Let marketers be marketers

Prior to joining Stipso as a content strategist last year, I spent five years as a student/freelance journalist writing everything from investigative reports to political profiles to arts features for a motley collection of indie publications. Indeed, my introduction to Stipso cofounders Steven Drost and Brian Corcoran came during a three-year stint as the editor-in-chief/editorial director of student media startup The Journal.

In making the transition from journalism into content marketing, I walked an increasingly well-trodden path. A consensus seems to have emerged that the journalist’s skillset is well-suited to the requirements of the marketing department of 2014 — and that’s great news for my generation of young journalists, who are already jaded by grim prophecies from our elders about our slender chances of ever actually making a living as writers.

The setting into motion of that revolving door between journalism and marketing parallels neatly with the apparently inexorable rise of native advertising and branded content [see note] as the marketing tactics du jour. And all this being so, perhaps the emergence of ‘brand journalism’ as a term of art was inevitable.

But that doesn’t mean I have to like the buzzword.

Content marketing learned everything it knows from journalism

The relationship between journalism and content marketing isn’t anything new: most of the founding precepts of this relatively new marketing ethos are taken from the gospel of news.

The idea of content providing ‘value’ [see note], whether informational or entertainment, to the consumer; the adoption of a longer view that still demands ROI (building a brand and generating leads) but significantly doesn’t necessarily demand immediate commercial results (ie. it doesn’t necessarily make the till ring right away) — these are major philosophical shifts for marketing as an industry.

The most obvious and overarching parallel between the two, and the one which directly informs ‘brand journalism’ as a concept, is that both marketing and journalism are fundamentally about communications. The skillsets are almost identical: gather, synthesise and communicate information. The intellectual yardsticks are similar: to present that information in a useful, informative way. Even the (short-view) metrics of success are common: are people finding, consuming and engaging with this content?

But the ultimate objectives are different — and that’s where this all starts to get complicated.

Content marketers are already serving two masters

I found myself having a conversation with my boss recently about Stipso’s marketing strategy, in the course of which he posed the question: “what is the goal of our content?”

That question stumped me for a moment — not because I’m bad at my job, but because there are two answers of equal validity:

• our content is designed to provide informational benefit to the reader (the micro goal);
• our content creation is ultimately designed to help build the Stipso brand, and hence to build interest in our product — and generate leads (the macro goal.)

Those two goals aren’t particularly Stipso-specific. In fact, they’re common to all content marketing operations. In essence, it’s a frequent tension at the heart of content marketing: those two goals, while not mutually exclusive, have to be in equilibrium. If not, the dominant one can jeopardise the other; you’re selling too hard, for example, or you’re producing no tangible benefit for your brand.

As a content marketer — and especially coming from journalism — you are a servant of two masters, and it’s not always a comfortable position. At times, the immediate, micro-level aims of the content you’re creating can come into conflict with the broader marketing objectives of the brand you’re working under.

Herein lies my problem with the ‘brand journalism’ terminology: the idea that brands should not just be publishing, but becoming publishers is gaining momentum, and the exhortations to produce content that is journalistic in nature are growing louder. But I think ‘brand journalist’ may be the job title that jumps the shark.

We are all publishers now (sort of)

My reservation is this: why not let marketers be marketers? Asking them to also be journalists seems to serve only to muddy the waters.

You don’t have to become a media organisation, because it’s perfectly possible to have your cake and eat it too on this one: you can adopt and adapt the tactics and ethics of news organisations, and you don’t need to account or apologise for that; that’s part of the beauty of the democratisation of publishing.

There’s plenty that brands can and should learn from media organisations; not least, the importance — primacy, even — of a deep understanding of your audience and what they want or need — because, like them or not, that’s why the Daily Mail and Fox News are two of the most successful and lucrative news organisations in the world. The same logic applies there as in both traditional marketing and product design, best articulated (of course) by Steve Jobs: start with the customer experience and work backwards.

Equally, the newsroom approach — a focused, structured group designed to act and react fast — can be a uniquely powerful force under the right conditions. [See note]

But the problem with taking this mimesis to its logical extreme in ‘brand journalism’ is that it elides an important distinction: in the idealised understanding of journalism which informs much of the talk of ‘brand journalism’, there is only one motivator for journalists (ie. the content creators): the reader.

Commerce isn’t irrelevant by any stretch, but until relatively recently it’s generally been placed behind a Chinese wall and made the sole preserve of non-editorial employees — the dismantling of which has shaken the profession to its core. For the marketer, the consumer’s interest and the company’s interest must share the reins, and that’s fine.

Journalists and marketers share a lot, and there’s a lot they can learn from each other — why can’t we just regard them as related but separate?

A version of this post first appeared on the Stipso blog.