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Content Marketing: Who's The Boss?

While it is the year of data, mobile, and the snake, 2013 also continues to revitalize the age-old trend of content marketing and syndication. It seems these ideas are so old they’re new again.

John Deere has been doing it since 1895 with “The Furrow,” so what is making content marketing so attractive now to the modern marketer? While there is no clear cut definition of content marketing, I would put forth that it is content created by a brand, that even if the branding were removed, that the content would still be valuable and engaging to a reader. If done well, it creates positive brand connotation. And if we work with that definition, it makes sense that the modern marketer (much like the modern publisher) wants to get the attention of content-ravenous consumers, most of whom have one or more devices attached to them at any given moment with which to consume.

Untitled-1.pngLast week, the IAB held a Content Marketing Town Hall to foster a discussion around both the concerns and opportunities publishers have in the content marketing and syndication space. The IAB AdLab was packed to the brim. Publishers came with some fears about brands honing in on the content business. To open the day, Andrew Susman, President & CEO of StudioOne and ICSC Board Chairman, reminded us with calming voice that, “Currently the industry sees branded content as a type of media buy, butactually it’s a type of content. If you bring audience to branded content - you get content marketing.”

Joe Pulizzi, Founder of the Content Marketing Institute, delivered the opening keynote of the day, outlining the opportunity for publishers and brands to work together to deliver relevant content to consumers, whether branded or editorial, because, as Jonathan Perelman, VP Agency Strategy and Industry Development at BuzzFeed later noted, “Great content finds its audience.” So it seems that the name of the game is getting engaging content in a place where your readers will consume it, whether you’re a publisher embracing branded content on your site, or you’re looking to syndicate out your editorial content to brands. 

One concern did resound in the room around advertorial content. Should there be guidelines that clearly denote advertorial content? Do ethical standards need to be set for branded content and along with it, best practices on transparency and disclosure? Do we need to create sponsored content labeling conventions? And especially as automated platforms serve up content, how can we ensure that we’re seamlessly integrating advertorial content but not duping readers? The need to ensure will undoubtedly be an ongoing conversation within the IAB, among our membership, and in the industry as a whole.

Download Content Marketing Insights from IAB’s January 2013 Town Hall 

The IAB Content Marketing Town Hall was held on January 24, 2013. Moderated by Susan Borst, Director, Industry Initiatives, IAB, the following industry leaders presented at this IAB member-exclusive event:

Amy Hyde, Product Strategy & Business Development R&D Ventures, New York Times Company

Andrew Susman, President and CEO, StudioOne; Board Chairman, ICSC

Asli Hamamci, Director, Digital, Mindshare

Bill Powers, EVP - Corporate Development, Swoop

Brett Curtis, Global Business Director, Thomson Reuters

Greg Cypes, Director of Product, AddThis

Hal Muchnick, President, Kontera

Joe Pulizzi, Founder, Content Marketing Institute

John LoGioco, SVP & GM, Outbrain

Jonathan Perelman, VP Agency Strategy & Industry Development, Buzzfeed

Ken Zinn, DVP of Marketing - Online Business Unit, Sears Holding

Mark Howard, SVP - Digital Advertising Strategy, Forbes Media

Michael Goefron, Director of Operations, Unruly Media

Peter Minnium, Head of Digital Brand Initiatives, IAB

Shafqat Islam, Co-Founder & CEO, Newscred

Skip Brand, CEO, Martini Media

Tim Clark, Corporate Blogs Editor-in-Chief & Social Media Strategist, SAP

 About the Author

Julie Van Ullen

Julie Van Ullen is the Vice President of Member Services at the Interactive Advertising Bureau. Ms. Van Ullen oversees member acquisition, participation, and retention programs. In addition, she works with designated member leaders to develop strategic, market-marking initiatives for execution within IAB’s Committees and Councils.

Studio One Launches Content Management Dashboard Platform to aid brands in publishing branded material

June 11, 2012

As brands delve deeper into the content game, it can be difficult to manage and understand how to best leverage these assets. For many brands, content creation is relatively uncharted territory. Unlike publishers, who've become acquainted with the trials and tribulations of online metrics and data, marketers are faced with a challenge in tracking the performance of branded material. Studio One, a content creator and distributor, is aiming to jump in early and help brands navigate this new space with today's launch of its Content Asset Management Platform.

The dashboard can track each story and origin language (asmany global brands are managing and tracking content in multiple regions and languages), as well as socialengagement metrics and simple pageview statistics to help brandsunderstand how their content is performing. "We're not just creatingcontent in a vacuum," Studio One COO Devin Johnson told Adweek."We're seeing what is hot and what works. What CAMP allows us todo is organize the information and data that we are getting so thatwe can make good decisions based on the content we are creatingand reusing. Ultimately we want brands to invest in content and geta good return."

While CAMP is in its infancy, the creation of a content asset management dashboard geared toward brands represents the latest step in the growing trend of brands acting as publishers. Some marketers have been so quick to jump on the branded content bandwagon that they find themselves unable to manage and monitor the bulk of content they've put out. Johnson noted that "we've been listening closely, and this type of management system is what brands are asking for."

While Studio One boasts some large clients like Procter & Gamble and Intel, the question remains as to whether these blue-chip brands will find success engaging audiences with branded content, a process that sucks up considerable time and energy and one that is foreign to many legacy brands. If the current trend continues, dashboards like Studio One's will allow brands to adopt a plug-and-play approach to their content and obsessively track metrics in a searchable and accessible way. Yet many brands and advertisers are also investing heavily in the reinvention of the display ad, which could create some friction and confusion as marketers look for successful strategies for the Web.

