Picking the juicy bits from traditional media’s carcass
The nearby IAB conference may carry the handle of “What’s the Story: Building Narrative in the Digital Age” but it also seems to be the unofficial tag of the 8th annual Advertising Week in New York.
With authenticity, transparency and all those other obvious-but-oft-forgotten-when-rushed tenets as subtext, Ad Week’s first two-and-a-half days were pretty much summarized by Ron Faris, head of marketing for Virgin Mobile and a panelist at Tuesday’s “Silicon Valley, Hollywood, Madison Avenue: Using Virtual Networks to Spread Influence.”
“Humans telling each other stories about things is the most powerful thing ever,” he said. Then, minutes later, he revealed that Virgin runs their marketing department “more like a newsroom than a studio.”
Small wonder, then, at last night’s Marketing VIP reception for Canadian marketers living in and visiting New York for Ad Week, the conversation was big around what high-flying digital shops can learn from traditional media. The answer, gleaned from some of the 400 or so in attendance, is utility.
The sentiment was articulated perfectly by this morning’s sold-out “Content Marketing: The Foundation of Branding Online” session with long-time story-as-marketing advocate and Content Marketing Institute founder Joe Pulizzi. He dropped author Jay Baer’s nugget that there’s only a two-letter difference between the world “helping” and “selling.” Marketers in the room were told to remember the tenet, especially if they want to tap the growing dollars being allocated by large brands to content creation and distribution. Although he didn’t attribute it, he said that “60% of large U.S. brands” are in the market for content help.
The panel also featured Teal Newland, vice-president and group director of brand content at Digitas New York, who called content the “glue” for social platforms.
Pulizzi ended the sessions with some cheery news “for journalists in the room. You have plenty of work out there, but it’s no longer with the Times or the Journal, but with brands.”
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