The word of the year for most online marketers, marketing think tanks and brand advertisers is ‘brand publishing.’ Here at Online ventures group, we’ve talked about it here, here and, of course here but so far haven’t fully answered the big question on most would be publishers minds, “What is Brand Publishing?” Perhaps a reason for this has been that brand publishing is quite a difficult thing to define, let alone develop a full theory on how it works. This is because, much like its previous guise of content marketing, the game of online advertising is constantly changing. Like real world advertising and self publishing, online advertising is never a solidly defined thing; and if it is, then it’s probably time you moved on.
So when reading this article bear in mind that this isn’t set in stone, everything is subject to change, as it should be. Hopefully though, you’ll gain an insight into this year’s cutting edge marketing method and how it can help you out, or not, if the case may be. Brand publishing isn’t for everyone, although it is a powerful method for developing a brand fan base and creating a sustainable system for marketing, it might be that your company needn’t worry about producing a brand image this way. I’d suggest before deciding anything to see for yourself, and make your own decisions. After all, the overarching message of brand publishing is taking control of your online presence.
What is Brand Publishing?
The History
To understand the history of brand publishing, it’s important to look at the start of branding, and how this has tried to move onto the internet. As this article from contently illustrates, many of the lessons learnt by 19th century media moguls such as William Randolph Hearst (who Citizen Kane is rumoured to be based on) get to the heart of how branding, and brand publishing works. Producing content in any medium begins with the paper publishers of the early days of mass printing, they had to create large scale attention grabbing pieces and articles to sell their papers. When printing such a large scale of papers each and every day, they would have to have guaranteed those sales.
How they did this was by creating trust in their brand; any company could get a news team and publish their own papers, but why choose us over them? The answer is through creating an image that buyers can trust and want to come back to again and again. This remains true nowadays, but who the publisher is has changed.
Online Content
Jump forward to the early 2000’s. As the internet became more and more popular so did brands and advertising companies, they then moved more towards it, looking at the new landscape to sell their products and advertise their companies. What was frequently the case was the production of banner adverts and clickable links, similar to how a magazine would place advertising space on the sides of their space or in a full page advert, brands and companies too would pay for the space. This still happens, and I’m sure you’re only a click away or a Google search from seeing something that appears separate from the rest of the web page offering you a product or brand page.
This idea of a web page following the same structure and format as a newspaper page has been the case since browsing began, and it’s only fairly recently that publishers and websites have begun to move away from it.
Birth of the News Feed, Social Media marketing
As of October 2013, 500 million people use Facebook. Around 232 use Twitter. Even Myspace has 36 million users. Since 2003, social media has taken the internet by storm, from the beginning of myspace in 2003 and facebook in 2004, more and more people use social media as their key method for consuming online content. Like mentioned before, what advertisers used to do is advertise through banner ads and as featured links, hop onto twitter and near the top of you feed with be a promotional tweet. What’s changing though, is how now a lot of content appearing in your news feed is shared by a friend to you but is still produced by a brand. In the same way we see a buzzfeed link in our feed with a list style article, you may find a video of Felix Baumgartner by Red Bull, or a General Electric produced Jimmy Fallon segment.
This is how advertising is changing. Rather than General Electric advertising their products directly, they’re producing content that a potential audience will be interested in. That video has over 300,000 views on it, including the television audience that will have been viewing that live means that GE have essentially advertised their company without having to separate them from the flow and style of a show, associating their brand with innovation and family values. This is the beginning of brand publishing.
The Birth of Content Marketing, the development of Brand Publishing
Last year everyone was talking about content marketing. This was where a company, by setting up a blog or on their website, would use a number of tricks and tips to boost the visibility and hits of their online content. It’s no secret that by keeping a regularly updated blog with quality and relevant content you can quickly vault up the search engines, thereby increasing your chances of being viewed and guiding viewers to your companies products and services. The number of views and hits a website received became the currency for content success.
Yet, content marketing, or the view of marketing content, hasn’t been enough. An issue with content marketing is that the focus is on marketing the specific piece of content. It can be easy as a content marketer and producer to forget about what purpose the content really has which is To advertise the brand, one high hitting and shared blog post may not be worth the attention it gathers if nothing else on the site stands up to its quality or style.
