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Brands as Publishers.
Marissa Gluck, Director, Huge Ideas (Author)
John McCrory, Director of Content Strategy (Co-Author)
Tom O’Reilly, Director, Huge Content (Editor)

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Key Insights:
• Brands today have an unprecedented opportunity to
engage with consumers across proliferating channels and
platforms. Original, authentic content is a prerequisite to
success.
• Consumers expect brands to meet them where they are.
When brands aren’t present on social channels, they are
abdicating ownership of and responsibility for consumer
sentiment.
• For a brand to succeed as a publisher, it needs to invest in
four areas: process, content, technology, and people. Most
brands are lacking in all four.
• Effective publishing operations require multiple workstreams
with dedicated staff, systems and technologies supporting
each discrete stream. This approach enables organiza-
tions to produce multiple content types supporting different
organizational goals, e.g. evergreen product content, pro-
motional offers, and real-time event-driven content, without
having to manage conflicting priorities on
a continuous basis.
Key Questions:
• Why should brands become publishers?
• What does it mean for a brand to be a publisher?
• What are the fundamental drivers of publishing success?
• How can a brand manage successful publishing
operations?
• What are the key investments in capabilities necessary for
success?
Brands today have an unprecedented opportunity to engage
with consumers in more and more meaningful ways. The me-
dia landscape has been transformed. The industry has frag-
mented, digital channels and platforms have proliferated, and
social networks have created an expectation among consum-
ers that brands will engage them directly. In such a climate,
business and marketing leaders have rushed headlong into
publishing—they’d be foolish to stay on the sidelines—but
few brands have been successful. One of the major reasons
brands fail at publishing is they lack the strategic vision, tal-
ent, process, and technical infrastructure required to support
the ongoing creation of effective content.
Media fragmentation, consumer
behavior, the rising preeminence of
search, and the need to fight against
commoditization are forcing brands
to become publishers.
Introduction.11

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Brands should often bypass traditional media.
Brands can no longer succeed by spending money primarily
on traditional media. Both the production and distribution
of content has become increasingly democratized. Advertis-
ers and audiences now have the opportunity to produce
and publish their own content and bypass traditional media
gatekeepers. This shift means brands must re-examine their
assets, in particular their paid, owned and earned media.
From the advertiser perspective, there is a shift in budget
allocation as marketers swing spend away from paid media
towards investing in their own content and media (Altimeter
Group). The shift in Unilever’s budget from paid media to a
greater investment in earned and owned media illustrates
how large brands are transforming. Additionally, the distinc-
tions between paid, earned, and owned media are becoming
less and less obvious, rendering this traditional model less
relevant.
Note: Percentages relate to impressions delivered
Source: Unilever via Credit Suisse, Jan 2012

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Devices, channels, and platforms have multiplied.
Yesterday’s linear consumer purchase path has been re-
placed by a tangle of different possible routes: a consumer
may use search to compare prices online, go to the store to
“showroom” a product before buying it online, like and inter-
act with a brand on Facebook, watch a tutorial on YouTube,
and consult a much broader social graph for opinions. Or he
might follow a combination of some or all of these paths to
purchase.
To compete in the market, brands must create content for
multiple touchpoints. And their number is ever-expanding:
Constant innovation is leading to new devices and consumer
contexts all the time, from smartphones and tablets to game
and entertainment consoles to self-driving cars and wearable
tech like Google Glass. The proliferation of devices means
that brands will face new content challenges as form factors,
technology, and user behavior may differ on each.
Today.

