in point: Microsoft can chime in on the lat­est social media trend, jok­ing about #The­Dress with the best of them, but does this kind of con­tent affirm the tech­nol­o­gy giant’s posi­tion as a pio­neer on the cut­ting-edge of con­sumer tech­nol­o­gy.

If brands real­ly want to com­mu­ni­cate a mes­sage of who they real­ly are – par­tic­u­lar­ly, to voice the thoughts, opin­ions, and visions of the peo­ple who make the com­pa­ny what it is – then they ought to engage in forms of jour­nal­is­tic out­put which enable them to com­mu­ni­cate the gen­uine views and thought-lead­er­ship of cher­ished per­son­nel.

Hav­ing this kind of edi­to­r­i­al voice goes beyond con­tent mar­ket­ing, or con­tent pro­duced for brand­ed dig­i­tal pub­lish­er sites. Brand jour­nal­ism is a means of enabling brand rep­re­sen­ta­tives to engage in the news and com­men­tary of our times. Impar­tial­i­ty, dis­ci­pline of ver­i­fi­ca­tion, and inde­pen­dence are among the prin­ci­ples of jour­nal­ism, and for brands, it could mean adjust­ing their approach to meet edi­to­r­i­al expec­ta­tions.

The ben­e­fits of doing so, how­ev­er, can be huge.

An Early Example of Success: Forbes’ BrandVoice

One of the com­pa­nies who have cham­pi­oned the ris­ing impor­tance of brand jour­nal­ism in recent years is Forbes.

Brand­Voice is a ser­vice offered by the dig­i­tal pub­li­ca­tion and, as stat­ed by Forbes writer Lewis DVorkin, pro­vides “a way for brands to use the same pub­lish­ing tools [edi­tors do] to cre­ate, curate and dis­trib­ute their expert con­tent in a cred­i­ble news envi­ron­ment.”

At present, there are a select num­ber of brands uti­liz­ing Brand­Voice, begin­ning with SAP, the first dig­i­tal part­ner, and Cadil­lac, the first print part­ner. Oth­er brands include Microsoft, Dell, Mer­rill Lynch, Ora­cle, UPS, Aflac, Unit­ed Air­lines, and Toy­ota amongst oth­ers.

A quick look at the brand­ed chan­nels on the pub­li­ca­tion reveal that SAP write on top­ics rang­ing from per­son­al­ized health care to Kore­an cin­e­ma, and Dell on top­ics such and eth­i­cal micro-finance and keep­ing your brain in shape, a post which also yield­ed a prize-win­ning drawn info­graph­ic.

What About Value?

Even in these select exam­ples, it’s evi­dent that the con­tent here is not dri­ven by a motive to encour­age a pur­chase or progress a con­ver­sion, but to com­mu­ni­cate a brand voice that affirms a com­pa­nies inter­ac­tion and engage­ment with top­i­cal issues.

How­ev­er, even with­out any obvi­ous mar­ket­ing agen­da, there is already evi­dence to sug­gest that this kind of jour­nal­ism serves a valu­able func­tion for par­tic­i­pat­ing brands.

A brand jour­nal­ism project by Dell with the esteemed New York Times report­ed­ly “paid for itself with­in 48 hours”, and as Dvorkin writes in the pre­vi­ous linked arti­cle, Brand­Voice part­ner NetApp report­ed that the part­ner­ship meant “aver­age page views per post have dou­bled each month since it start­ed post­ing.”

Why Brand Journalism Shouldn’t Be Ignored

While adver­tis­ing media chan­nels can change dra­mat­i­cal­ly, peo­ple tend to remain (at the heart of it) rel­a­tive­ly sim­i­lar. The notable adver­tis­ing inno­va­tor Howard Gos­sage, not­ed that peo­ple do not blind­ly read the ads (or con­tent) that brands cre­ate, but sim­ply that which inter­ests them:

Nobody reads ads. Peo­ple read what inter­ests them. Some­times, it’s an ad.

It is the role of a brand to con­tin­ue to pro­duce con­tent that inter­ests con­sumers on the chan­nels which they val­ue and trust. Brand jour­nal­ism offers a nat­ur­al way to engage with con­sumers, on chan­nels they fre­quent with­out the expec­ta­tion of being mar­ket­ed to.

Per­haps, the les­son here, is that sim­ple con­ver­sa­tion with­out a pres­sure for sale, if it engages con­sumers in mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tion, undoubt­ed­ly has it’s val­ue. As Annal­isa Camar­il­lo, NetAp­p’s Senior Man­ag­er of Exec­u­tive Engage­ment said of the com­pa­nies Brand­Voice part­ner­ship:

“In mar­ket­ing you’re trained to leave out the bad and the ugly for good rea­son: you have to pro­tect the com­pa­ny, your cus­tomers, your part­ners and your share­hold­ers. We’re learn­ing that we have to let go a lit­tle. Loosen up our col­lar a bit to reach our audi­ence at their place and in a more con­ver­sa­tion­al style that’s con­ducive to dia­logue and engage­ment.”

In years to come, these ear­ly adopters of brand jour­nal­ism may find they have secured a head start in engag­ing in artic­u­late con­ver­sa­tions with con­sumers, and devel­op­ing a brand voice via jour­nal­is­tic con­tent.