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How To Build Your Brand With Branded
Content
by tracy stokes, March 21, 2013
key TakeaWays
Marketers Must seek new Ways To Connect With perpetually
Connected Consumers
The old model of push marketing has lost impact with consumers who decide
where, when, and how they want to connect with brands. Marketers must shift
from a push- to a pull-driven world to engage these consumers.
Branded Content provides support To The Brand When done Right
Branded content has the ability to create brand differentiating by bridging the gap
between TV’s emotive power and digital media’s efficient reach. But marketers are
struggling to build content at scale -- to get the right message to the right consumer
at the right time.
CMos Must actively Guide Their Branded Content effort
Forrester recommends a four C’s framework to enable marketing leaders to harness
the power of branded content to help build their brand. This framework guides
marketers to: 1) capture the brand’s North Star in branded content; 2) connect to
consumers in context; 3) create visible value; and 4) continuously measure and
optimize results.
Forrester research, inc., 60 acorn park drive, Cambridge, Ma 02140 Usa
tel: +1 617.613.6000 | Fax: +1 617.613.5000 | www.forrester.com
For CMO & Marketing Leadership Professionals
March 21, 2013
How To Build Your Brand With Branded Content
by Tracy Stokes
with David M. Cooperstein and Alexandra Hayes
Why Read This Report
Traditional marketing vehicles are becoming less effective in capturing and engaging the attention of
today’s perpetually connected consumers. Chief marketing officers (CMOs) must adapt their marketing
strategies to build brand advantage in the face of consumers’ rapidly changing media consumption
landscape. Branded content is a powerful tool to help build a brand, but marketers run a gauntlet of
obstacles to harness it effectively. This report introduces Forrester’s four C’s framework for effective use
of content for brand building: 1) capture the brand’s North Star in branded content; 2) connect to your
consumers in context; 3) create visible value through the content; and 4) continuously measure and
optimize results. As a result of using this framework, marketers will be able to use branded content to
build the trusted, remarkable, unmistakable, and essential brand that will drive success.
Table Of Contents
Notes & Resources
2 One-Way Push Communications Have Lost
Impact With Consumers
Forrester interviewed 16 vendor and
user companies, including Aegis Group,
Astadia, Demand Media, Intel, Manifest
Digital, Meredith Xcelerated Marketing
(MXM), Microsoft, Pandora, Percolate,
Razorfish, Relevant24, RockFish, Schiff
Nutrition, Skyword, Visible Measures, and VL
Strategies.
5 Four Ways Branded Content Can Help Build
A TRUE Brand
8 Introducing A Framework To Guide Brand
Building Content
recommendations
12 Shift From Random Acts Of Content To
Purposeful Storytelling
Related Research Documents
13 Supplemental Material
Develop Content Capabilities Now
October 31, 2012
The Always Addressable Customer
September 26, 2012
Measuring The Impact Of Branded Content
May 21, 2012
© 2013, Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited. Information is based on best available
resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. Forrester®, Technographics®, Forrester Wave, RoleView, TechRadar,
and Total Economic Impact are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies. To
purchase reprints of this document, please email [email protected]. For additional information, go to www.forrester.com.
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How To Build Your Brand With Branded Content
one-way push communications have lost impact with consumers
Marketers must seek new ways to build their brand with consumers, as brand-led advertising online
and offline has lost its allure. Ninety-three percent of marketing leaders agree that they need to
reinvent their brand building strategies as a result of digital innovations like social and mobile.1 And
38% believe that TV advertising has become less effective.2 In this new media landscape, there is a
seismic shift from a push- to a pull-driven world where:
■ Perpetually connected consumers engage with brands on their own terms. Today’s
consumers decide where, when, and how they want to engage with brands. With multiple
interconnected devices at their fingertips at any one time, these perpetually connected
consumers can opt in or out of content as they choose.3 Two-thirds of US online adults have
two or more Internet-connected devices, such as laptops, smartphones, or tablets. And 81% of
TV-watching online adults who own at least one of these connected devices go online while
watching TV.4
■ Marketers shift spending to digital to keep up with consumers’ plethora of media options.
