The publishing industry has seen massive disruption over the past 5 years or so. It was once the case that there were only a select few publishing houses that were pushing out content and influencing readers, but not anymore. The power to publish and influence is now not just with the big news corporations and media conglomerates across the globe, think Fox International, CBS or our very own BBC. The rise of social media, self publishing platforms and mobile communications has allowed not only customers to be able to have voices, but brands are also able to now reach customers by publishing their own content (blogs, videos, infographics, etc.) through the media channel of their choosing.
Newspapers can influence their readership by pushing out stories which carry political weight, and they’ve been doing this for a long time. You’d be naive to read the front page of a broadsheet or tabloid and think there was no political bias at all, and I’m not saying the purpose of brand publishing is in any way identical to this, although it is similar. Essentially, brands want you to buy their products, and through the self publishing of their own content, they are now the publishers. They want to influence you.
The New York Times are said to be quite scared about the future of their operation, especially with publishers like Buzzfeed who are now big players on social media, publishing branded news and entertainment stories. When an organisation like the NYT comments saying that they are worried about the future of publishing, this well and truly tells you that some feathers have been ruffled. The future lies with even the smallest of brands, who are now able to gain some commercial klout by pushing out their own unique content. I’m not saying Buzzfeed is a small operation, but it’s only been around for a short while, so this shows you what you’re able to do with the right content publishing strategy.
This blog will look at some predictions which were made about brand publishing in January of this year, and will also aim to look at whether anything has changed in the time since then. A lot’s happened since January 2014; the World Cup has been and gone (how time flies) and with the ever-evolving nature of online digital marketing, there have been plenty of new developments to look at.
Branded content should be about building a relationship with an audience and keeping them engaged, so that in time, they will move on to make an actual purchase. Most customers won’t give two hoots about your brand or product, so it’s your job, if you’re in charge of marketing for a brand, to create interesting information that they are passionate about, that they will pay attention to, and if you’re lucky, they might even share it.
The predictions
Let us start by looking at a number of predictions from those working in online marketing, their thoughts look at everything to do with brand publishing and how they feel it will change over the coming months and years. Here at Neil Walker Digital, we are huge advocates of brand publishing and we believe that if put in the ring with one another, branded digital content would win over traditional advertising any day of the week. Another outfit who believes this is Contently, they are experts in content marketing and in January of this year, they published an extensive list of predictions regarding brand publishing, here’s a selection:
- The Brand publishing arms race will escalate (Shane Snow, Co founder)
- Transparency will become a major buzzword as deceptive content strategies get brands in trouble (Joe Lazauskas, Editor in Chief)
- User Experience will count (Kelsey Rahn, UX Designer)
- Agencies will announce mini-content shops / garages with silly names (Elisa Cool, Director Business Development)
- Branded content will continue to advance in volume and quality (Matthew Rothenberg, Strategist)
Now, this is just a cross-section of opinions that staff at Contently posted, but how does this look seven months down the line. Are these ‘experts’ right in what they said? There are now more blogs than ever on the subject of brand publishing, and when you look around the internet, on the surface its looks like brands are seriously undergoing internal changes, moving towards self-publishing, but lets delve a little deeper.
Nike : The Last Game
If you’ve not seen this breathtaking short animation from sportswear giant Nike, then where have you been? Unleashed on the eve of the 2014 Fifa World Cup in Brazil, ‘The Last Game’ runs for five minutes and took the help of over 300 people to produce over seven months. It was a bold move by Nike as it took up valuable airtime during the tournament in June and July. The huge investment by Nike to push out branded content on this scale shows that ultimately, if the so called ‘big boys’ are doing branded stuff well, why can’t other brands join in and build similar momentum themselves?
If you wanted proof that the ‘brand publishing arms race’ as Shane Snow of Contently coined it, was a real thing, firstly look at Nike, then check out this next humdinger, it gets better!
GoPro
I admit that I’ve concentrated on sports brands, but what the hell, it’s a huge sector and one I’m interested in, so the next example is one from GoPro. If you were unaware, GoPro make cameras, not any old cameras, but cameras which are perfect for filming extreme sports of all kinds. Users have been capturing beautiful coverage, be it skiing, mountain biking or surfing – you can pretty much capture anything using the technology.
Red Bull get many plaudits when it comes to their content, but so should GoPro. They have a product on their hands which means they are able to amass so much wonderful content, that they probably don’t know what to do with it all. I’d say they were a marketers dream, the script writes itself, and their content pretty much just forms itself.
Check out this video, onboard footage from the Tour de France, filmed with a GoPro, the content is there and ready to be uploaded by the brand. Dead easy. And then theres this, this, this and this, all branded content, showing off the technology and the endless possibilities and excitement that comes with competing in a plethora of different sports. GoPro have the ultimate weapon in the brand publishing arms race, no limits!
Imagine the Marketing department at a toaster company for example, and their envy at the ease in which GoPro can create beautiful and inspiring, engaging and limitless brand published material. That image just cracks me up, poor souls.
We all dream, a lot of us have dreamt of skydiving in paradise or getting behind the wheel of the ultimate driving machine. Red Bull might be the company you would associate with those activities, but you wouldn’t be able to witness the action without GoPro, they’ve encroached on Red Bull’s territory, and their Youtube channel is oozing with enough branded content to keep you entertained as a viewer for while, and will also make you want to buy a GoPro camera. I know I want one now anyway!
