Why Most Branded Content Sucks And What To Do About It

I’ve always maintained that branded content can be done well; it just isn’t. Why?

1. Many brands think branded content is just a very long, overly wordy ad, and hire ad copywriters to create narrative stories. (Some are decent storytellers, but most are not because it’s an entirely different skillset.)
2. Quality standards for branded content are somewhere below sea level. They don’t have to be, but they are, largely because brands don’t think of creating content that’s as good or better than original content produced by popular publishers and entertainment companies. They think of creating content that’s as good or better than a display ad. Which is perhaps the lowest of low bars.
3. They focus more on messaging to consumers than producing something consumers actually want to read, watch, and engage. As a result, the content feels too on-the-nose and consumers can’t enjoy what they’re reading or viewing because they feel like they’re being aggressively pitched.
4. They think they do it for little or no money because really, all you need is an army of typing monkeys you can pay $20 a post/article or some stock video with text overlays, and when you’ve SEOed that shit into oblivion, your job is done!

This is why most branded content sucks. But it’s actually not rocket science to produce something good. Here are some correlative guidelines:

1. Hire people who already know how to produce good content. Not good ads. Good content. Understand the difference. Look for great videographers, agile narrative storytellers who can write well, people capable of making interesting things. (Yes, they are probably going to cost you a bit more, but they will be worth it.)
2. Create standards for your content that are at least as high as the standards you have for your own media consumption, and understand that your target audience will measure your content against their own media consumption standards. Which you should always assume are far higher than their standards for what they will tolerate in an advertisement. That is the low bar. Aim for the high one: given the opportunity to read or watch or otherwise engage with a limited amount of media, would your audience prefer what you’re producing, or something else? (Or worse, anything else.)
3. You don’t have to be direct about your messaging all the time. Unless your objective is direct retail conversion RIGHT NOW, err on the side of subtlety. You want your audience to develop a long term relationship with your brand. Hitting them over the head with the message at the first opportunity feels desperate.
4. It’s rare that anything good can be done at zero or extremely low cost. There are plenty of ways to create branded content in a cost effective manner, but that doesn’t mean paying creators something below minimum wage and expecting that they’re going to produce anything that your audience loves. On an individual basis, talent can be undervalued, and you might find some people who are willing to work for under market rates, but that usually doesn’t last long if they’re doing good work. (And if they’re under market because they’re very junior, that’s not a long term solution either, for obvious reasons.) For the most part, when you underpay for talent, you get what you pay for. So you need to be realistic about what good content will actually cost you. For digital, the answer is probably far less than a traditional ad campaign, but certainly more than little-to-nothing.

The best branded content client I’ve had so far has been Casper. (I will exercise discretion and refrain from mentioning the worst.) Their team is natively digital anyway, and their standards for what they produce are inherently high. We launched Van Winkles last year with a dedicated team that would cover all things sleep. Backchannel did a good overview of the results here.

So now we’re doing it with our own brand. The Insurrection just launched a new digital magazine about virtual reality called There Is Only R. We’re part of Medium’s publisher/revenue beta, but I don’t have any delusions of grandeur about what that’s going to produce–though I’m very optimistic about Medium’s ability to find new business models that work for publishers.If it resulted in a slightly bigger freelance budget for the publication, we’d be incredibly happy with that.

But we’re doing it because we really believe it’s the most efficient and engaging way we can talk to our potential audience. And it’s additive to our business in other ways: we get to meet people doing interesting things in virtual reality and share what we’re learning with the rest of the community.

So please read and share, if you’re inclined. The first feature is an article about the best portrayal of augmented reality I’ve seen in film: an indie flick released earlier this year called Creative Control. The film is available for free for Amazon Prime members right now. I interviewed the writer and director, Ben Dickinson, and we talked about how AR is rendered in film, skewering Brooklyn creative class professionals, techno-optimism, VR UI design, and where VR filmmaking is going.

You can read it here.