What it takes for brands to put on the publisher hat

The marketing world is starting to see more brands making major acquisitions and taking stakes in publishing firms. One such example would be the Rolling Stone, a leading voice of music and popular culture for nearly 50 years, which recently formed a partnership with BandLab Technologies, which took a 49% minority stake in it, alongside parent company Wenner Media.As the world of content marketing grows, publishing firms are quickly catching the eye of marketers today.  According to Hedvig Lyche, general manager of King Content Singapore who was speaking at a recent A+M Content 360 Malaysia conference, ad buy is no longer enough to capture the audience’s attention. Rather you need to own your own channel either by creating one and acquiring new ones.“In owning their own channels, brands can own the complete conversation,” she said. This lets brands own the audience they want to reach out to.“It is important to build your content on your own platforms to have control over the conversations occurring,” Lyche added.  She added however content marketing is not channel centric or campaign centric. It is a long term investment.“Don't over push your products in a bid to use content marketing to reach your viewers. Content marketing is never just one campaign, it needs longevity,” she said. While creating a permanent space to house brand content is important, the work behind creating it is also just as important, if not more.It's not about creating maximum amount of content. It is about creating a minimum amount with maximum impact.Agreeing with Lyche is Ben Mahmud (pictured), head of retail marketing at Shell Malaysia, who explained that brands should become publishers to build brand love and resilience through the tough times.The brand recently took on content marketing as it celebrated its 125 years in the country. Mahmud said Shell in Malaysia was initially viewed as one which was “functional, premium, but distant”. Hence a brand reinvention was necessary and going into content was a shift necessary. Using content, Shell Malaysia wanted to create emotionally and locally relevant communication materials. He said:Consumers have become promiscuous when it comes to choosing brands.Hence, adopting a “spray and pray” mentality when it comes to traditional marketing is no longer good enough. You need to give them something more. Rather than enlist celebrities, Shell Malaysia decided to feature its own customers.According to Mahmud, this was because real authentic stories had a higher resonance with the Malaysian public as compared to celebrity endorsement. As such, the Shell #StationStories campaign was born.  This saw the brand telling the stories of its customers rather than relying on a conventional brand campaign.Mahmud said the brand wanted to emulate the Humans of New York feel and focused on getting the customers’ stories out there.“There was no storyboard and script, instead, we grabbed willing customers and asked them questions about their lives,” Mahmud said. He added this tactic was used to make the campaign more authentic as opposed to one which seemed staged.“You need to fulfil the spiritual needs of consumers aside from the functional ones. Have a tone of voice and a personality to let the brand values shine through,” Mahmud said.He added that when it comes to creating content, brands must be ready to spend on finding the "fanatics" of the brands and turning them into ambassadors. They must also be ready to invest on social media in house and training their teams.  Internally, Mahmud explained the importance in investing in community managers who are able to respond to all the comments.In his experience, outsourcing this task may not something which is effective as these managers may not be as involved in the brand. Investing in promoting the content is also crucial as it allows viewers to see the content which has been created for them. This creates a good storytelling and editorial framework.“We found that a brand cannot rely on the old method in conventional agencies, hence we worked in smaller boutique agency which specialises in content. Our agency, which is Dutch, recommended Station Stories,” Mahmud said.