Brand Journalism
Responding to the newly emerging trend of organizations hiring journalists to create content on their behalf, Brand Journalism is the first comprehensive, practical guide to this hybrid form of traditional journalism, marketing and public relations.
This textbook takes a direct and practical approach to the subject, showing journalists and journalism students how they can apply their skills to working for a brand, and showing those who work for non-media organizations how their organization can acquire the skills necessary to become a multimedia publisher.
Areas covered include:
- establishing the audience your brand wants to engage with
- identifying your organizations business goals
- developing a brand journalism strategy to help deliver those business goals
- measuring the results of your brand journalism strategy.
The book also features a wealth of case studies on the subject and offers an invaluable companion website www.brand-journalism.co.uk.
Andy Bull has held senior positions at The Times , AOL, The Independent , the Mail on Sunday and the Sunday Express . He has produced brand journalism on behalf of organizations including Amnesty International, HSBC, Harrods, 20th Century Fox and Parlophone. He currently teaches at the London School of Journalism and is author of Multimedia Journalism: A Practical Guide (2010).
Brand Journalism
Andy Bull
First published 2013
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
2013 Andy Bull
The right of Andy Bull to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Bull, Andy, 1956
Brand journalism / Andy Bull.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Branding (Marketing) 2. Advertising. I. Title.
HF5415.1255.B85 2013
658.8'27dc23
2013000999
ISBN: 978-0-415-63809-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-63810-4 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-08357-4 (ebk)
Typeset in Goudy
by Taylor & Francis Books
This book is dedicated to Lisa Clark.
Contents
What the Brand Journalism project is about
This book is about how to do journalism for a brand. And by brand, I mean any organization: any corporation, B2B (business-to-business) or B2C (business-to-customer) company, any government department or quango, any third-sector body, any charity, cause or campaign. The book demonstrates how any organization can use brand journalism to help it attain its business and marketing goals, and shows how it can function effectively as a publisher.
What brand journalism is
Brand journalism is a hybrid form of traditional journalism, marketing and public relations. It has emerged as a reaction to what Tom Foremski, a former Financial Times journalist now reporting on Silicon Valley, has dubbed EC = MC: every company is a media company. Brand journalism is a response to the fact that any organization can now use journalistic techniques to tell its story direct to the public.
But while it is rooted in some of the main principles of traditional journalism and good storytelling, creating stories that are timely and compelling, it also differs from traditional journalism. There are serious issues over balance, independence and fairness that must be addressed, and we shall.
Brand journalisms hybrid nature also sees it incorporate core elements from strategic public relations (PR) and marketing communications: visionary planning, research, incisive messages, a defined purpose, and a requirement to quantify what has been achieved through it. The result is an integrated brand journalism-driven communications strategy.
Because brand journalism is a new and still-evolving discipline, there is much disagreement about its validity, the form it should take, the value it represents and the threats it may pose to traditional journalism. This book takes a direct and practical approach to its subject. By bringing together 97 case studies of how a wide range of small and large commercial organizations, charities, campaigns, government departments, public bodies and others are actually using it, this book aims to be the first comprehensive, practical guide to how to do brand journalism.
Who this book is for
This book, and its companion website, are designed for journalists, for brands, and for those working for brands: in brand management, marketing, public relations, communications and customer service.
For journalists, its about how to bring the skills you learned, or are learning, on your undergraduate or postgraduate journalism course into the alien environment of an organization that is not principally a media company. It also provides an essential guide for any working journalist who is switching from employment by a media organization to working for a brand.
For brands and their non-journalist employees, it shows, now that every company is (or could be) a media company, how brand journalism can be made to work for you.
What we cover is also known variously as content marketing, inbound marketing, brand storytelling or most colloquially how to sell without selling. Whatever you call it, our focus is on how journalistic techniques can be used to transform the quality of the material brands employ to communicate with their communities of customers, clients, supporters, whatever.
We focus on those areas of content where journalism can do most to help; where journalists skills and creativity can have the most impact. We dont deal directly with the wider context of content strategy for example, the processes surrounding the creation and maintenance of the many hundreds of pages of basic service or product-focused information that many brand websites have to carry. Thats not to say good journalistic writing cant help in any context. It can, and what we cover here can be applied across the content-creation board.
What the book will teach
To exploit the enormous potential of brand journalism as a business tool, a brand will need to introduce a new skill set within the organization. It will need an editor-in-chief and a team of brand journalists, either in-house or run externally by a third party. It will need to give brand journalism training to those within marketing, public relations, communications and customer service who will be creating content and engaging with customers or clients via social media and other platforms.
The book puts creating journalism for a brand in the context of the organizations business or marketing goals. It covers establishing brand journalism strategies to help deliver those goals; monitoring the performance of that journalism; and using monitoring and analytics to demonstrate the return on investment that the brand journalism strategy has delivered.