Marketers face a higher bar to engage consumers, who have more media options than ever
before. Companies like Procter & Gamble (P&G) have made big budget shifts into digital to
optimize their media spend and keep up with their consumers. In 2012, P&G Global Marketing
Officer Marc Pritchard announced that the company would be “leaning more heavily on lowercost digital marketing and easing up somewhat on pricey broadcast ads.”5 But digital ads alone
lack the power to connect with consumers as a branding tool.
■ Consumers trust self-selected online content more than one-way push communications.
Forrester’s Technographics® data shows that consumers in Europe and especially in the US trust
professional and consumer reviews, natural search, and brand websites the most for marketing
communications. Digital ads such as banner ads, text messages, and mobile apps are the least
trusted. For example, 46% of US online adults trust consumer-written online reviews, but only
9% trust text messages from companies or brands (see Figure 1).
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How To Build Your Brand With Branded Content
Figure 1 Consumers Trust Self-Selected Content More Than Push Communications
“To what extent do you trust each of the following types of advertising/promotion?”
(4 or 5 on a scale of 1 [do not trust at all] to 5 [trust completely])
Brand or product recommendations
from friends and family
61%
Professionally written online reviews
(e.g., CNET, consumer reports)
38%
Natural search engine results
(e.g., Google, Bing)
23%
Sponsored search engine results
(e.g., Google, Bing)
Posts by companies or brands on social
networking sites (e.g., Facebook, Twitter)
Information on mobile applications
from companies or brands
Ads on websites (e.g., banners)
Text messages from companies or brands
Self-selected
digital pull
content
46%
43%
37%
Information on websites of
companies or brands
Emails from companies or brands
55%
33%
Consumer-written online reviews
(e.g., Amazon)
70%
32%
27%
24%
18%
11%
15%
10%
Europeans trust all
advertising communications
less than Americans.
12%
10%
10%
8%
9%
8%
US
EU*
Digital
push
content
Base: 57,499 US online adults (ages 18+)
*Base: 15,654 EU-7 online adults (ages 18+)
Source: North American Technographics® Online Benchmark Survey (Part 1), Q2 2012 (US, Canada)
*Source: European Technographics Online Benchmark Survey, Q3 2012
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Branded Content Has Brand Building Power, But It’s Not A Panacea
Marketers now have the power to directly connect with their customers in ways they never could
before, as branded content can bridge the gap between TV’s emotive power and digital advertising’s
measurability and efficiency. Seventy-nine percent of marketers report that their organizations are
shifting into branded content.6 And 55% of business-to-consumer (B2C) marketers plan to increase
their investment in this new medium.7
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How To Build Your Brand With Branded Content
There’s no clear consensus on what is and is not branded content. Some marketers define it as any
communication from a brand, including paid advertising. Forrester defines branded content in the
consumer marketing arena as:
Content that is developed or curated by a brand to provide added consumer value such as
entertainment or education. It is designed to build brand consideration and affinity, not sell a
product or service. It is not a paid ad, sponsorship, or product placement.
Within the context of an integrated approach, branded content can:
■ Build brand differentiation. Branded content offers marketers a rich venue in which to
create an image and tell a story that goes beyond easily mimicked features and benefits. For
example, Lucky Brand’s A Lucky Life blog creates a brand lifestyle through the likes and loves
of its creative director that goes beyond showing the latest style of jeans. The blog had 30,000
readers after just one month. Charlie Cole, vice president of marketing for Schiff Nutrition,
sees branded content as a way to create brand differentiation and hold off the growing threat of
private label or price erosion, such as associating its Airborne brand with content that portrays a
healthy, active lifestyle.
■ Amplify return on TV investment. With every marketing dollar under scrutiny, branded
content enables marketers to amortize big budget TV buys across owned and earned channels.
Visible Measures Chief Analytics Officer Seraj Bharwani reports that brands that seed and tease
ads as content two weeks before the Super Bowl achieve seven times the greater online reach
than those that don’t. Similarly, the analytics firm reveals that 45 million people watched Procter
& Gamble’s athlete videos as part of its “Proud Sponsor Of Moms” 2012 Olympics campaign,
producing 17 incremental views for every paid view.
