This article is part of SWOT Team, a new series on Mashable that features insights from leaders in marketing, brand-building and public relations.
Journalism, at its core, is about objective storytelling and shedding light on issues, people and trends that affect everyday life. At best, it is an act of nobility and service. At worst, it is a regurgitation of someone else’s information devoid of emotion, empathy, or authenticity. A royal disconnect, if you will.
Today's journalists, God bless them, are tasked with sifting through thousands of emails and off-target pitches from PR reps and company founders who assume their audience will give a flying fudge about
Audiences don’t care about that, really. That piece of “news†is best served as an email marketing campaign or a company blog post. If a journalist reports on it, he looks lazy: Unless, of course, it is a sign of a larger trend or a harbinger of a seismic industry shift.
The convergence of brands and media
The explosion of digital has not only flipped the script on how we consume information, but it has also completely rearranged the relationship between brands and media.
A key driver behind the ever-changing relationship between brands and media is the shrinking number of journalists reporting for publications. The past year alone has seen an explosion of companies bringing journalists in-house to spearhead owned media efforts. Yahoo snagged New York Times reporter David Pogue and Katie Couric, reinforcing its position as a media company; while companies like Dell and SAP have spent the past several years building out their own newsrooms spearheaded by a "managing editor" and "head of brand journalism" respectively.
The PR industry, for its part, is also affected by this changing of the journalism guard. With fewer media targets and more opportunities than ever to self-publish and syndicate, the publicist's job is becoming more about building creative content that reflects a brand’s values, market position and innovative ideas; and then working with both brand journalists and mainstream media to amplify these stories.
In short, it’s a collaborative effort between three constituencies: Journalists, brands and PR.
But how do companies, both large and small, embrace this concept of brand journalism? How should we be thinking about it, and how does it interact with traditional journalism?
Content as a service
Talking about oneself incessantly is a despicable practice in social situations, and the same can be said for a brand’s marketing strategy. Stephanie Losee, former PC Magazine and Fortune reporter who now holds court as managing editor of Dell Global Communications, says it best:
"The reason to launch your own content site is not to crow about yourselves. You can try it if you like, but I promise you the audience will vote with their feet. It’s like any interaction â€" do you prefer to spend your time with people who go on and on about themselves, or whose conversation adds something to your life and addresses your needs in some way? We offer our content as a service via Tech Page One to audiences who are interested in Dell."
In other words, treat your owned content as a vehicle for connecting with your audience.
"Content can give your metallic company a beating heart; it can put faces and voices behind a brand that is having trouble relating to its audiences or making them understand who the company is and what it values," says Losee.
Storytelling from the inside out
Who is best equipped to tell a brand’s story? Perhaps this is where the rubber meets the road in terms of brand journalism.
Fueled by a workforce of thousands, SAP has corralled its internal talent around a singular cause to build a cadre a "brand ambassadors" who can evangelize the company message in an authentic way.
"I launched Business Trends three years ago," remarks Tim Clark, head of brand journalism at SAP. "It’s an open platform for anyone within the company to write about general, ‘non techie’ topics. Our most senior executives, including CEO Bill McDermott, regularly contribute. We then take the best content and syndicate to our Forbes' SAPVoice site."
Brands as publishers. I rest my case.
Cutting through the clutter to reach the customer
"You shouldn't have to read a whitepaper to get to a whitepaper," adds Clark, who spends an ample amount of his time ensuring that SAP’s content is less about quoting research from experts and more aligned with the idea of "shared experiences."
With the morass of information swimming around the Interweb, brands that become filtering mechanisms for "news you can use" will win customers over.
Ido Leffler, serial entrepreneur and co-founder of both Yoobi and Yes To consumer brands, offers further insights about why owned content is important in terms of customer relationships:
"It is our responsibility to engage our audience in a way where we can cut through the clutter and access our core customers. It takes sincerity and enthusiasm, but it is absolutely critical to own the narrative. We create our own stories based on our core values, and this ownership affords us the flexibility and creativity we need to stand out from competitors and ultimately reach our customers."
Putting brand journalism to task
Another important aspect of brand journalism is its unique position to break down the barriers between organizational silos, such as advertising, PR and sales. If brands commit to a solid owned media strategy, chock-full of compelling, engaging content, this content can be used to drive all other aspects of marketing and communications.
"It can give your salespeople conversation starters, it can drive traffic to your website, and it can save money, since data seems to say that inbound marketing can accomplish the same results as outbound for a fraction of the price," says Losee.
But she also cautions brands against thinking that building the owned media platform is enough.
"It can’t do any of those things by just sitting there. If you build it, they will not come. But if you build it and amplify it and socialize it and weave it into the fabric of your company, it can do just about everything but get your honey to marry you."
Optimizing and measuring for success
In theory, the self-reliant nature of owned media is certainly preferred to being solely dependent on others to capture and communicate your brand story.
No matter how great the story, or how compelling the argument, if the lift isn’t there from a sales standpoint, the argument for brand journalism’s existence won’t be defensible in "data-driven court."
"Our measurement team is always re-evaluating numbers and how much weight we should give to things like search rankings and website traffic," says Losee. "They evaluate our earned media, and lead-generation, although I think that’s asking a lot of editorial content."
Ultimately, each brand has to decide what purpose owned media serves. Is it to enhance reputation, build customer relationships, drive sales, or all of the above?
Whatever the case, one thing holds true: Brand journalism, like traditional journalism, is about quality storytelling.
"Quality is paramount to success, and quality is a very manual process," adds Clark. "It’s one thing to have a branded newsroom, but what we're really looking for â€" just like mainstream media â€" are the interesting story angles."
Does your business have an owned media strategy? Tell us in the comments.
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