Your new post is loading...
In many cases, brands have a leg up on news organizations in creating content that resonates with people, argues JWT NY's Lydia Leavitt.
Brand journalism, native advertising, sponsored content — whatever you want to call it — has been in the news a lot lately. The big question is whether brands, which need to sell after all, can create compelling content.
It looks like brands cannot only do that but also beat their editorial counterparts. Take Pulse, an RSS-aggregation app. Pulse CEO Askshay Kothari went as far as to say that users are 25 percent more likely to share a piece of branded content (aka ads) than a traditional news story through the app. Branded editorial is doing so well on Pulse because it’s much less PR-driven than its non-branded counterparts and, therefore, more engaging. As a former full-time journalist, I’ve witnessed some in the editorial news cycle using an opposite strategy. It’s mainly centered on writing up the day’s most interesting PR initiatives before their competitors do. Of course, this isn’t true for every publication or journalist, but most will admit (after a few drinks) that in the age of editorial sites hungry for pageviews, writing feature stories is a dying art.
What good branded editorial should do is rally people around an idea central to the brand’s messaging but not directly about the brand. There’s an opportunity to create better, more engaging content on higher-level topics. Qualcomm and T. Rowe Price’s brand journalism initiatives, which we’ve helped develop at JWT, have seen such astronomical engagement on Pulse because they are not putting out what many would consider advertorial....
[Who's best at brand journalism? ~ Jeff]
