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- 1. Brands as Publishers. Marissa Gluck, Director, Huge Ideas (Author) John McCrory, Director of Content Strategy (Co-Author) Tom OâReilly, Director, Huge Content (Editor)
- 2. 2 Key Insights: ⢠Brands today have an unprecedented opportunity to engage with consumers across proliferating channels and platforms. Original, authentic content is a prerequisite to success. ⢠Consumers expect brands to meet them where they are. When brands arenât present on social channels, they are abdicating ownership of and responsibility for consumer sentiment. ⢠For a brand to succeed as a publisher, it needs to invest in four areas: process, content, technology, and people. Most brands are lacking in all four. ⢠Effective publishing operations require multiple workstreams with dedicated staff, systems and technologies supporting each discrete stream. This approach enables organiza- tions to produce multiple content types supporting different organizational goals, e.g. evergreen product content, pro- motional offers, and real-time event-driven content, without a continuous basis. Key Questions: ⢠Why should brands become publishers? ⢠What does it mean for a brand to be a publisher? ⢠What are the fundamental drivers of publishing success? ⢠How can a brand manage successful publishing operations? ⢠What are the key investments in capabilities necessary for success? Brands today have an unprecedented opportunity to engage with consumers in more and more meaningful ways. The me- dia landscape has been transformed. The industry has frag- mented, digital channels and platforms have proliferated, and social networks have created an expectation among consum- ers that brands will engage them directly. In such a climate, business and marketing leaders have rushed headlong into publishingâtheyâd be foolish to stay on the sidelinesâbut few brands have been successful. One of the major reasons brands fail at publishing is they lack the strategic vision, tal- ent, process, and technical infrastructure required to support the ongoing creation of effective content. Media fragmentation, consumer behavior, the rising preeminence of commoditization are forcing brands to become publishers. Introduction. 1 1
- 3. 3 Brands should often bypass traditional media. Brands can no longer succeed by spending money primarily on traditional media. Both the production and distribution of content has become increasingly democratized. Advertis- ers and audiences now have the opportunity to produce and publish their own content and bypass traditional media gatekeepers. This shift means brands must re-examine their assets, in particular their paid, owned and earned media. From the advertiser perspective, there is a shift in budget allocation as marketers swing spend away from paid media towards investing in their own content and media (Altimeter Group). The shift in Unileverâs budget from paid media to a greater investment in earned and owned media illustrates how large brands are transforming. Additionally, the distinc- tions between paid, earned, and owned media are becoming less and less obvious, rendering this traditional model less relevant. Note: Percentages relate to impressions delivered Source: Unilever via Credit Suisse, Jan 2012
- 4. 4 Devices, channels, and platforms have multiplied. Yesterdayâs linear consumer purchase path has been re- placed by a tangle of different possible routes: a consumer may use search to compare prices online, go to the store to âshowroomâ a product before buying it online, like and inter- act with a brand on Facebook, watch a tutorial on YouTube, and consult a much broader social graph for opinions. Or he might follow a combination of some or all of these paths to purchase. To compete in the market, brands must create content for multiple touchpoints. And their number is ever-expanding: Constant innovation is leading to new devices and consumer contexts all the time, from smartphones and tablets to game and entertainment consoles to self-driving cars and wearable tech like Google Glass. The proliferation of devices means that brands will face new content challenges as form factors, technology, and user behavior may differ on each. Today.
- 5. 5 Social engagement raises consumer expectations. Consumers today actively create awareness about brands and make product recommendations. In turn, they expect brands to engage with them. With the dominance of social media, consumers expect to be able to communicate directly with brands. More than just getting a response to a tweeted complaint or inquiry, though, consumers expect context, backstory, and even entertainment. Social media is also increasingly looking more and more like paid media. Building a social media presence on Facebook is no longer enough; savvy marketers are also investing in paid media to be seen by fans. All of these developments demand more content. being able to share purchases and visually assemble what of style. While sites like thefancy.com and Pinterest use vivid imagery to showcase both inspirational and aspirational prod- ucts. Fab.com and 1stdibs.com help drive social and curated discovery for style products via friends and tastemakers. Social helps spread a brand across all channels, including their own, where they can engage with consumers. Pinterest's popularity has forced brands to use high quality, visually rich media assets. Users are creating full boards and collections of products that they would love to own. They product. Pinterest sites and similar sites rely on image-based discovery, so having compelling product imagery that can live outside of a brandâs own website is becoming a requirement for all high-end style brands. Changing nature of search. The shifting structure of search algorithms is beginning to reward good and plentiful content. Essentially more con- tent (usually) means better rankings. Search engines now measure social signals as well to determine search rankings, making citations (not just links), virality, and page authority increasingly important. The more and better content, the bet- ter search results. Fighting to avoid becoming a commodity. Some brands are losing control both of price and image to third party retailers because of pricing competition online. As sites like Amazon gain an ever-larger percentage of overall - moditized and constrained in how they present themselves to consumers. Templates and assets on these sites tend to be restrictive and donât fully differentiate each brand or explain once again communicate their value and create desirability for their products.
