Should public relations own content marketing and where does brand journalism sit?

[…] I have written more fully about public relations, content marketing and brand journalism and how they fit together here. […]

I like some of the discussion here but I feel this is a Silo question. My friend Lindsay Bell shared this on Twitter. And she works for Gini Dietrich who wrote a book about breaking down silos. I feel ‘Content Marketing’ is being used like Social Business these days to increase agency billings while being very deceptive.

If you ask me what is content marketing? It is so broad that PR is not qualified to handle over 50% or more of these things: Product Catalogs online and Print. TV commercials. In fact all advertising is context marketing Email Marketing. Store Layout online and brick and mortar to display your ‘content ie things you sell’. The things you sell. Blog posts. Press Releases. Brand Videos. Social Media. Promotions. Sponsorships. Trade Show Exhibits. Store Signs/Logos. Community Engagement/Charity Work. It is all content marketing.
Can PR handle all this? Are they best fit for it?

This is why I dislike these questions because it is overly broad and is a trick question. with no real answer. Most businesses can’t afford any of this other than the DIY type because most businesses are small. 90% +

For the big businesses not all need content marketing. I can win the SEO battle if I win the Ad Words bids. While Boeing’s history of success is a nice story they have had epic failures. So when they bid on a NASA project it is really the content of their proposal and the engineering work and the sale person schmoozing the prospect than anything PR could ever do for them. Or their airplanes often come down to catalog sheets test plights and cost to operate per mile flown ratioed with how many seats they have.

So the whole thesis of todays hot button content marketing to me is very suspect and needs to be handled carefully with someone above PR/MKTG etc leading everything and directing who does what and would draw from Sales, Mktg, Advertising, PR and Customer Service to achieve the business goals.

Hi Howie – Yes, the headline does point to a binary answer. Few, if anything, in life is so simple. The blog post’s subject was the topic of debate at http://www.prredefined.org and designed to be open-ended, to provoke contribution from community members and to move the discussion on. One of the contributors, Lyndon Johnson, founder of Think Different [LY] would agree with your point about content marketing being a ruse to increase billable hours.

I make the point in the post that “The word ‘ownership’ speaks to me of fiefdoms. Building walls around specialisms can no longer be best practice – or commercially sensible – as the lines surrounding communications’ disciplines become ever more blurred.” I think content marketing and brand journalism both have important places within the communicator’s armory but that they must form part of an integrated communications plan.

All communication is about action. Everything an organisation does or says is a form of communication. You describe well the ephemera or touch points/marketing collateral at an organisation’s disposal. I’m not wholly sold that all marketing collateral is the same as content marketing – if you go by the CMI definition (see post).

By the way, have you heard of Betteridge’s Law? Ian Betteridge argued that any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered with the word, no!
Thanks for stopping by and taking the time to post a comment. – best Scott

Interesting article. I found myself wanting to know more about your aside re “the increasingly irrelevant role of media relations experts”.

Can you expand on this one please?