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Social engagement raises consumer expectations.
Consumers today actively create awareness about brands
and make product recommendations. In turn, they expect
brands to engage with them. With the dominance of social
media, consumers expect to be able to communicate directly
with brands. More than just getting a response to a tweeted
complaint or inquiry, though, consumers expect context,
backstory, and even entertainment. Social media is also
increasingly looking more and more like paid media. Building
a social media presence on Facebook is no longer enough;
savvy marketers are also investing in paid media to be seen
by fans. All of these developments demand more content.
Social is strongly influencing shopping online. With users
being able to share purchases and visually assemble what
they’re interested in, they become curators and influencers
of style. While sites like thefancy.com and Pinterest use vivid
imagery to showcase both inspirational and aspirational prod-
ucts. Fab.com and 1stdibs.com help drive social and curated
discovery for style products via friends and tastemakers.
Social helps spread a brand across all channels, including
their own, where they can engage with consumers.
Pinterest's popularity has forced brands to use high quality,
visually rich media assets. Users are creating full boards and
collections of products that they would love to own. They
also vie to be the first person to discover a new and beautiful
product. Pinterest sites and similar sites rely on image-based
discovery, so having compelling product imagery that can live
outside of a brand’s own website is becoming a requirement
for all high-end style brands.
Changing nature of search.
The shifting structure of search algorithms is beginning to
reward good and plentiful content. Essentially more con-
tent (usually) means better rankings. Search engines now
measure social signals as well to determine search rankings,
making citations (not just links), virality, and page authority
increasingly important. The more and better content, the bet-
ter search results.
Fighting to avoid becoming a commodity.
Some brands are losing control both of price and image to
third party retailers because of pricing competition online. As
sites like Amazon gain an ever-larger percentage of overall
e-commerce traffic, brands face the risk of becoming com-
moditized and constrained in how they present themselves to
consumers. Templates and assets on these sites tend to be
restrictive and don’t fully differentiate each brand or explain
unique benefits. Brands that are able to escape this box can
once again communicate their value and create desirability for
their products.

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In the rush to publishing, brands
have often failed to understand the
factors that lead to success and the
corresponding organizational and
technical adjustments needed to
achieve those factors.
The keys to brand publishing success.
Most brands will find evolving towards a publishing model
that serves both their customer needs and corporate strategy
to be a challenge. Huge has identified seven key steps to
creating a successful brand publishing strategy:
01 Manage content as an asset.
Content can add tangible value to an organization. It also
needs maintenance and care. Conducting a content audit is
the first step toward understanding a brand's content assets
and how to value and maintain them.
02 Have meaningful, useful content for each audi-
ence, positioned at each point in the new customer
journey.
Since most brands serve more than one kind of customer,
content needs be created with the different goals of each in
mind. As discussed, the customer purchase path today is
far more complex than it used to be—more of a loop than
the traditional funnel—so brands must develop relevant and
engaging content that serves the distinct needs of customers
as they progress through each stage of the journey.
03 Be fast–able to create and publish new content
in a day or a week.
Flexibility in this environment is key. Likewise, streamlin-
ing production and approval workflows is essential, if often
extremely difficult. Witness Oreo’s “You Can Still Dunk In
The Dark” tweet during the Super Bowl blackout, or Cap’n
Crunch’s “press conference” video in the midst of the brand
mascot’s uniform controversy. (Full Disclosure: Cap’n Crunch
is a Huge client).
04 Attract and retain the best creative talent.
Creating great content requires a great creative team. The
kinds of creative talent needed now are not necessarily the
usual corporate marketing types. The skills needed–writing
and reporting, graphic design, data visualization and multime-
dia production–may not always exist within a single organiza-
tion. In some cases, working with a trusted partner may be
the most efficient solution. In others, new working environ-
ments and management and compensation structures may
be needed to attract and retain this new kind of talent.
05 Test, learn, interate, and publish at an
ongoing pace.
Content creation, like other digital endeavors, requires optimi-
zation. Rapid testing, learning and publishing on a continuous
basis are all signs of success. Creating an infrastructure that
What Are the Signs of Brand
Publishing Success?22

