Like many of you reading this, I can remember a time when the internet was a home for special interest groups, mainly flash animations and little else. How times have changed! Now when it comes to trying to define marketing, time and time again online and content marketing will appear.
This has been, in recent times, the go-to word for content marketing agencies and online advertisers – content marketing where the content produced is the replacement for banner ads and other separated forms of communication with a brand’s customers. Nowadays, rather than trying to sit an advert alongside other pieces of online content, frequently the content itself actually becomes an advert of the company.
The internet has become a, if not the, major platform for branding and advertising. Digital services and online ordering has made it a place for big businesses and a way for those looking to cut overheads. The results of content marketing, however, led us to a sticky place. The internet has not, and was not, prepared for how much using content as advertising would change the system. Like pioneers of the Wild West, poor content marketing can lead to Snake Oil salesmen, using cheap parlour tricks to get sales and numbers.
Whilst this certainly isn’t the case with every type of content marketing, we’ve come to a point of revision now, where we look to try and define marketing and what it means. Rather than the rolling plains of the online wilderness, where loose articles crammed with keywords and SEO roam down hollow caverns of content, brands are looking at what’s called brand publishing.
Brand publishing is in a way the next step for many companies and businesses seeking to establish a tighter hold on their content marketing strategies. Content, as we know on the internet, has a loosely defined parameter, leading many companies to go from podcasts, to videos to blogs all for the sake of competing with others. The issue is, by considering this process as content marketing, one presupposes that the content is going to sell something. This can potentially give all content online a murky taint; why has this video been produced? What you thought was a simple and engaging article has quickly turned into a sales pitch for a latest business product.
Brand publishing is different, it seeks to set up an ideological system to promote the business itself to a considered demographic. Providing customers with something they’ll want to see in the hopes of getting them to trust in a brand name. Gone are the days when a big corporation could remain faceless, more and more it now appears that the way forward is a greater level of transparency and portraying a greater sense of personality.
What is Brand Publishing?
Once upon a time, there was a business, which dreamed more than anything to reach as many people as possible online. In its excitement, it thought nothing of what advertising campaigns linked together would say about itself as a company, and as a result what its beloved customers would think of it. The people grew tired of its constantly changing company outlet and online brand name. Until, one day, it considered brand publishing!
Rather than seeing each separate item of content as a marketing piece existing in a vacuum, it saw the story it was telling with each object acting as a chapter in its unfolding journey through the internet. The business considered how it wanted to appear and it found followers and customers, some even became champions for them, telling their friends of the business’ services. They spoke directly to the customers and found out what they wanted. The business lived happily ever after. The end.
Maybe the happily ever after isn’t true of a business marketing itself online, but hopefully it showed that what brand publishing is all about is the brand considering itself as a publisher rather than a marketer. Here, by creating a succinct and consistent message within a company, it creates a solid base for customers to become aware of, maybe even becoming emotionally attached. It lets customers know what to expect from a company without each individual message having to be actually spoken. By taking responsibility for all content, the advertising becomes more about the brand and less about individual products. It means the internet becomes less of a minefield of products and services; instead brands are now showing of their creativity and their personalities, and customers can invest their time in that.
In a way, this is the result of the current movement from company advertising online through social media. With the rapid expansion of mobile internet and the content feed, companies’ main way to reach people on the internet is through this platform. This can make individual pieces of marketed content feel artificial and unnatural, and importantly make a viewer feel like you’re wasting their time by taking up space on their newsfeed. By changing to becoming a brand publisher, the company starts to take more responsibility, mimicking what it would be like for a user to follow their friends. It builds a relationship with the customer in a way that a stand-alone advert never can.
How Does it work?
To illustrate how brand publishing works, let’s have a look at a company considering their continuous brand within their publishing. Namely, the streaming service Blinkbox by Tesco.
Blinkbox has been around as a company since 2007, but, since a Tesco buy out in 2011, has completely changed the way it markets itself. With so many companies offering the same product – from Netflix to Amazon prime instant streaming, and even Sky’s recent efforts – finding a way to separate oneself from the competition has been the main challenge.
So, enter the Pugs of Westeros. Within 3 weeks the video has had over two million views and been shared across all social media platforms. This is a prime example of a company looking to produce something that tells a message about the company – namely, they love the products they offer as much as you will, they also know how to communicate this successfully.