Therefore, the next step has been to move away from considering an advertising scheme as a content marketer, and more as a brand publisher. This in many ways simply means mimicking how individuals use their social media, on their phone or desktop, to create a more organic and personal method of advertising and marketing. This doesn’t mean pretending to be a singular individual on a social media site, which could come across as creepy, but rather working around the social medium rather than against it.
Producing an online brand image is like creating an individual’s identity on the internet: there will be certain interests an individual has online and certain things that for that person will be appropriate for them to share and let others know about. Likewise, a brand should know what sort of audience they wish to communicate to, and therefore what content they would like to provide them with. The difference is that often users will only create a status, photo or video, for a brand publisher the types of content are endless. From videos, articles, pictures, tweets and even podcasts brand publishing is all encompassing but does only one thing – tells the story of the brand.
Key aspects of Brand Publishing
Brand publishing is, roughly, when a brand considers themselves as a publisher. This may sound obvious, but deserves consideration. Correct guidelines and the right content need to be considered at all times, this isn’t just your content though, as curation of others work becomes an important thing. Everything that is posted on the brand’s website, Twitter, Facebook profile or blog has to all be adding to the story of who the company are, what their philosophy is and what they do about it. A great example to show is the previouslymentioned Pugs of Westeros marketing from Blinkbox, owned by Tesco. Not only is the advert itself adorable but conveys the brand’s message. They are a streaming site that cares about the programs as much as their fans do, and also are internet savvy, taking from the popularity of other pug videos. In many ways, the British sign of a brand liking internet seems to be the use of pugs or kittens, as the phone company 3 also are very cute small mammal heavy.
This means that rather than a brand looking at a singular advertising strategy, it becomes more holistic. Online content moves so quickly, but paradoxically can also take time to really take off, that simply advertising a single product can be counter intuitive. Creating a collection of content that builds a fan base and garners viewers to your brand will generate interest in your products organically and without feeling too intrusive to their news feed. Again, this perhaps isn’t just a game of shares, although they can’t hurt. The trick becomes developing a relationship with your customer, in a medium where you can receive direct and instant feedback for your products services and endeavours.
Looking back at the Blinkbox example it was clearly an appropriate video to produce and share, as is the content on their blog. Articles that curate pictures of LEGO film tributes and a list which acts as an advert for a company about adverts for other companies directed by directors that are being advertised as products available on Blinxbox. The last one is a bit heady, but what is clear is that Blinkbox are serious fans of films and television and are proud of the products they offer. Yet these are so successful because they are so specific to the brand’s image, showing the importance of hiring a great content team not just of writers producers, but also editors. Treating their brands like the media moguls of the yesteryear treated their papers.
A difference to make though is that these are not necessarily vying for singular attention of the online public. By cutting out their own area they are providing a short part of users online experience. RAGU have done this to great effect, understanding their fan base and engaging perfectly. RAGU know that they want to be and are a family oriented brand, offering a nutritious and easy meal that can feed the whole family. As a brand that is quite established already, viewers can see them as great for advice and a company that knows what families want. When asking questions on their social media platforms not only do they get responses, but they also find out who are interested in contacting and engaging with them. This data is invaluable and the future for online brand interaction.
So to recap, here are the key aspects of Brand publishing:
- Telling the brand’s story
- Establishing and developing a brand’s personality
- Holistic use of all online media and content
- Appropriate curation and editing
- Contact with users and the fan base
- Accepting brand status, but not necessarily ‘advertising’ products
Hopefully by now, you’re starting to see how brand publishing works, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. As far as looking to advertise online goes, the online landscape is constantly changing. Whilst being a brand publisher may work for one company, it can be completely counter intuitive for another. Trying to answer what brand publishing is is the same as asking what is marketing? A definitive definition is yet to be created. And if you do define it fully, it’s probably become old news and you should be moving onto the next marketing technique.
How do you think brand publishing has changed? Can you think of any great (or terrible) examples of companies doing brand publishing right now? Join the conversation on twitter @theukseo.