The brand newsroom became all the rage over the last 18 months or so. But for all of the warrooms and command centers that popped up, there are still many brands and agencies who haven’t taken advantage of the power of content.
Recently, Jonah Peretti from Buzzfeed told The Drum in an interview that he sees continued growth in the utilization of branded content. But he admonished those who merely want to throw traditional advertising out disguised as content.
“…you need to make content and advertising fit the way that people consume media. You can’t make an ad that is a 30 second television spot. You need to think about how people are engaging with media and then make your advertising and marketing match those behaviours”
I see brands struggling to create content that resonates. I also see many that are still relying on the same old push messaging that they’ve always relied on. Audiences of today have too many options and they are tuning out traditional messaging and it’s obvious that a lot of advertisers aren’t accepting this to be true.
“…we’re going to see more and more branded content as people become aware of the fact that you can’t interrupt people and get them to hear your message, you have to make a message that’s engaging…”
We all know that brands are spending a ton of money on traditional commercials in an attempt to gain a share of a decreasing amount of available eyeballs. Terms like reach, frequency and saturation are guesstimates. Do your own focus study tonight. When the family is sitting around watching television, take a look for yourself and see how many of the commercials on television get watched.
“…if you can’t make your branded video or your commercial or your advertising interesting enough to compete with someone’s mobile device, then they’re not even going to see your message”
Let’s face it. We’re all in marketing. We all have a need to have our audiences see our stuff. Inevitably, we want them to subscribe, buy from us, or hire us. But it’s becoming increasingly obvious that we can’t get people to subscribe, buy from us, or hire us, if they’re not even seeing what we have to offer.
In order for someone in our audiences to take action, they first have to like what we’re saying, they then have to see what we have to offer and to put the proverbial cherry on top, it would be awesome if they shared what we offer with their friends.
You have to know that there aren’t many people sharing commercials. The landscape of the social web is ever-changing. If you’re not creating content that matters to your audience, you’re falling behind…big time!
“brands…the smart brands, want to connect with consumers in a way that is authentic and matches the way they are consuming media…and that’s something that’s increasingly hard to do as all of the industry keeps shifting in new directions”
brand publishing flywheel by Shane Snow, Contently CCO
There’s no secret formula to making this work. None of us has a crystal ball as to what makes audiences tick. You simply have to continually adapt, experiment, and produce daily.
via Contently: “For a newsroom—brand or otherwise—to work well in 2014, it needs to be creating content;…there’s no magical bullet for making a brand newsroom effective. It requires brands to adopt the right philosophy and bust their butts everyday”
As marketers, we’ve been talking about brand newsrooms ever since the lights went out in the Super Bowl. Content has become the currency of the social web. It influences, it inspires, it motivates and it’s expected. The problem a lot of brands are facing right now is that getting content seen is becoming increasingly more competitive and the bar gets raised daily.
For instance, take this amazing piece of content by Under Armour.
How does your commercial compete with that?