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supports and produces content on an ongoing basis means
that brands need to act more iteratively than most are ac-
customed to. Creating popular, shared content is a little like
capturing lighting in a bottle. It’s hard to predict and difficult
to sustain, but striving for a flexible, adaptable content culture
is necessary. Additionally, brands need to think of themselves,
as well as their content endeavors, as a service rather than
product. This demands greater ongoing engagement with
users and audiences, sometimes on an individual basis, and
listening to their needs.
06 Align the content strategy with the overall mis-
sion.
While most brands are familiar with the peaks and valleys of
a media plan, shifting towards a publishing model requires
an “always on” approach. Brands should first step back and
assess how the content strategy aligns with overall business
objectives. Content should support the overall mission of the
company and serve users. Is the objective to build brand
awareness or affinity? Is it to sell a product? To get subscrib-
ers? What media types and channels are most appropriate
to achieve the prescribed goals? All subsequent decisions—
about tools, partners, and technologies—will flow subse-
quently from this foundational content strategy.
07 Shift measurement approach from advertising
to publishing metrics.
For a brand to effectively act like a publisher, measurement
also needs to change. Traditional online advertising metrics
such as impressions and click through rates matter less,
while publishing metrics such as page views, unique visitors,
repeat visitors, and time spent begin to matter more. Social
metrics, such as likes, shares, comments, volume of traffic
from social media channels, and share of voice also take on
increased importance.
Measurement metrics should align with the overall strategy
and objectives. Determining the Key Performance Indicators
(KPIs) in the early planning stages will help align metrics to
understand what kind of content resonates with users and
what doesn’t.
Invest in people, process, content, and technology.
Achieving this kind of branded content success requires
investment in four key capabilities:
• Process
• Content
• Technology
• People

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What Are the Key Investments in
Capabilities Needed to Succeed?
Establish different workstreams.
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01 Process.
Establish multiple workstreams to rationalize con-
tent development.
Brands need to create different workstreams with discrete
time horizons, and match content assets to each workstream.
Brands should create a framework for evergreen, reusable
content each quarter, a monthly plan for campaign content,
and a blueprint for daily, ephemeral content that includes
real-time engagement. The particular time horizons for each
workstream will vary. This framework of quarterly, monthly and
daily is appropriate for some brands but not necessarily all.
Brands should develop an editorial calendar and establish
workflow and content parameters. The editorial calendar and
workflow should build in enough flexibility for brands to react
to current events, memes, and popular (yet still relevant) sto-
ries that emerge online. This is especially essential if a brand
is working with an agency partner, so both can act as nimbly
as possible in a content environment that moves quickly
(such as Twitter).
Quarterly
Evergreen content
Reusable content and
asset releases
Monthly
Campaign content
Promotional Releases
Daily
Emphemeral content
Real-time engagement
across channels

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02 Content.
Develop brand guidelines.
A critical step is developing a brand voice and defining a
content playbook. Existing existing brand guidelines need to
be adapted and expanded for digital media. Typically, existing
guidelines on the proper use of the logo, brand font, and
color palette were not created with digital in mind, and often
don’t speak to the larger issues of creating content as out-
lined in this paper. Additionally, brands must ask themselves
what kind of content is acceptable and what isn’t? What are
the rules for the brand voice? Is the voice and tone authentic
to the brand?
It’s also important to remain true to a brand’s essence. A
somewhat staid blue chip brand should not attempt to sud-
denly become the Lady Gaga of the insurance industry, for
instance. While humor tends to resonate, particularly with
younger audiences, brands should tread carefully with edgy
humor. Staying relevant doesn’t automatically translate into
comedy. Often, building a content presence is much more
about being of service to customers with useful information
than demonstrating snarky wit.
Identify and put audiences first.
Customers are not a monolithic group of users with the same
needs and expectations. Creating audience personas helps a
brand understand the users it’s trying to reach and their mo-
tivations. The persona helps identify the particular personality
attributes, desires, and habits of target audiences so that
the brand’s value can be communicated to different types of
customers effectively.
When developing audience personas, website analytics can
provide a rich source of insight into your customers. Combin-
ing demographic data with site behavior will help identify the
core goals of your audiences–what are they searching for on
the brand’s site? What problem are they looking to solve?
Which tasks are users succeeding at and which is the brand
failing to support? Customer personas based on the real-life
data a brand owns enables it to effectively tailor site content
to the needs of its customers.
In addition to identifying the key attributes of a target audi-
ence, brands must consider where that audience is in the
real world, and where it congregates online. On which social
media platforms and networks is it is most active–Facebook?
Twitter? Reddit? This insight also helps inform what type of
content—visuals like infographics or images, video, or long-
or short-form content—the target audience will respond to
most. Additionally, different audiences will have distinctive
sharing preferences, such as email versus Facebook versus
pinning or subscribing to feeds.
Knowing where and how the target audiences consume and
share content is essential to developing a focused content
strategy.

