Branded Content in 2015! But WTF is #BrandedContent?

Friends, colleagues, even clients keep asking me this question - "WTF is #Brandedcontent?" And I just answer them it’s the future and the present of any Brand’s campaign initiative. If brands don’t hop on this giant wheel of Branded Content they will be lagging always behind their competition. Branded Content should be part of each and every campaign to encompass the power of digital storytelling of brands.

What are the ingredients of Branded Content?

I would divide this into the following broad categories

• Advertiser-funded
• TV and web-series,
• social content (Video, infographics, visual graphics etc)
• Mobile or social apps
• Technology Innovations on Rich Media banner
• Editorial Brand Integrations into TV shows,
• Press features
• Radio shows
• Experiential Marketing
• Event Sponsorship

Branded content ingredients have to be smartly integrated into social media campaigns and digital activations. It would be imperative for brands to take out their extra monies from their allocated marketing budget for this initiative.

But the success of any Branded content campaign would depend on content strategy, content marketing, content distribution and lastly customer engagement. In 2015 it’s how well brands humanize the customer experience for a wholesome customer engagement and that would be the metrics of ROI on any campaign.

What is Branded Content Marketing?

Universe is made of stories and not atoms. And stories that reach out to people turn into news. Brands and Marketers should get those stories out, wrap it with branded content and distribute it to the right people so that the brand can stand out from the rest.

These stories (Content creation) have to be communicated to audience in an engaging manner (Engagement management) and reach out to everyone (Distribution) in the best possible way (Strategy). These 3 elements in Branded Content Marketing – Content Creation, Engagement Management, Distribution strategy have to be unified for a successful campaign and eventually a positive ROI

So Strategic Consideration one should have when incorporating Branded Content into their content strategy are:

• How is the engagement managed?
• How is content distributed? i.e where in the converged landscape of earned, owned and paid media and when in the customer decision journey.
• How is the success of the different parts and their sum measured in the campaign

Branded Content would be the most dominant component in the marketing plans in 2015 so now its upon the brands, marketers on how to leverage and cache on this in their next campaign!