- 6. 6 In the rush to publishing, brands have often failed to understand the factors that lead to success and the corresponding organizational and technical adjustments needed to achieve those factors. The keys to brand publishing success. that serves both their customer needs and corporate strategy creating a successful brand publishing strategy: 01 Manage content as an asset. Content can add tangible value to an organization. It also needs maintenance and care. Conducting a content audit is and how to value and maintain them. 02 Have meaningful, useful content for each audi- ence, positioned at each point in the new customer journey. Since most brands serve more than one kind of customer, content needs be created with the different goals of each in mind. As discussed, the customer purchase path today is far more complex than it used to beâmore of a loop than the traditional funnelâso brands must develop relevant and engaging content that serves the distinct needs of customers as they progress through each stage of the journey. 03 Be fastâable to create and publish new content in a day or a week. Flexibility in this environment is key. Likewise, streamlin- Crunchâs âpress conferenceâ video in the midst of the brand is a Huge client). 04 Attract and retain the best creative talent. Creating great content requires a great creative team. The kinds of creative talent needed now are not necessarily the usual corporate marketing types. The skills neededâwriting and reporting, graphic design, data visualization and multime- dia productionâmay not always exist within a single organiza- tion. In some cases, working with a trusted partner may be - ments and management and compensation structures may be needed to attract and retain this new kind of talent. 05 Test, learn, interate, and publish at an ongoing pace. Content creation, like other digital endeavors, requires optimi- zation. Rapid testing, learning and publishing on a continuous basis are all signs of success. Creating an infrastructure that What Are the Signs of Brand Publishing Success? 2 2
- 7. 7 supports and produces content on an ongoing basis means that brands need to act more iteratively than most are ac- customed to. Creating popular, shared content is a little like is necessary. Additionally, brands need to think of themselves, as well as their content endeavors, as a service rather than product. This demands greater ongoing engagement with users and audiences, sometimes on an individual basis, and listening to their needs. 06 Align the content strategy with the overall mis- sion. While most brands are familiar with the peaks and valleys of a media plan, shifting towards a publishing model requires assess how the content strategy aligns with overall business objectives. Content should support the overall mission of the company and serve users. Is the objective to build brand - ers? What media types and channels are most appropriate to achieve the prescribed goals? All subsequent decisionsâ - quently from this foundational content strategy. 07 Shift measurement approach from advertising to publishing metrics. For a brand to effectively act like a publisher, measurement also needs to change. Traditional online advertising metrics such as impressions and click through rates matter less, while publishing metrics such as page views, unique visitors, repeat visitors, and time spent begin to matter more. Social from social media channels, and share of voice also take on increased importance. Measurement metrics should align with the overall strategy understand what kind of content resonates with users and what doesnât. Invest in people, process, content, and technology. Achieving this kind of branded content success requires investment in four key capabilities: ⢠Process ⢠Content ⢠Technology ⢠People
- 8. 8 What Are the Key Investments in Capabilities Needed to Succeed? Establish different workstreams. 3 3 01 Process. Establish multiple workstreams to rationalize con- tent development. Brands need to create different workstreams with discrete time horizons, and match content assets to each workstream. Brands should create a framework for evergreen, reusable content each quarter, a monthly plan for campaign content, and a blueprint for daily, ephemeral content that includes real-time engagement. The particular time horizons for each workstream will vary. This framework of quarterly, monthly and daily is appropriate for some brands but not necessarily all. Brands should develop an editorial calendar and establish to current events, memes, and popular (yet still relevant) sto- ries that emerge online. This is especially essential if a brand is working with an agency partner, so both can act as nimbly as possible in a content environment that moves quickly (such as Twitter). Quarterly Evergreen content Reusable content and asset releases Monthly Campaign content Promotional Releases Daily Emphemeral content Real-time engagement across channels
