The end of Grantland this past week was upsetting for the many, many fans of the great, quality journalism that had appeared on the site for the past four years. Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute, asked why couldn’t Nike or another similar brand purchase the site and manage it as an impartial content arm? While your brand may not have the budget to consider “buying” a publisher, to truly be successful your marketing department needs to start thinking like one.
Content
Fast Company: What Patagonia Learned So Far from Mixing Content Strategy and Activism
Patagonia has figured out how to use content to build its brand better than nearly any other company out there. Highlighting a new content campaign that combines ideals and action, this story gives an inside look at how Patagonia did it.
AdvertisingAge: Ford, Domino’s, Dell, Others Work to Translate the Language of Emojis
Emojis have worked their way into our common lexicon and are nearly everywhere we turn. Now brands are using the digital hieroglyphics to help work their way right into the messaging platforms of their users, one of the last digital frontiers for marketers.
re/code: Instagram Builds Its Own Version of Snapchat Live Stories
2015 has been a big year for “curated events” on social platforms, and Instagram is now jumping into the fray with its Curated Content Streams for events. Instagram kicked it off with a Halloween feed that allows you to view an “immersive” video-only content feed curated by Instagram employees. Creating content that gets included in these feeds could be a big boost for brands that do so strategically.
Digital Advertising
VentureBeat: Why Google is getting schooled by Facebook in display ads, and what it’s doing about it
Facebook’s display advertising tools have quickly caught up to, and for some, surpassed the tools offered by Google. Because of the user data, the social network can apply to ads across the web. Google isn’t taking the challenge lightly, recently announcing a new Customer Match product that will allow advertisers to upload email lists of current customers, then find logged-in Google users who look similar demographically.
