Content Bridges

Get Ready for "Brand Journalism"

Think you know about Brand Journalism?

Think again.

In the words of leading marketers, it's not the New York Times or the BBC writ large. It's IBM, Ford and, probably soon, Taco Bell. At this week's SIIA Information Industry Summit, the hand between Ford's "Bold Moves" website explained the direction of the fingers. "We decided we'd call it brand journalism," said Colleen DeCourcy, who serves as the chief experience officer (candidate for the Wired list of dot-com super-titles?) of JWT ad agency. DeCourcy described the ins and outs of telling Ford's story -- "documenting internal struggles, initial perceptions", etc. -- and how she didn't an overarching way of describing how Ford would describe Ford. Hence: brand journalism, or journalism about the brand.

On the "Advertising and PR for Everyone: Who is Winning the Race for Marketing Dollars?" panel, ably moderated by David Meerman Scott, DeCourcy was joined by Ben Edwards. He's director of new media communication for IBM, and a veteran of The Economist, or as the program had it: "Ben enjoyed a 14-year career as a journalist in the "mainstream media". Ben spent the last nine of these years as a reporter, foreign correspondent and editor for The Economist magazine, covering business, finance and politics from London, Tokyo and New York."

Edwards' take on such brand journalism: He embraced it.

Let's Call It Google Life

Twenty-first century Internet life has revolved around many things Google. We Google each other. We Google for news. Google Adsense. Googlebombs. Googlaritmentic, I called its ad revolution.

For much of the last century, it was about Life. Life was the premier pictorial  chronicler of American life, from its founding in 1936 through much of the century, a living reference, encased on many bookshelves across the country. Think moonshots, Walker Evans, Marilyn Monroe -- many of the iconic shots stuck in our brains -- come from Life.

Now Life -- itself a thin, throwaway weekly newspaper insert, hardly a shadow of itself-- and Google are mating.

Today, at the New York SIIA meeting, Time Inc CEO Ann Moore announced that Google will digitize Life photos, from 1936 on. (For more SIIA conference coverage, check out David Scott, John Blossom and Barry Graubart.)

Moore offered no details, but the announcement sets the mind alight. Digitizing whole mainly anonymous libraries is one thing, but both memorializing and spotlighting Life's riches is something else again. What's the economic model -- buy a reprint of the famous VJ day New York kiss ? Will Google be the photo repository, a preview of Google Base to come? Picture that.

Dow Jones’ Annual Reporting: Into Terra Incogdigito

Hold on, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

That’s the message I got out of Dow Jones’ recent fourth-quarter earnings announcement. Sure, Dow Jones’ numbers were better than what we’ve seen coming out of the industry yesterday. But I noticed the news placed politely in paragraph six (of seven) in the Wall Street Journal’s own story: Dow Jones will no longer provide upfront quarterly guidance, opting for an annual outlook. “This change is consistent with the company’s focus on long-term performance.” 

Indeed. It’s a good idea, and you can bet Dow Jones CEO Rich Zannino would even prefer a quadrennial reporting, rather than annual. Why? While Dow Jones is among the leaders in rapidly re-thinking and restructuring the print and digital products it produces, its leaders well know that the restructuring is an open-ended one, one likely to take three to five years to work well. But it’s largely uncharted territory; let’s call it Terra Incogdigito, a place of potholed expressways and hazy destinations. 

Sure, what it’s doing makes a lot of sense – giving room and resources to  Consumer head Gordon Crovitz and Enterprise head Clare Hart -- to  re-org and meet changing readers’ habits. It’s become a joke around the WSJ newsroom how each Page One must have at least one How or Why head – pushing the second-day, analysis angle of the print product. Sure, editors may be pushing hard, but you know the message is kicking him. Compare that push, which may be a bit too pushy at times, to most dailies, which still believe they are newspapers of record. They believe they announce the news – news that has already been announced by MSN, the Huffington Post and DayLife the day before.

But Dow Jones has little illusion. Rich Zannino told an SIIA audience today that he hopes to move his company from a 70%+ print revenue reliance to less than 50% -- without reducing print revenues. (For more SIIA conference coverage, check out David Scott, John Blossom and Barry Graubart.)