Marketers Run A Gauntlet Of Obstacles On Their Quest To Develop Branded Content
The branded content road is not an easy one to take and must be considered as part of an integrated
marketing approach. There are a slew of obstacles to overcome; only 32% of marketers believe
their organization is effective at content marketing. Primary challenges are in sufficient budget and
producing enough engaging content.8 As they try to navigate this new journey, marketing leaders
are challenged to:
■ Get the right content to the right people at the right time at scale. Many of today’s CMOs
grew up in a world of carefully crafted TV spots that took months to develop, and when done
could reach the masses via broadcast. But branded content is an entirely different animal that
is more akin to publishing; unlike a defined push campaign, it requires a constant stream of
new, relevant, and engaging content. Ford CMO Jim Farley believes the automaker’s biggest
challenge in digital media is to create compelling content that’s shareable.9 He’s not alone. Half
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How To Build Your Brand With Branded Content
of marketers cite the need to produce enough engaging content as one of their key content
marketing challenges.10
■ Replicate and repeat success. For every Old Spice or Oreo success story there are hundreds of
unseen messages and videos. Unilever has garnered great success with content development for its
youth-targeted brand, Axe, such as the personal care brand’s socially sourced graphic novel for the
launch of its first “his and hers” fragrances. The campaign helped: Axe Anarchy For Her became
the best-selling fragrance for the predominantly male brand in 2012. But that’s not enough for
Unilever. It wants to be able to repeat that success over multiple quarters in multiple markets.
■ Mitigate risk from lack of control and governance. With paid media, marketers know exactly
where their ads will show up and when. But branded content is intended to be shared; as a result,
it could show up in unsuitable places. For example, alcohol brands face tight age restrictions that
prohibit those under 21 years old from seeing these communications, but branded content can
be picked up and seen by younger consumers, blurring the lines of responsibility. Slow-moving
pharmaceutical firms and legislation-laden financial firms have risk-averse cultures that fear the
unpredictability and uncertainty of branded content. This can lead marketers to hold back due
to well-meaning but overly cautious legal departments that can put the brakes on a content idea
before it sees the light of day.
Four ways branded content can help build a TRUE Brand
Is the shift in marketing approach worth the changes in mindset and execution to deliver a coherent
content strategy? Forrester believes that yes, brands need this approach to content to build the four
components of a 21st century brand — one that is trusted, remarkable, unmistakable, and essential
(see Figure 2):
■ Educate and inform to build a trusted brand. Johnson & Johnson’s (J&J’s) Baby Center helps
information-hungry new moms with a wealth of valuable advice. That repository of evergreen
brand-agnostic information relevant to the category and audience helps J&J engage with and
understand its consumer outside of overt advertising efforts.
■ Create topical, shareable content to build a remarkable brand. Oreo stole the 2013 Super Bowl
because it has an established, fast-moving process in place for responding to real-time events. Red
Bull has a sophisticated in-house media empire that keeps it at the forefront of popular culture.
These efforts allow brands to respond to topical events in real time, which creates cultural resonance.
■ Develop stand-out content to build an unmistakable brand. Focus on unique content that
no one else can offer to differentiate your brand from private label and me-too competitors, as
Chanel does with its “Inside Chanel” videos that speak to the brand’s iconic heritage.
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How To Build Your Brand With Branded Content
■ Become part of your customers’ daily routine to build an essential brand. Content is a key
component of consistent engagement. Firms like American Express create media channels that
become a destination resource. Cisco asks journalists from publications such as Business Week
and The Wall Street Journal to contribute stories on industry trends for its technology news
website, The Network. These stories seek to make technology relevant to their audience, not
push Cisco offerings.11 Create value-added content that keeps the audience engaged to make
your brand part of their lives.
Figure 2 Build A TRUE Brand With Branded Content
2-1 How brands are building a TRUE brand with branded content
Cleveland Clinic
creates original, medically vetted
in-house research to build brand
trust. Content is made easily
accessible through its website,
Facebook account, and Twitter.
Trusted
Cisco created
“My Networked Life”
to show the nextgeneration workforce
how connected
technology enables you
to pursue your dreams.
Essential
Remarkable
Red Bull’s in-house
media machine created
a cultural moment when
it sponsored Felix
Baumgartner free-fall
jump from the edge
of space.
Unmistakable
As part of its “Inside Chanel”
videos, the French fashion house
featured a previously unheard
interview of Marilyn Monroe
talking about her famous
comment on wearing nothing
to bed but Chanel No. 5.
