The Content Conundrum

Anchored by hilarious and often bluntly honest keynote speaker, Joan Rivers, Day Two centered on the role of content in marketing and media and how digital channels facilitate an unfiltered back and forth dialogue around it. For Rivers, a comedic legend in stand-up and television who has since expanded her presence to the interwebs (In Bed With Joan is a 45-minute web series of interviews she posts exclusively on Youtube), digital channels represent the final bastion of true free speech. “This is the last place where you can really say what you want,” she said. 

It’s no surprise that with this kind of freedom, the chatter online whether it’s social media, blogging, or reviews, can sometimes be deafening and hard to discern—begging the question of what it all means anyway. Nielsen and SocialGuide seek to offer one answer to this question with a new Twitter ratings system they will be unveiling in Fall 2013. According to the founder of SocialGuide Sean Casey, these ratings will not only measure “activity” (quantified by KPIs like number of tweets), they will also be able to track “reach” (down to viewable impressions—or the amount of people who have read each tweet), and ultimately help to add some metrics around the conversation taking place in regards to television and presumably brands as well.

For companies like Vice and Refinery29, which are editorial in nature,  the discussion was more about the role of branded content within their publications. Refinery29 which is seeking to grow its e-commerce arm, especially, was asked repeatedly about the conflict of interest between featuring products in articles because they are inherently worthwhile or because their sale would ultimately benefit the site. Co-founder Justin Stefano responded by saying that “transparency” was vital to draw the line between branded and editorial content. 

But, in marketing and business, is this in-between becoming more and more gray? Said Neil Blumenthal, founder of Warby Parker, “I think the best retail is a form of entertainment.”

As brands grow into storytellers and “product marketing becomes content marketing,” does this shift mean the currency of ideas and to a further extent, conversation, trump all?  “With the internet, we’re able to tell a really deep brand story,” said Blumenthal. 

While his point was about retail, to push the comparison further—are advertising and entertainment one and the same? Should they be? Does narrowing the boundary unwittingly manipulate the audience or simply speak to them in a different way and allow brands to move away from being commercial to being more conversational?
--Li