Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Not that long ago we started distinguishing between owned, earned and paid media but how real was that? Media evolutions that scare me....

If you’re looking for tips and tricks regarding the evolutions in brand journalism and the usage of content marketing (oops, I used the term) in branding and PR, don’t read this. If you want an opinion (mine, that is) on the dangers of some content and media evolutions, read on. I have a good friend who’s quite cynical, even more than I am. He sees marketing as lying and making people pay too much for products. I can’t even blame him.

As a former journalist and publisher but at the same time a marketer, I’m in a constant state of duality regarding the role of both journalism/media on one hand and marketing on the other. And in this “digital and social age” it’s getting worse. If you know part of the role of a publisher (read on) you’ll understand that duality. Also look at the number of journalists becoming “content marketers”. Are there still journalists in fact?

I never read a story about a “content marketer” becoming a journalist. Especially phenomena such as brand journalism (for later blog posts) and converged media confuse me in an ‘ethical’ way. Marketing is business. Brands are business. Media is business. Brand journalism is business. If media converge, do we still have credible media? Each time I preach people-centric and human marketing, I hope you keep that in mind. We are not doing business for a greater moral cause (although we can, more than ever)....

I think advertisers are smart to want to have their ad copy look, read, and sound more like journalism. It’s a form of flattery for what we do, and although trust has waned in our profession recently—the public sees that our journalism is not as good as it used to be–it means that at least that the Mad Men of Madison Avenue think we’re more trustworthy than they are.

There’s an informative website, brandjournalists.com, that explains what these new kinds of ad producers do and why. It’s instructive.At base what they say they are doing is story telling. And, as they say, a good story is the essence of human communication. We journalists know that, or at least we should. If you can tell a good story about a company or organization, that’s likely to sell more product than the best old-hat sales pitch, the brand journalists reason.

They’re right. I agree with the ad folks that most companies have a good story to tell. I used to cover business and I never found a business I couldn’t find something interesting and newsworthy to write about.But let me show you how journalism is different than “brand journalism” or other kinds of sponsored content. This story you might even know....