N5
CHANEL
Note: See how Cleveland Clinic makes itself trusted (http://my.clevelandclinic.org/default.aspx), how Red Bull
makes itself remarkable (www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHtvDA0W34I), how Chanel makes itself unmistakable
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wo8UtWiYiZI), and how Cisco makes itself essential
(http://newsroom.cisco.com/mynetworkedlife).
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How To Build Your Brand With Branded Content
Figure 2 Build A TRUE Brand With Branded Content (Cont.)
2-2 Four ways to build a TRUE brand with branded content
Cleveland Clinic builds a trusted brand
with accessible, objective content.
Red Bull creates a remarkable brand
with stratospheric content.
Cisco becomes essential through
independent content.
Chanel No. 5 taps into unique content to burnish
its unmistakable brand.
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March 21, 2013
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How To Build Your Brand With Branded Content
introducing a framework to guide Brand building content
Forrester recommends a four C’s framework to guide brand building content. This framework
guides marketers to: 1) capture the brand’s North Star in branded content; 2) connect to consumers
in context; 3) create visible value; and 4) continuously measure and optimize (see Figure 3).
Figure 3 Guide Your Brand Building Content Strategy With The Four C’s Framework
3-1 The four C’s of brand building content strategy framework
Capture the brand
North Star in
branded content.
Guide by the
light of the brand
North Star.
Stay focused on your
business purpose.
Create
visible value
through the
content.
Provide inspiring,
interesting, and
useful content.
Ground creative in
customer insights.
Tell a good story.
Consider the context in
which content will
be consumed.
Connect
to your
consumers
in context.
Quantify business
impact.
Feed insights back
into the business.
Continuously
measure and optimize.
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How To Build Your Brand With Branded Content
Figure 3 Guide Your Brand Building Content Strategy With The Four C’s Framework (Cont.)
3-2 Are you ready to build your brand with branded content?
Actions to take
Capture the
Clearly articulate your brand North Star in
brand North Star seven words or less. It should be concise,
in branded
inspiring, strategic, and honest.
content.
Align the brand and business objectives
for your branded content.
What it looks like
Intel’s North Star is “enriching the lives of
people through technology.”
Identify where your customers are in the
customer life cycle. Determine if you want to
build awareness or change perception during
the discovery phase or stay top of mind in the
engage phase.
Determine what aspect of a TRUE brand you Each brand can take on the parts of the TRUE
want to build (i.e., trusted, remarkable,
brand compass based on their goals with their
unmistakable, or essential).
consumer. Decide where you want to focus,
then align with your North Star.
Connect to your Uncover your consumers’ passion points.
consumer in
context.
Find out where your customers go for
entertainment and information. Consider
how those channels affect the content
they want.
Create visible
value through
the content.
Continuously
measure and
optimize.
Four Seasons’ consumers enjoy the finer things
of life, like good food and good wine.
Hidden Valley provides problem-solving
recipes on its website and shareable snackable
content on Facebook.
Determine how the device consumers are
using affects the type of content you
provide.
Be clear on what value you can bring to
the customers — it should be something
they can’t get elsewhere.
Offer quick-hit information on mobile devices.
Invest in rich visual content for browsing
on tablets.
Determine if customers want to be informed
or entertained. Thermo Fisher Scientific
develops informational content that is
not available anywhere else.
Identify why they will come to your brand
for this content.
Cisco contracts journalists to create
independent content that’s relevant for
today’s young workforce for its “My
Networked Life “ website and promotes it
through social networks.
Set up metrics for three levels of
measurement: reach, engagement, and
business impact.
Cisco tracks engagement through the quality
of the shares. Intel uses pre/post brand tracking
to determine if it is becoming more
relevant to its target.
Feed insights back into the business
A refrigerator manufacturer used images of
what people stored in their fridge to help
improve design.
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March 21, 2013
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How To Build Your Brand With Branded Content
Capture The Brand North Star In Branded Content
The branded content journey must be anchored in the brand’s fundamentals in order for consumers
to make the connection. To do this:
■ Use your brand’s North Star to shine light on the right content strategy. Content has
to be authentic to pass the sniff test with consumers, especially younger generations. So
begin with who you are as a brand: Ask yourself, “What’s the North Star that will guide my
content?” Brian Fravel, Intel’s director of marketing, notes that “branded content has to have
a logical connection to your brand.” Intel’s North Star is “to enrich the lives of people through
technology.” It brought this to life for its creators’ project that sought out artists who marry art
with technology to create “something amazing” and provide their own engineers as a resource
to help build art installations.
