The Resurgence of Brand Journalism and Why It’s Here to Stay (2023 Update)

How story-driven and branded content will continue to complement your marketing campaigns

Do companies now parallel or exceed mainstream media in producing great content? In light of all the unreliable news and the pressure for newspapers to produce clickbait-ish content or close its doors, it makes me really wonder.

We’ve seen countless companies like Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, Nissan, Mercedes, Wells Fargo, and Sequoia Capital explicitly hire professional writers to augment their marketing departments. Many seasoned journalists from The Wall Street Journal, Wired, and The New York Times have traded in their newsroom digs to become content editors and journalists serving under CMOs.

“Brand journalism is lightly-branded, customer-centric storytelling that transforms the reader. It is the truth creatively delivered.” -Arlie Peyton

The digital marketing landscape is changing before our very eyes. It’s not only more competitive than ever, but the very means of media communication is also changing. We saw this coming, but many companies are slow to adapt.

Twenty years ago, Seth Godin wrote Permission Marketing and predicted several maxims that companies are still struggling with today.

• “Marketing is a contest for people’s attention.”
• “People do not buy goods and services. They buy relations, stories, and magic.”
• “Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make but about the stories you tell.”

He was right about everything, and in 2018 he was inducted into the prestigious Marketing Hall of Fame.

Now most customers agree with what he was saying. A study done by OneSpot revealed that 92% of consumers want companies to make ads feel like a story. But do most marketers understand this? Not always.

The best marketing is customer-centric and story-driven. In the past decade, we’ve seen marketing agencies that understand this create movements with their stories and transform regular customers into…