- 9. 9 02 Content. Develop brand guidelines. content playbook. Existing existing brand guidelines need to be adapted and expanded for digital media. Typically, existing guidelines on the proper use of the logo, brand font, and color palette were not created with digital in mind, and often donât speak to the larger issues of creating content as out- lined in this paper. Additionally, brands must ask themselves what kind of content is acceptable and what isnât? What are the rules for the brand voice? Is the voice and tone authentic to the brand? Itâs also important to remain true to a brandâs essence. A somewhat staid blue chip brand should not attempt to sud- denly become the Lady Gaga of the insurance industry, for instance. While humor tends to resonate, particularly with younger audiences, brands should tread carefully with edgy humor. Staying relevant doesnât automatically translate into comedy. Often, building a content presence is much more about being of service to customers with useful information than demonstrating snarky wit. Customers are not a monolithic group of users with the same needs and expectations. Creating audience personas helps a brand understand the users itâs trying to reach and their mo- tivations. The persona helps identify the particular personality attributes, desires, and habits of target audiences so that the brandâs value can be communicated to different types of customers effectively. When developing audience personas, website analytics can provide a rich source of insight into your customers. Combin- ing demographic data with site behavior will help identify the core goals of your audiencesâwhat are they searching for on the brandâs site? What problem are they looking to solve? Which tasks are users succeeding at and which is the brand failing to support? Customer personas based on the real-life data a brand owns enables it to effectively tailor site content to the needs of its customers. In addition to identifying the key attributes of a target audi- ence, brands must consider where that audience is in the real world, and where it congregates online. On which social media platforms and networks is it is most activeâFacebook? Twitter? Reddit? This insight also helps inform what type of contentâvisuals like infographics or images, video, or long- or short-form contentâthe target audience will respond to most. Additionally, different audiences will have distinctive sharing preferences, such as email versus Facebook versus pinning or subscribing to feeds. share content is essential to developing a focused content strategy.
- 10. 10 Each workstream develops unique content. Each workstream in the framework produces different types of content. Evergreen content includes product and service descriptions, legal terms and conditions, and content for new categories or audiences. Monthly content is more campaign- focused, tied to product launches, PR initiatives or long-form stories and social media responses. Quarterly. Evergreen content ⢠Product/service descriptions ⢠New categories ⢠New audiences ⢠âAboutâ content ⢠Copy book and style guide ⢠Legal terms & conditions ⢠Brand guidelines Daily. Ephemeral content ⢠Topical, time-sensitive stories ⢠Social media responses integrated across channels ⢠Reposts from 3rd parties ⢠Crisis communication ⢠Op-Eds, columns Monthly. Campaign content ⢠Planned promotions ⢠Seasonal/holiday content ⢠Product launches ⢠3rd party syndication ⢠PR initiatives ⢠Annual report ⢠Partner launches ⢠Long-form features Each workstream develops unique content:
- 11. 11 Amplify content via earned and paid media. resources, and produces a beautifully-crafted, steady stream of on-message content, there is no guarantee the target audience will see it. Promotion is critical to ensuring it is not only seen and read by the target audience, but also shared Brands need to identify the tastemakers within their target are isnât always easy and requires research, which includes looking at how aligned their content and tone are with a brandâs central message. Brands also need to use paid media such as promoted tweets, sponsored stories, native advertising, and even display ads to promote their content. âBrands still seem to believe that if you build it, they will come,â explains Huge Community Manager Andrew Cunningham. Branded content doesnât go viral without spending.â 03 Technology. Invest in technology for production and content management. Building the technological foundation for publishing requires more than an investment in a content management system marketing team should be a stakeholder in the tool selec- tion, ensuring the functional requirements meet its needs for producing, collaborating on, and distributing content. As a brand builds a library of content, tools that help plan, docu- ment, and track stories are needed. For brands with global reach, this need is even more profound, and includes the ability to track the origin language. Regular content audits will help brands document what assets they own, where within the organization it resides, and who âownsâ it. THE FUTURE OF CONTENT PUBLISHING: THE EMERGENCE OF CONTENT APIs. The future of content distribution lies in content APIs. An API, or applica- tion programming interface, is a simple way for two or more applications to communicate in a common language. An API is most often used as a way to transfer data between applications (such as scores, stock market tickers or Facebook status updates) but the idea is now being applied to robust content. Content APIs have been tricky to develop because it requires not just transferring data but also interpreting its meaning and the taxonomy of content. A content API goes beyond simple tags that show where a title, subheads and main content are located, giving context to that data. It allows developers to distribute more information, more rapidly, in new and different ways. Today more publishers are using content APIs, especially as devices proliferate. The New York Times, NPR and the Guardian are just a few publishers using them. While the use of a content API is nascent (even for media companies), expect its growth to be fueled not just by tra- ways to distribute their content.