■ Stay focused on your business purpose. What are your brand goals? Is this the year to increase
awareness or change existing perceptions? Do you aim to foster loyalty? Which phase of
the customer life cycle is your content intended for? L’Oréal’s goal is to be top of mind with
its consumers when they are ready to replenish their shampoo or mascara. So its content
approach is to create tools such as style guides and skincare tutorials that help it stay in constant
communication with consumers.
Connect To Your Consumers In Context
Having great content is not sufficient. Marketers must also consider the context in which their
perpetually connected consumers will find and engage with that content. To do this, marketers must:
■ Ground creative in customer insight to create relevant, accessible content. Understand what
your users are interested in (their passions), how they want to consume it (video, image, blogs,
music), and where they go to find it. Few consumers will search for a specific brand or product, but
they will search for a category need or their own passion. Meredith Xcelerated Marketing (MXM)
channels content according to the different search terms a consumer uses based on where they
are in the customer life cycle, such as car style content at the beginning of their path to purchase
and auto warranty and service information when they are close to making a decision. Pandora
creates a soundtrack for a brand, synthesizing brand attributes with its music genome project. For
example, the online music station created pump up and cool down workout stations for Gatorade.
■ Consider the context in which content will be consumed. Today’s perpetually connected
consumer uses different devices and different channels for different needs. Mobile is used
for quick-hit information, while tablets provide a less portable but more visual experience.
And laptops provide a great venue for deeper research. And the same consumer will come
to different channels with a different mindset. For example, Hidden Valley has found that its
consumers visit its website to solve a problem, so recipes are very popular. But these same
recipes are the worst-performing piece of content on social networking sites, because when
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How To Build Your Brand With Branded Content
consumers are on Facebook or Pinterest, they just want fun, bite-sized content they can share
with their friends and family.12
Create Visible Value Through The Content
There’s a lot of great content out there. Wendy Clark, senior vice president of integrated marketing at
Coca-Cola, says “content is the new currency. . . . The world is not suffering from lack of content . . .
content creation has to be useful, interesting, important, (and) shareworthy.”13 This forces marketers
to ask themselves what they bring to the party that hasn’t already been done so they can:
■ Provide content that is interesting, useful, and inspiring. Ask yourself on which topics you
can credibly be a source of valuable information, education, or entertainment. Go deep on a few
relevant topics rather than stretching across too many. Michelob Ultra taps into the insight that
its consumers want to regain the athletic prowess of their youth. Its “Beat My Best” video series
created by Demand Media tells the story of consumers like Joel, a 32-year-old TV producer who
is training to beat his own personal best — a 5-minute mile he ran when he was 18 years old.
The videos live on a Michelob Ultra branded microsite within Demand Media’s content websites,
such as livestrong.com and ehow.com; this enables Michelob to get content to its consumers
rather than wait for them to come to the content.
■ Tell a good story. Most people don’t remember features and benefits, but they remember stories.
A good story can create an emotional connection. But ensure that brand and product plays
a supporting role, not a lead role. For example, BMW’s video “The Road Home” shows the
mundane (watching your shoes go through security) and the beautiful (a glorious California
coast) aspects of journeying home for Thanksgiving. The cars are there, but appear only in the
background until the closing frame. Chipotle Mexican Grill’s stop-motion animation “Back to
the Start” campaign shows the benefits of sustainable farming through the journey of a single
farmer to the tune of a Willy Nelson cover of Coldplay’s “The Scientist.” To date, the spot has
received more than 7 million YouTube views.14
Continuously Measure And Optimize
To build a successful content strategy, marketing must understand which content is resonating and
working. To do this:
■ Go beyond tracking data to quantify impact. There are three levels of measurement for
branded content: 1) basic reach — how many people saw my content; 2) engagement — what
people did as a result of seeing that content (e.g., share or take action); and 3) business impact —
how it changed how people think about my brand or buy my product. An Ad Age survey found
that most marketers claim to be somewhat or very satisfied with their ability to understand
the effectiveness of content marketing.15 But industry experts reveal that only a few are going
beyond traditional brand tracking measures to connect consumption with business results. Intel
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How To Build Your Brand With Branded Content
looks at pre-and post-campaign brand perception to determine if it is becoming more relevant
to its youth target. Visible Measures used sentiment analysis to help P&G understand how its
primary audience of moms ages 25 to 54 thought about the CPG giant as a result of its “Thank
You, Mom” 2012 Olympics campaign.
