I had the opportunity to see David Germano’s presentation on content marketing twice, once in our class and a second time in a course of advertising students. As an intern at a media agency, I was pretty excited to hear about his expertise and how it is executed in a work environment.
From an agency lens, questions emerged as he spoke. What is the job description of a marketing specialist? What are his or her daily duties like? Are they brainstorming ideas of where the brand can integrate, or contracting the deals? Are they pitching mock content and writing up blog posts or category posts, or outsourcing that to another individual? Is there a designated person on a brand’s agency team to focus on content marketing, or is the whole team educated on the topic and supposed to regularly brainstorm these ideas? I look forward to seeing how content marketing is executed at the agency level and how billable hours will work in this setting.
The notion of content marketing makes advertising the intersection between journalism and traditional media planning. The idea of sponsoring category-level over brand-level material must be hard for clients to grasp, nonetheless buy into. He raised the idea that no one pays attentions to brands when they talk about themselves on social media, so consumers would roll their eyes if brands over-inserted themselves into media vehicles. An older advertising professor who heard the same presentation felt that this moves in the direction toward traditional advertising. Back to the days when print advertisements told stories and before branded content, viral videos, branded entertainment and excessive Internet sponsorships took over.
As students who could soon be implementing these ideas in the work force, it’s important to consider a few ideas before taking this too far forward. Advertising professionals must acknowledge that the art of journalistic writing is not yet dead. We are so engrossed in punchy copywriting for brands, or short, social media copywriting—but business writing & journalistic storytelling are not to disappear. Journalists who are skeptical this idea must be aware of how media agencies function to truly understand how content marketing is executed, and not lose faith in advertisers. David showed us a few blogs that are owned by corporations, and the real stories on them. Therefore, presenting this idea to journalists by explaining how marketers & retail sites are their own media vehicles is a lesson everyone in the media industry should soon be aware of.
The most important lesson I took away from today’s lesson is the vitality of:
-Communicating ideas
-Working with a team to develop them
-Maintaining a good relationship between journalists & strategic communication/business professionals
From an educational standpoint, it is important for students to learn about emerging topics like this. I was surprised that David himself referred to content marketing as a fad because of its propensity to evolve in the next five years, but now that we are aware of it, we can follows news on it and seek successful examples.
-Katie Artemas
Changing Media Business Models 