- 12. 12 Each workstream relies on technology. The established technology infrastructure of most non-media brands was not designed for publishing, but for control. Brand marketers often discover that the capabilities required for their most important marketing objectives, such as good personalization and segmentation, rapid A/B and multivariate testing, or multichannel publishing, are not well-supported by the companyâs central technology stack. Instead, they are forced to rely on an ad hoc patchwork of systems. In particular, most content management systems are primarily built to create web pages, not to provide the full spectrum of content offerings possible across multiple channels. There will likely never be one technology platform to rule them all, so to become effective publishers, brands need to deploy the appropriate technology within each content workstream. The key is organizing existing systems into rational informa- gather, create, and publish its content. Quarterly. Evergreen content ⢠Product content database ⢠⢠Enterprise metadata ⢠Personalization engine ⢠Testing protocols ⢠Content API Daily. Ephemeral content ⢠Content management systems ⢠Community management tools ⢠Social listening platform RSS ⢠Content API Monthly. Campaign content ⢠Content management system ⢠Syndication APIs ⢠3rd party social platforms ⢠Testing and Analytics Tools ⢠Email marketing Each workstream relies on tech:
- 13. 13 04 People. Align the organizational structure to meet growing content requirements. Today, many brands use an ad hoc organizational structure with content ownership fragmented across the company. So, for example, corporate communications may âownâ social media channels like Instagram or Tumblr, while marketing may run the Facebook and Twitter accounts (sometimes sharing responsibility with customer service), and the digital department manages not just the brandâs website but also its YouTube videos. Not only is there wasted and duplicative Too often, businesses are assigning content duties to already over-taxed and under-trained staff. One way of addressing or agency. Given the dynamic nature of social content (often itâs the real time interaction that gets the biggest response), choosing a partner that is able to smartly embody the brand voice is paramount. That partner must also be given the latitude to engage with fast-breaking current events and pop cultural events to ensure the brand can build cultural capital through content. OVERCOMING LEGAL IMPEDIMENTS. approval process most corporations have in place. The problem is that while approval procedures were established to mitigate risk and ensure compliance (especially in highly regulated industries such as pharmaceu- fast reaction times, so requiring legal approval for every piece of content is not only unwieldy, itâs unreasonable. (The exception to this rule may be brands in those highly-regulated industries.) To overcome these roadblocks, businesses need to carefully consider how is to assign dedicated legal staff to approve topics for each distribution channel. This can be a single lawyer (either on staff or consulting), or a team of legal experts. Creating an internal task force to offer consolidated feedback on content can shorten approval lag times. The most critical factor is that there is a dedicated legal resource that doesnât change from week to week. A shifting legal team can result in feedback.
- 14. 14 Each workstream has a team. One of the challenges a brand faces with multiple content workstreams is allocating talent appropriately. Too often, immediate content needs (particularly when there is a com- workstream with its own team (even if there is sometimes overlap), a brand can ensure the content needs of each workstream are appropriately addressed and executed. Quarterly. Evergreen content ⢠Product managers ⢠Copywriters ⢠⢠Legal compliance ⢠Brand marketers ⢠Corporate communications Daily. Ephemeral content ⢠⢠Community managers ⢠Copywriters ⢠Multimedia producers ⢠Legal compliance ⢠Corporate communications Monthly. Campaign content ⢠⢠Writer/researcher ⢠⢠Copywriters ⢠Legal compliance Each workstream has a team:
- 15. 15 The opportunity to engage with consumers directly is rela- tively unprecedented. Not only do consumers increasingly expect it, but there are compelling systemic reasons why brands should produce relevant, engaging content, including shifts in search and social algorithms, the fragmentation of the media landscape, and the explosion in potential customer - ured to meet consumer content demands, but by investing in the four critical components of process, content, technology, and people, brands can successfully evolve to meet the new consumer demand for direct engagement and meaningful content. Establishing a process of multiple workstreams sets the foundation. Aligning staff, technology, and content across these workstreams is the best way to ensure success as brands become publishers. Aligning staff, technology and content across these workstreams is the best way to ensure success as brands be- come publishers. Conclusion. 4 4
- 16. 16 Acknowledgements. The authors acknowledge the following from Huge for contributing their insights and feedback: Andrew Cunningham Roman Ptakowski Neda Namiranian, Engagement Manager Susie Clarke Mary Lou Bunn Ken Allard Judd Schoenholtz Sam Weston, VP, Comm