■ Create an insights loop to feed learnings back into the business. Content should not just
be created and distributed on a wing and a prayer. Prepare to analyze how consumers are
engaging the content and the impact that has on the business. For example, Percolate, a content
technology platform, uses real-time analytic tools to understand how the audience is reacting
to a brand’s postings and feeds those insights back into its system to enhance future content
development. Or scour the content that your customers share with you to learn more about how
they use your products. To improve its designs, one refrigerator manufacturer used pictures of
how people stock their fridge.16
R e c o m m e n d at i o n s
Shift from random acts of content to purposeful storytelling
As branded content gains steam, marketers must shift from an ad hoc approach where content is
an afterthought to content production with a systematic, integrated, and data-driven approach. To
ramp up their branded content capabilities, marketers should:
■ Develop an integrated editorial calendar. There’s a debate as to whether the new branded
content model is brand as publisher or brand as newsroom. Either way, you need an editorial
calendar that maps out which topics you are going to cover and when. And this calendar
should be fully integrated with other corporate and marketing activities; your branded content
should not tout your corporate announcements or push your product launches, but it must
take them into account to avoid stepping over each other. Marketers use a mix of resources
to help them with their content — from agencies like Aegis and Astadia to content providers
like Demand Media, Skyword, and MXM or technology providers like Percolate that feeds
marketers with content inspiration. But ownership of the content calendar must sit with brand
marketers, as they are the ones closest to the brand and the business needs.
■ Plan for topical spontaneity. If you want to react instantly to topical events, you need
systems and processes in place. Oreo’s moment of Super Bowl XLVII glory was not a fluke.
The cookie maker has set up a system to quickly respond to live topical events. At the Super
Bowl, the marketing and agency team had a war room to fast-track any brand response; its
quick “You can still dunk in the dark” social media response to the stadium power outage
put it ahead of any paid TV spots for buzz. Contrast this with bottled water manufacturer
Poland Spring; it waited too long to capitalize on its moment in the spotlight during
Republican Senator Marc Rubio’s live televised response to President Obama’s 2013 State of
the Union.17 If you don’t have internal resources, get outside help from your ad agency or
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How To Build Your Brand With Branded Content
real-time response experts such as Digitas BrandLive, MXM, Percolate, and Relevant24 that
help brands like Lowes, Doritos, and Tide deliver real-time storytelling.
■ Build a blended team of marketing and creative talent. Many marketers are bringing
in journalists and editorial staff who understand how to develop great topical, shareable
content. But while they know how to produce great content, they don’t know how to build a
brand. A seasoned marketer like Schiff partners content creators with content marketers to
keep the creative within brand guardrails.
■ Budget for paid media to amplify your message. Creating great content is one side of the
coin. To be effective, build an amplification plan into the process, using paid media to create
a spark. Big brands like Coca-Cola and Nike have amassed a massive audience through
their social networks, but smaller brands need to buy that audience, such as through Native
advertising — content created for a specific media outlet on behalf of a brand, akin to a
modern-day advertorial. Or partner with third-party platforms like Demand Media that have
built-in audiences for the themes you want to focus on, such as health, fashion, or sports.
Supplemental Material
Methodology
Forrester conducted the North American Technographics® Online Benchmark Survey (Part1), Q2
2012 (US, Canada) in April and May 2012 of 58,068 US and 5,635 Canadian online adults ages 18 to
88. For results based on randomly chosen samples of these sizes (N = 58,068 in the US and N = 5,635
in Canada), there is 95% confidence that the results have a statistical precision of plus or minus 0.4%
of what they would be if the entire population of US online individuals ages 18 and older had been
surveyed and plus or minus 1.3% of what they would be if the entire population of Canadian online
individuals ages 18 and older had been surveyed. Forrester weighted the data by age, gender, income,
broadband adoption, and region to demographically represent the adult US and Canadian online
populations. The survey sample size, when weighted, was 57,499 in the US and 5,347 in Canada.
(Note: Weighted sample sizes can be different from the actual number of respondents to account for
individuals generally underrepresented in online panels.) Please note that this was an online survey.