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Each workstream develops unique content.
Each workstream in the framework produces different types
of content. Evergreen content includes product and service
descriptions, legal terms and conditions, and content for new
categories or audiences. Monthly content is more campaign-
focused, tied to product launches, PR initiatives or long-form
features. Daily content focuses on topical, time-sensitive
stories and social media responses.
Quarterly.
Evergreen content
• Product/service descriptions
• New categories
• New audiences
• “About” content
• Copy book and style guide
• Legal terms conditions
• Brand guidelines
Daily.
Ephemeral content
• Topical, time-sensitive stories
• Social media responses integrated across channels
• Reposts from 3rd
parties
• Crisis communication
• Op-Eds, columns
Monthly.
Campaign content
• Planned promotions
• Seasonal/holiday content
• Product launches
• 3rd
party syndication
• PR initiatives
• Annual report
• Partner launches
• Long-form freatures
Each workstream develops unique content:

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Amplify content via earned and paid media.
Even if a brand invests heavily in technology and staffing
resources, and produces a beautifully-crafted, steady stream
of on-message content, there is no guarantee the target
audience will see it. Promotion is critical to ensuring it is not
only seen and read by the target audience, but also shared
amongst a brand’s fan and influencers.
Brands need to identify the tastemakers within their target
audience, those who wield disproportionate influence on their
readers, followers and fans. Figuring out who the influencers
are isn’t always easy and requires research, which includes
looking at how aligned their content and tone are with a
brand’s central message.
Brands also need to use paid media such as promoted
tweets, sponsored stories, native advertising, and even
display ads to promote their content. “Brands still seem to
believe that if you build it, they will come,” explains Huge
Community Manager Andrew Cunningham.
Branded content doesn’t go viral
without spending.
03 Technology.
Invest in technology for production and content
management.
Building the technological foundation for publishing requires
more than an investment in a content management system
(CMS) or digital asset management (DAM) system. The
marketing team should be a stakeholder in the tool selec-
tion, ensuring the functional requirements meet its needs for
producing, collaborating on, and distributing content. As a
brand builds a library of content, tools that help plan, docu-
ment, and track stories are needed. For brands with global
reach, this need is even more profound, and includes the
ability to track the origin language. Regular content audits will
help brands document what assets they own, where within
the organization it resides, and who “owns” it.
THE FUTURE OF CONTENT PUBLISHING: THE EMERGENCE OF
CONTENT APIs.
The future of content distribution lies in content APIs. An API, or applica-
tion programming interface, is a simple way for two or more applications
to communicate in a common language. An API is most often used as a
way to transfer data between applications (such as scores, stock market
tickers or Facebook status updates) but the idea is now being applied to
robust content.
Content APIs have been tricky to develop because it requires not just
transferring data but also interpreting its meaning and the taxonomy of
content. A content API goes beyond simple tags that show where a title,
subheads and main content are located, giving context to that data. It
allows developers to distribute more information, more rapidly, in new and
different ways. Today more publishers are using content APIs, especially
as devices proliferate. The New York Times, NPR and the Guardian are
just a few publishers using them. While the use of a content API is nascent
(even for media companies), expect its growth to be fueled not just by tra-
ditional publishers but also brands looking for more efficient and powerful
ways to distribute their content.

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Each workstream relies on technology.
The established technology infrastructure of most non-media
brands was not designed for publishing, but for control.
Brand marketers often discover that the capabilities required
for their most important marketing objectives, such as good
personalization and segmentation, rapid A/B and multivariate
testing, or multichannel publishing, are not well-supported
by the company’s central technology stack. Instead, they are
forced to rely on an ad hoc patchwork of systems.
In particular, most content management systems are primarily
built to create web pages, not to provide the full spectrum of
content offerings possible across multiple channels.
There will likely never be one technology platform to rule them
all, so to become effective publishers, brands need to deploy
the appropriate technology within each content workstream.
The key is organizing existing systems into rational informa-
tion workflows so that each workstream team can efficiently
gather, create, and publish its content.
Quarterly.
Evergreen content
• Product content database
• Digital asset management
• Enterprise metadata
• Personalization engine
• Testing protocols
• Content API
Daily.
Ephemeral content
• Content management systems
• Community management tools
• Social listening platform RSS
• Content API
Monthly.
Campaign content
• Content management system
• Syndication APIs
• 3rd
party social platforms
• Testing and Analytics Tools
• Email marketing
Each workstream relies on tech:

