Hasta La Creative!

New York City, sometimes I wonder why I am so far away from you.

I am invited to countless industry events in Manhattan, and have been for years, but AdPulp’s travel budget is exactly zero.

So, I do appreciate BtoB and Online Media Daily sending reporters to the Rise of Brand Journalism conference at Forbes Inc. headquarters this week. Otherwise, I would not be puzzled by this statement:

Mark Himmelsbach, COO of IPG Mediabrands Publishing, said scaling the distribution of native content often creates a paradox for marketers and agencies, because they have to pay for both the creation of content and the distribution.

“We create content and are forced to buy advertising to drive people to it,” he explained.

How is this a paradox? Only in a dream world is brand content good enough to actually pull in the desired audience on its own. In the real world, we still need push mechanisms to get the word out. Push and pull, that’s the ticket to ride.

Publishers, Agencies Say Native Ads Should Look More Like Editorial, Not Less tip @mediagazer http://t.co/FefevKgkoC

— Steve Rubel (@steverubel) October 24, 2013

According to data revealed at the conference, brand content produces a 29% boost in unaided brand recall, an 8% increase in brand favorability and a 9% jump in purchase intent.

Branded content beats display ads alone but, when combined with display, the two are particularly effective, with brand recall boosted up to 15%.

Speaking of brand journalism, Sam Slaughter, vp of content at Contently* offered up a deepening of the definition on Adweek recently.

A valuable piece of brand content doesn’t exist in a vacuum, despite what some publishers would have you believe. In fact, content is an effective medium for brands because it maps back to a broader narrative—the story a brand is telling about itself.

Which is why in my office we have a swear jar for anyone who uses the term content marketing—it insinuates that the content exists to sell you a product, when in reality great content exists to tell a story.

Great content exists to tell a story. For sure, but that story better build the brand and grow the client’s business, or it’s just more fluff. Or worse, it’s smelly brown stuff stuck to the brand’s shoe.

*Disclosure: I have a working relationship with Contently. Here’s one story I wrote for them. Here’s another. And another.

The post Brand Publishing Is The New New Content Marketing appeared first on AdPulp.

Are you a change agent? If you work in advertising today, there is no doubt.

According to The Wall Street Journal, a recent Adobe survey found that 76% of marketers think marketing has changed more in the past two years than in the past 50.

Needless to say, digital is the great disruptor. Clearly, there is much opportunity in this turbulent media atmosphere — new agencies with new specialties are being born. On the other hand, there is much chagrin.

Sometimes I miss the days when I had a print ad and a radio spot, said Carlos Figueiredo, a creative director at Publicis Kaplan Thaler. He said it feels like there are “a billion” ad options today.

I know how Figueiredo feels. We want to uphold not just tradition, but craft, and radio and print are great vehicles for it. Also, traditional media tends to deliver desired results.

Someday, we may in fact bring craft to digital advertising. Media companies, brand marketers and possibly consumers with no ad blockers in place will be grateful. Because for all the talk about innovation and change, when it comes to display advertising, most of what’s out there continues to be an embarrassment.

Of course, display ads represent just one aspect of digital advertising. There are many more creative expressions of brand advertising in digital, including serial video content, mobile utility and the building of brand sites and microsites. Nevertheless, sometimes you just want to make a radio spot.

The post Digital Disruption Adds Complexity To The Job of Keeping Things Simple appeared first on AdPulp.

Media companies certainly have a ton to gain by solving the online advertising riddle that continues to plague Adland, for they will be the direct beneficiary of client dollars invested.

According to Adweek, The New York Times’ 10-person Idea Lab is helping to reshape what it means to be a display ad.

Just as technology enables the Times to tell stories in a more visual, more interactive way, it now affords advertisers the same opportunity.

Recently, Idea Lab created an ad unit for Prudential, the insurance giant, which allows people to type in their date of birth and see the front page of the Times on the day they were born.

The ad satisfies the interactivity problem straight away and that’s a big step in the right direction. Plus, if you think of the Times’ archives as a canvas and a data mine, a developer certainly has plenty to work with.

From the agency perspective, the desire for a more complex storytelling vehicle is palpable. No one wants to make banner ads that just sit there. We’re happy to now ask what kind of value these ad units can deliver, and how can they perform more like an App?

The post Using Interactive Technology To Forward The Brand Story appeared first on AdPulp.

In a nutshell, advertising doesn’t have to be sophisticated. There is a belief in some companies that the more high-tech your advertising campaign is, the more attention you will get. This may be true but not all people are appreciative of sophisticated display advertising.

Remember that advertising aims to attract the masses towards your product or service. It doesn’t matter if it is basic or simple. What remains is the fact that most people today have varying tastes towards taking notice of advertising campaigns set loose today in the various mediums.

Simple advertising works to the advantage of people but in the end, it still depends on how you can make your product or service become a need towards people in their daily needs.

“In order to really move into large masses of advertisers, display advertising has to be easier and simpler,” said Ajay Agarwal, managing director of Bain Capital Ventures. “Google did this with search advertising. We think the same thing has to happen with display.”

(Source) Wall Street Journal

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