Native content or simply marketing in fancy dress.

As a person who wears many hats in the ‘writing’ sphere – writer, publisher, consultant I’ve been watching the changes in the writing, publishing and marketing world with some interest and a great degree of scepticism. I’ve also been talking with a number of people in marketing, PR and advertising about the changing way in which their trades are now promoting themselves.

It seems everyone in the publishing, marketing and advertising space is now touting themselves as content specialists, content curators, brand story specialists and more. I suspect most are not but it’s as if you don’t use the right terminology you’re not regarded as being capable of any of these core skills in the current marketplace.

Social media, personalised marketing and mobile technology have clearly driven the need for content, good content, but I think its disingenuous at best for old and new marketing and advertising people alike to think that they can rename their skill set simply to capture the content space.

Added to this, is a whole raft of new terms, phrases and descriptions such as content marketing, native advertising and brand publishing. Most recently Sam Slaughter wrote an interesting article on Mashable titled, Can content marketing save journalism? (21 March 2013). In the article he makes several comments:

“Call it what you want — content marketing, native advertising, brand publishing – but the idea that advertisers can create editorial content has gained an amazing amount of momentum over the past two years.

“Native ads are different from traditional advertorials in that they aren't overtly about a brand. They are meant to engage the audience with interesting content, as opposed to overtly promoting a product.

“But what’s clear is that the line between content and ads is becoming ever more blurry, a reality that both publishers and advertisers will have to address if they’re going to prosper.”

I am not sure that they are becoming more blurry. Advertising is advertising…the consumer is not a dunce, they can tell when its an advertisement or if its paid for writing. Just because you might have a big name writer attached to an article, doesn’t mean the consumer will regard it as anything other than readable advertising.

Journalism is just that – good writing that covers and/or investigates a story in the public interest.

Advertorials, sponsored content, brand publishing, native advertising are all paid for content designed to push a particular emotional response to a product, brand or service. They are all ads. There’s nothing wrong with this, we writers and journalists have to pay our bills somehow, but lets not kid ourselves or anyone else either. Its not blurry, its business I know it and so do the consumers of it.

And writing/storytelling is just that. It may well take lots of forms, fiction, non-fiction, fantasy, biography, history . . . whatever, but its writing and has not been paid for by a company, although Nike could well do to think about applying its “Just do it” mantra to supporting writer’s festivals. On second thought, the link just doesn’t work.

So, can I ask all professionals in the writing, marketing, PR, advertising and publishing space to just call types of content exactly what they are. They’re an ad, or a piece of sponsored content or they are genuine pieces of writing, journalism or comment. It’s not that hard is it?