Brand Journalism: The Rise of Non-Fiction Advertising #sxsw Session

hashtag #brandjo

Hard to believe it's been 11 years since The Cluetrain Manifesto, and we're still doing the same panel. And we're still trying to teach big companies and ad agencies how to communicate like humans, how to listen, and how to use transparency as a messaging tactic. Brand Journalism is a way to take those decade-old ideas and incorporate them into actual campaigns (we know, we've done it). The first step is to teach agencies and clients to think like publishers instead of marketers--it's not a new idea, but it's one that is rarely executed well. In this panel, Brand Journalism pioneers will share some of the secrets, successes, and obstacles of their award-winning campaigns.

An editorial approach to brand building. Do we need to start thinking like a publisher?

Audio of session

Presenters

Bob Garfield, Bob Garfield LLC

Brian Clark, Partner/CEO, GMD Studios

David Eastman

Kyle Monson, Editor, JWT

Shiv Singh, Mktg, PepsiCo

So what does this mean? The short description is taking an editorial approach to brand building. If you are in branding its not a choice anymore, it's imperative to look at how you are approaching branding.

An example of brand as a journalist is mormon.org. They have turned their brand over to church members to tell their stories and they are not doing any editing of the stories.

Today's consumers are more interested in speaking to your employees instead of those who write your mission statement. Think really hard about this. Are you ready to turn your brand over to your employees and consumers?

The Chrysler social media issue was brought up in this session and the panel made some good points. Their thoughts were that the Chrysler mistake was not having an employee tweeting. Brands should not outsource trust building. With an organization as big as Chrysler, why are they outsourcing their brand building and journalism to a social media agency and a 20 y/o running the Twitter account? Your journalists should be part of your organization, not outsourced. Do you outsource trust-building? AdAge's Garfield: "Chrysler Tweet shows conflict between nature of social media and control freakdom of brands." PR stands for public relations, why fire someone for saying something the public can actually relate to?

People like to bring up how many followers they have on Twitter and how many Likes they have on Facebook. What they need to realize is that its not the numbers, it's about the engagement metrics.

Advertising goals = recognition and awareness. Social media goals = credibility and trust. Where do they meet for brands? How do we add value to a consumer's life? Think about these questions when you putting together strategy. Branding magic happens when brand values and consumer values align.

@jaredroy