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04 People.
Align the organizational structure to meet growing
content requirements.
Today, many brands use an ad hoc organizational structure
with content ownership fragmented across the company. So,
for example, corporate communications may “own” social
media channels like Instagram or Tumblr, while marketing
may run the Facebook and Twitter accounts (sometimes
sharing responsibility with customer service), and the digital
department manages not just the brand’s website but also
its YouTube videos. Not only is there wasted and duplicative
effort, but often conflicting messaging as well.
Too often, businesses are assigning content duties to already
over-taxed and under-trained staff. One way of addressing
this staffing dilemma is through the use of a trusted partner
or agency. Given the dynamic nature of social content (often
it’s the real time interaction that gets the biggest response),
choosing a partner that is able to smartly embody the brand
voice is paramount. That partner must also be given the
latitude to engage with fast-breaking current events and pop
cultural events to ensure the brand can build cultural capital
through content.
OVERCOMING LEGAL IMPEDIMENTS.
One of the biggest barriers to creating a timely flow of content is the legal
approval process most corporations have in place. The problem is that
while approval procedures were established to mitigate risk and ensure
compliance (especially in highly regulated industries such as pharmaceu-
ticals and financial services), it was also developed to serve the marketing
and content process in an analog world. Digital requires greater fluidity and
fast reaction times, so requiring legal approval for every piece of content
is not only unwieldy, it’s unreasonable. (The exception to this rule may be
brands in those highly-regulated industries.)
To overcome these roadblocks, businesses need to carefully consider how
legal is incorporated into each workflow for content. One potential solution
is to assign dedicated legal staff to approve topics for each distribution
channel. This can be a single lawyer (either on staff or consulting), or a
team of legal experts. Creating an internal task force to offer consolidated
feedback on content can shorten approval lag times.
The most critical factor is that there is a dedicated legal resource that
doesn’t change from week to week. A shifting legal team can result in
conflicting policies, gaps in technological knowledge, and inconsistent
feedback.

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Each workstream has a team.
One of the challenges a brand faces with multiple content
workstreams is allocating talent appropriately. Too often,
immediate content needs (particularly when there is a com-
munications crisis) override long-term ones. By staffing each
workstream with its own team (even if there is sometimes
overlap), a brand can ensure the content needs of each
workstream are appropriately addressed and executed.
Quarterly.
Evergreen content
• Product managers
• Copywriters
• Data entry
• Legal compliance
• Brand marketers
• Corporate communications
Daily.
Ephemeral content
• Creative Director
• Community managers
• Copywriters
• Multimedia producers
• Legal compliance
• Corporate communications
Monthly.
Campaign content
• Editorial Creative Director
• Writer/researcher
• Visual Designer
• Copywriters
• Legal compliance
Each workstream has a team:

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The opportunity to engage with consumers directly is rela-
tively unprecedented. Not only do consumers increasingly
expect it, but there are compelling systemic reasons why
brands should produce relevant, engaging content, including
shifts in search and social algorithms, the fragmentation of
the media landscape, and the explosion in potential customer
touchpoints. Most brands are ill-equipped as currently config-
ured to meet consumer content demands, but by investing in
the four critical components of process, content, technology,
and people, brands can successfully evolve to meet the new
consumer demand for direct engagement and meaningful
content. Establishing a process of multiple workstreams sets
the foundation. Aligning staff, technology, and content across
these workstreams is the best way to ensure success as
brands become publishers.
Aligning staff, technology and content
across these workstreams is the best
way to ensure success as brands be-
come publishers.
Conclusion.44

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Acknowledgements.
The authors acknowledge the following from Huge for
contributing their insights and feedback:
Andrew Cunningham, Community Manager UX/ID
Roman Ptakowski, Engagement Director
Neda Namiranian, Engagement Manager
Susie Clarke, Engagement Director
Mary Lou Bunn, Director, New Business
Ken Allard, Managing Director, Global Business Strategy
Judd Schoenholtz, Experience Director, UX/ID
Sam Weston, VP, Comms