Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

One of the takeaways from Advertising Week in New York last week is the rise of “branded content”. Brands are embracing the potential of branded content to blur the lines between advertising and entertainment. It seems like every week, I hear the expression, “Content is King”.

It’s true that content marketing holds great promise, as marketers start to create communication that is genuinely worth sharing. Yet, in creating content, we should remember that consumers don’t necessarily want “content”. They want stories. “Branded content” and “content marketing” is insider terminology used by marketers. It’s up to marketers to make the content into something more meaningful.

In the branded content bandwagon, there is too often an emphasis on quantity over quality. Content is treated like a commodity. Consumers can see many forms of “branded content” a mile a way, and it’s only a matter of time before they learn to tune it out as readily as other forms of advertising.

That is, unless we create content that is truly meaningful to the audiences we are trying to reach....

Brand teams are quick to rebrand when they hit a rough patch. But they sometimes forget that a brand is more than a company name, logo, tagline, or ad creative. And that a shiny new brand identity won’t automatically solve all of the problems of the business.

The marketing world is littered with failed rebranding initiatives (from the Gap to Tropicana) that illustrate one simple truth about branding. A company doesn’t own a brand. It’s consumers do. Giving a brand a new coat of paint (or dressing it in sheep's clothing) won’t change consumers feelings and expectations of a brand....