It's Hard Out There for a Freelancer Studio One launches journalist certification program

May 07, 2012

For journalists, a freelancing career usually means a life of instability and, in the Internet age, can result in partnerships with less-than-reputable publishers and institutions. Just like the quality of freelance jobs, freelancers also vary in quality—but now content network Studio One is launching a program to certify its freelancers in an effort to assure the production of high-quality content.

Shifts in digital publishing have led brands to change the waysin which they interact with online publishers and editorial teams,often trying to find ways to package advertisements as originaleditorial content that enhances, rather than disrupts, user experiences. As a content creation network,Studio One builds partnerships with brands to form editorial entitiesthat make relevant brand content geared to help reach a tailoredaudience. Through the creation of custom freelance editorial teams,the formula has landed Studio One partnerships with a variety ofsponsors like Procter & Gamble, Nestlé, IBM and Intel.

Partnerships aside, the freelancing formula for content generators often makes brands and publishers uneasy. Content farms are guilty of countless accounts of journalistic malpractice and often mistreat and overwork freelance employees to the bone for little reward. This is one reason why Studio One is certifying its writers.

According to the guidelines, a Studio One freelancer will have at least three years of professional experience, demonstrated Web experience, knowledge of the content area they’re writing for and a keen understanding of SEO practices. Peter Sikowitz, Studio One's evp of content and programming, told Adweek that the certification is a formal application of a process they’ve been using to produce content for years.

“We’ve been doing something very similar while we’ve been in a pretest mode," he said. "In addition to our usual metrics, we can use this and make sure we are hitting our marks for content. We feel we have much value to bring to brands and readers as well.”

Hare Today, But Gone Tomorrow?

March 19, 2012

Is your business a tortoise or a hare?  Too many digital marketing and media companies – prodded by salivating venture capitalists and enticing exit strategies – jump at the chance to be the latter. The quicker you move, the quicker you get the spoils, after all.

But remember the lesson of Aesop’s fable: it’s the tortoise that ultimately wins the race.

In any industry, that means a company that rides out shifts in the marketplace and ultimately delivers long-term rewards.

Take Apple. When the company was way down a couple of decades back, it resisted buyouts from IBM and Sun Microsystems. Eventually, refusing to give up on its mission of serving customers over quick financial fixes, it won over consumers – and Apple’s stockholders also got their just rewards.

That’s a prime example of how long-term planning beats the quick fix. But look at what’s been happening just recently in the digital marketing world. In a mad push for short-term results designed to convince bigger companies to make acquisitions, start-ups latch on to the latest trend that looks expeditious and may prove opportunistic. The prevalence of what might be called “click lust” may have diminished, thanks largely to improved Google algorithms that reward quality over manipulated search results, but now you have companies touting the number of their Twitter followers, Facebook likes and Klout scores – none of which has anything necessarily to do with nurturing meaningful relationships that will actually build brands in the long run.

How do you achieve long-term success?  First, you need to get your money from paying customers, not from investors – “by earning their deserved trust,” in the words of Warren Buffet’s business partner Charlie Munger.

When you’re playing with investors’ money and you’re not contributing meaningful revenue, you’re building a house of cards.  And, as an earlier generation of Internet startups learned with a bang in March 2000, that house can fall down faster than the hare can outrun it.  Over 95 percent of late ‘90s startups don’t exist today.

You’d think this industry would have learned from that dot-com bubble and subsequent collapse.  But that’s hardly the nature of either venture capitalists or profit seekers, out for the quick buck.

Not even the financial crisis that started in 2007 – which was caused by similar bubbles in worldwide real estate markets – could dim the lure of technology capital funding.

In the best scenario, companies running on VC’s “funny money” resemble Wall Street. And, just as speculative financial derivatives can cause collapse, so too can rampant derivative content in the Internet world.

So how can you avoid the potential pitfalls?  It really depends on the type of company – and businessperson – you want to be. The founders of social network Bebo, for example, made it clear from launch in 2005 that their end goal was to sell out to a larger company – indeed, why attempt the difficult task of competing head-on with Facebook when it’s easier to get a company like AOL to buy you?

If you’re like Steve Jobs, however, and your passion is in providing consumers – or maybe, in your case, BtoB customers – with useful and better products, you have an inherent aversion to selling out, even if it means leaving the very company you started for greener pastures.

Not everyone, of course, is a certified genius like Jobs.  My company started in 1998, in the midst of that first Internet boom, but we were determined to be in the game for the long haul. That meant we had to actually make real money. When we received our first and only investment capital, we too were asked about our exit strategy.  Our response?  “Studio One’s exit strategy is to build a sustainable business – then we can do whatever we want.”

And that’s my advice when today’s start-up execs ask me the secret of our success: Ignore the bank’s needs and focus on your customers’ needs.

But do keep in mind that not all investors or investment banks play the speculation game. The Jordan Edmiston Group (JEGI), for instance, is a digital media investment bank that seeks to work only withprofitable companies.

They look for companies with real cash flow, or at the very least real plans for getting cash soon – not just exit strategies for loading their businesses onto other parties. At a recent IAB meeting, JEGI’s Co-President, Tolman Geoffs, asked a panel of executives from smart money-backed trading desks how many of them were profitable.  Only one exec meekly half-raised his hand.

Having a real long-range business plan can mean you might not make as much money as fast as you might otherwise.  It means putting your faith in future profits over immediate gratification. It means building a company so you can sell products and services, not so you can sell the company.

If the latter method is your preference, I sincerely wish you the best of luck. As for me, instead of playing the hare’s fast and furious shell game, look for me under the tortoise’s solid and reliable shell. And I hope to see you on the other side of the finish line.

So are you built to sell out – or built to succeed in the long run?