By offering content output that doesn’t scream about what they offer, they’re finding a demographic that will want to be part of this subscription service. Once this initial connection has been made, they can continue to produce work like this. Articles such as ten Lego movie tributes builds a level of trust with the customers – you’ll then find that this brand can not only successfully give them access to instant films, but that they’ll also be able to provide online content they’ll actually want to see. The latter is known as content curation, where a business has, instead of making their own content, simply collected the efforts of others online and (giving them credit!) shown the work to their followers. This shows that, not only can they produce good online content, but can also guide customers through the internet.
To put it simply, they’ve created a brand style that speaks through its online output. This clearly and concisely communicates the company to potential customers and fans.
Content Marketing
Before looking at how they stack up against one another, let’s reiterate what content marketing is when set opposite to brand publishing.
Content marketing is the advertising of a product or brand straight through the actual content, it works a lot more like a standard advert that’s been fitted onto a newsfeed or that has been embedded on web pages. Look on a social media newsfeed, Twitter is a good example, and check out one of the many promoted posts – does it just communicate what product is being offered, or express a human point of view?
This of course is not to say every company should do brand publishing, for some companies’ customers may rather keep a more ‘professional’ relationship. However, there’s no denying that Tweet conversations like this definitely gets these companies some extra attention. The trick is getting the right balance.
Advantages of Brand Publishing
- Creates a Marketing Campaign that really Engages with CustomersThis is really the great success of Brand publishing – when it’s done right it can build a loyal fanbase of customers that will not only buy products, but advertise content for the business. Getting shares will spread their brand faster and more efficiently than anything else. Not only is it being shared, you’ve been given a recommendation from an existing customer.
- Direct Communication with CustomersAs more and more shares of published content are made, a company can benefit from an invaluable insight into how the customer base considers the company and its output. Even an unsuccessful campaign providing it has comments gives an unparallel level of company feedback.
- Higher Search RankingsAs we’ve spoken about before with long form content, the more shares and the more relevant published material becomes, the higher up a search ranking the business will be. When doing everything to persuade google to push you up the ranking system counts, you’ll find that brand publishing can really pay off.
- Brand Awareness and ReputationWith an expectant fan base, a company can now reap the benefits of its reputation speaking for itself – when Blinkbox next make a viral video people will know it’s been done by the company who made Pugs of Westeros. Providing the same high level of compelling content is produced, a company can enjoy long term financial and online support from the community it develops.
Disadvantages of Brand Publishing; Strengths of Content Marketing
In many ways, the disadvantages of brand publishing are the advantages of content marketing.
Whilst brand publishing can be an excellent choice for a brand seeking to spread quickly with a particular point of view online, it suffers from a number of practical and potentially ideological difficulties.
- Time and money ConsumingDue to how consistent brand publishing is required to be, the company must maintain a sort of ‘character’ in order to tell its story, it can take up a lot of time to establish this and there requires more revision and checks in order to approve the content to the desired effect. This means choosing the right content agency is a primary concern, somebody who understands what the company wishes to achieve and can creatively pull it off.
- Can Limit Customer BaseBrand publishing works best when done by a company that knows what demographic they are seeking to win over. If a company chooses the wrong demographic, or aims their marketing story wrong it can be disastrous. Not only could it alienate a target audience, but also any other potential customers could be put off the company and its stance.
- Failure is InherentLike with all advertising strategies, that take a point of view or a stance, failure is never far behind a success. What’s more, if failure does hit this then becomes a potentially awkward chapter in the company’s story. Will a fan base forgive a hero who’s done wrong?
What becomes apparent, is the need for high quality content, developed by marketing agencies or in-house publishers who are able to harness lots of creativity. A decent publisher will know what works about its company and what to expect from whoever it chooses to produce the content to publish for them. Considering a company as a brand publisher creates a bubble of the internet where a company can filter its content through. No longer just seeking to yell its name and products through the waves of kittens and cute baby animals, but working with it and producing things people want to see and subsequently trust them for.
As said before, it’s not for every company, but it’s clear to see the growing advantages of brand publishing in an online world currently dominated by social media.
What do you think? Do you have examples of successful (or unsuccessful) brand publishing? Join the Conversation at @theukseo.