Case closed, the brand publishing arms race is well underway.
Transparency?
Transparency within digital marketing is really about native advertising, something which is being touted as the content marketing of 2014, which was all the range last year, much like social media was the buzzword in 2011. Here’s everything you need to know about native advertising. It’s a form of brand publishing, which appears with other content and is dressed up to look like it, much like advertorials have done for many years.
Marketers will get on the wrong side of the authorities if they don’t label their native or branded content properly. There are things being done about it, whilst others have fallen foul and have been accused of duping the reader. While native ads should look as much like the editorial content which surrounds it as possible, it needs to be clearly labelled so that readers are aware of who is behind the content.
The prediction from Joe Lazauskas, Editor in Chief or Contently discussed the matter of transparency there have been a number of incidents regarding unlabelled native ads, the jury is still out, and so a the policy makers, come back to us in 6 months on this one!
Everyone is a publisher!
Elisa Cool, Director Business Development predicted that ‘Agencies will announce mini-content shops / garages with silly names’. It’s not just agencies that are doing this its, brands as well. If you want evidence that brand publishing is alive and well, you’ve already stumbled upon it, Here at Neil Walker Digital, we’re experts in the curation and publishing of content for ourselves and our clients, just look at our reading room created by our content team for evidence of that.
But, in terms of brands, who is publishing themselves and has anyone set up a successfull in house ‘content shop’? ASOS are great at it, they have plenty of offers on the latest fashions, I’ve got myself a shirt or two from their site, but not only are their prices fair, their content isn’t too bad either.
Their content helps them stay relevant, which is important when they have millions of customers. They have an in-house magazine, much like airlines, banks and retailers have had for years, but they are now publishing stuff themselves and sharing it on social, while they have an extensive email mailing list. All of this is concrete evidence of the power of good content marketing. And barring the unfortunate fire at their Yorkshire distribution centre, they’re doing well.
Volume and quality
Matthew Rothenberg, Strategist at contently said branded content would increase in terms of volume and quality. It’s a given really that the more content which is produced, the better the quality will be right?
Quality is a matter of perception, but with production technologies and software now being cheaper to buy and easier to use, brands can now roll out lots more branded content. By looking at this showreel from Mcdonalds, you can see that they used the 2014 Fifa World Cup as an opportunity to create branded work. It was a quirky and fun branded content exercise, and when you see examples like these from Cornetto, you’ll soon be aware that the volume of branded content out there is growing very rapidly.
So volume is predictably rising, but is the quality? There obviously be your pieces of awful branded marketing, but then again, there will be those diamonds amongst the rough, just keep an eye out for it, and try to avoid the poor quality stuff if you can.
Some more points
We’ve looked at what Contently had to say, but forget them for now, here’s some thoughts of my own. What do I think about branded publishing? Here are some rules I’ve drawn up, see it as my mid-term review, as we’re near enough half way through 2014:
No more interruptions
Your content now shouldn’t be a burden on the time of the viewer, it should offer value. Be it a video, article or any other form of content, if you can provide a form of entertainment which doesn’t get in the way of the users browsing or watching experience, you’re doing well. Television adverts will still interrupt a programme, be it The Soprano’s, House of Cards or whatever is being watched, but online content offers much larger scope for creativity – create branded stuff which is cool, exciting, witty and which doesn’t irritate prospective customers.
Value then viral
Shares are not everything, and while shares, retweets and likes will give your brand more awareness, there are other metrics you can measure your content by, such as sales and conversions. Think about value rather than instanly looking to create sharable content, and while we all dream of creating a viral wildfire which gets onto Rudetube, think value then viral.
It’s not all about articles
Exactly what it says, if you have the capabilities to create more than just words, do it. Videos are more immediate than words in most cases, but if you can offer a real ‘marketing mix’, why not go ahead. Choose the medium which best suits the brand, the message and the audience.
Don’t be salesy
Most of us think we’re too clever to be sold to, so don’t go overboard on the salesy rhetoric, people will smell it a mile off. Don’t be the desperate guy in the club, be coy and don’t be overbearing. Content should offer value, and shouldn’t be an extension of traditional advertising practices like newspapers ads and billboards which just say ‘buy this product NOW!’.
Don’t be to brand conscious
Have fun, let loose, think outside the box. If you are those marketers whose job it is to sell toasters, try something new. Brainstorm branded publishing ideas. Personally I’d hate to read about toasters, so think about other forms of content please.
They were some of my personal thoughts on the subject, now for a quick summary and I’ll let you go.
Summary
Brands need to think long and hard about jumping on the brand publishing bandwagon. Not because it might not be worth it, because it is, but because there is just so much branded content which is being produced by brands all over the planet. Brands are now looking to tell stories and build trust through creative brand content such as videos and blogs, but with the internet now being awash with so much material, marketers need to make sure it’s good, or just not bother at all.
Brands like Guinness, Redbull, Nike and GoPro have got it right and brands like Mcdonalds are proving that all of the major brands are contributing to the amount of branded content which is now flooding the net. If you’re a smaller brand, think about what type of content you want to use. Your budget might not be huge, but by utilising free tools like Vine, Instagram and Youtube, along with easily acquired production tools, impressive content which goes on to breed phenomenal success can be achieved!
What do you think, let us know on Twitter, we’d be more than glad to hear from you!