The Future of Content (and Custom Publishing)

Bluetooth's SIGnature Custom Magazine: The Future of Content

In a previous post, "The Future of Magazines (through a Custom Content Lens)", I considered the rise of custom magazines as a potential future for the printed magazine. In this paper, taking a closer look at this trend reveals that this magazine-like content—particularly that being produced by organizations for their stakeholders and customers—is migrating across all channels, print and digital. Indeed, the whole industry previously labeled as the "Custom Publishing industry" is now increasingly being referred to as the Content Marketing industry ("Content marketing" is a term that first appeared in the online digital marketing industry, and slowly it's coming to mean a content strategy for all media). So it seems that these saviors of the print magazine are also evangelists and innovators for digital content. How come?

As well-produced and fresh content becomes more and more in demand by all organizations—a demand currently being driven by search marketing and social media strategies—then so the search for experts and centers of excellence in content creation has intensified. And as the adoption of engaging and regularly refreshed content takes place, the wider role of content as a retention, cross-selling and engagement tool is also becoming more and more apparent to those organizations just beginning to understand the power of connecting through editorial content.

None of this is news to people like us—it’s what Pace Communications has been doing for over 35 years.

Ironically, at the same time that custom publishers are finding their true calling, traditional magazine companies are desperately searching for their future. And they have been reconsidering the "custom" world as a potential godsend for the ailing advertising and subscription revenues currently afflicting the sector. Time Inc, Meredith and Rodale all have significant custom units, and some (Meredith in particular) have made substantial bets in the mobile and CRM areas to supplement and complement their investments.

As a transplanted Brit, this Gadarene rush has a familiar ring about it, although the digital complications bring a new twist to the tale.

In the U.K. market, a downturn in advertising revenue in previous years would always send traditional magazine publishers scurrying to their box of tricks that included “customer magazines,” and a unit would be started and initiatives launched until the advertising market for consumer magazines started to recover, and then the whole enterprise would quietly wither and die. For those of us who made our living by serving the custom content field, the perennial entry of Hearst, Conde Nast et al into our domain was an irritating but interesting sideshow. Hopes among our corporate customers were raised then dashed—by the lack of understanding of these traditional publishers that marketing expertise, account management and measurement skills were all existing functions at custom publishers for good reason. The glossy custom magazines produced by newsstand publishers became the marketing equivalent of Anna Kournikova—all style but little substance—and the career trajectories of their creations were similarly short-lived.

Briefly continuing the history lesson, next on the custom content scene were the Advertising Agency groups, and strangely the move—having appeared a natural fit—stalled. My feeling is that after they had acquired their fledgling content agencies, the holding companies were somewhat disappointed by the small size and the relative infrequency of the projects arriving at their brand-new acquisitions. Unlike advertising, direct marketing and PR, not every CMO felt the need for a magazine, and growth was steady and solid rather than fast and frenetic. Those Madison Avenue types became somewhat disenchanted and went out instead to spend millions on Web agencies that appeared fatter and shinier.

So, fast-forwarding to the present day, how does the content marketing landscape appear and what does the future look like for content marketing agencies—amongst whom we consider ourselves to be primum inter pares (first among equals)?

Well, in the words of the song: the future’s so bright, we gotta wear shades! This is mainly because of the way in which marketing and content continue to merge as natural and lasting bedfellows. The Web has brought an understanding that functionality and storytelling can coexist as partners and friends. Also, brand marketers have always known that brands can be entertaining and that they do have personalities—but they are now learning that those personalities can be expressed in rich, complex and multi-layered ways—not only in 30-second sound bites and punchy direct marketing copylines.

Thus the skills we have as editors and designers of content packages created to engage you for 20 minutes or more at a time, can now be combined with ecommerce and call-to-action programs that reveal the power of engagement (content) marketing as well as a demonstrable path to consideration and purchase from those same consumers of content.

In this digital age, the social exchange between a brand and consumer has the potential to become worthwhile, fun and rewarding—and it’s increasingly appearing to be part of the fabric of the Web. The payoff for brands (and organizations) is that customers feel better about your brand and spend more time with it because you have given them more reasons (great content) to hang around.

But wait—there’s also a punch line: your content marketing agency can now turn around and give you the analytics to show where your customer has been, how long he engaged with you, what he read and watched, and whether and how much he purchased. There you have—as a marketer—the Holy Trinity of brand-building, relationship marketing and measurable transaction.

Now that’s what I call a great future for content.

Posted By: Craig Waller