Respondents who participate in online surveys generally have more experience with the Internet and
feel more comfortable transacting online. The data is weighted to be representative of the total online
population on the weighting targets mentioned, but this sample bias may produce results that differ
from Forrester’s offline benchmark survey. The sample was drawn from members of MarketTools’
online panel, and respondents were motivated by receiving points that could be redeemed for a reward.
The sample provided by MarketTools is not a random sample. While individuals have been randomly
sampled from MarketTools’ panel for this particular survey, they have previously chosen to take part in
the MarketTools online panel.
© 2013, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited
March 21, 2013
For CMO & Marketing Leadership Professionals
14
How To Build Your Brand With Branded Content
Forrester conducted the European Technographics® Online Benchmark Survey, Q3 2012 fielded in
July 2012 of 20,778 European individuals in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain,
Sweden, and the UK. This survey is based on an online population ages 12 and older (16 and older in
Poland) who are members of the Ipsos-MORI online panel. Ipsos weighted the data by age, sex,
online frequency, and hours spent online to demographically represent the online adult population in
each country. For results based on a randomly chosen sample of this size (N = 20,778), there is 95%
confidence that the results have a statistical precision of plus or minus 0.7% of what they would be if
the entire population of Western European online individuals ages 12 and older had been surveyed.
This confidence interval can widen to 3.1% when the data is analyzed at a country level. The sample
used by Ipsos is not a random sample; while individuals have been randomly sampled from the Ipsos
panel for this survey, they have previously chosen to take part in the Ipsos online panel.
Companies Interviewed For This Report
Aegis Group
Percolate
Astadia
Razorfish
Demand Media
Relevant24
Intel
RockFish
Manifest Digital
Schiff Nutrition
Meredith Xcelerated Marketing (MXM)
Skyword
Microsoft
Visible Measures
Pandora
VL Strategies
Endnotes
Source: February 2012 North American Marketing Leadership Online Survey.
1
2
Source: Forrester/Association of National Advertisers 2012 US Advertiser Online Survey.
Forrester defines these perpetually connected consumers as ones who connect online via multiple
devices, in multiple locations several times a day. To learn more, see the September 26, 2012, “The Always
Addressable Customer” report.
3
Understand the technology behaviors of your target generations and how to best engage with them in the
graphical analysis of Forrester’s North American Technographics Online Benchmark Survey (Part 1), Q2
2012 (US, Canada). TV multitasking offers companies the opportunity to coordinate television content with
real-time Internet content, but intensity of interaction differs by device. For more on how consumers’ use of
technology is changing, see the December 19, 2012, “The State Of Consumers And Technology: Benchmark
2012, US” report and see the May 21, 2012, “Data Insight: Online And Television Multitasking” report.
4
© 2013, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited
March 21, 2013
For CMO & Marketing Leadership Professionals
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How To Build Your Brand With Branded Content
Source: Emily Glazer, “P&G’s Marketing Chief Looks to Go Digital,” The Wall Street Journal, March 15,
2012 (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303717304577279460911630798.html).
5
Source: Jack Loechner, “Aggressive Marketing Spending on Branded Content,” MediaPost, December 27,
2012 (http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/189932/aggressive-marketing-spending-on-brandedcontent.html#ixzz2HVa0M3sT).
6
Source: Jack Loechner, “Effective Content Marketing,” MediaPost, December 5, 2012 (http://www.
mediapost.com/publications/article/188315/effective-content-marketing.html#reply).
7
Source: “B2C Content Marketing: 2013 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends — North America,” Content
Marketing Institute, November 13, 2012 (http://www.slideshare.net/CMI/b2-c-research2013cmi).
8
Source: Brian Morrissey, “Why Ford’s CMO Has Content on His Mind,” Digiday, September 19, 2012
(http://www.digiday.com/brands/why-fords-cmo-has-content-on-his-mind/).
9
Source: “B2C Content Marketing: 2013 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends — North America,” Content
Marketing Institute, November 13, 2012 (http://www.slideshare.net/CMI/b2-c-research2013cmi).
10
Source: Kylie Jane Wakefield, “Cisco Creates The Network to Report on Tech Industry [VIDEO],” The
Content Strategist, November 12, 2012 (http://contently.com/blog/2012/11/12/cisco-creates-the-networkto-report-on-tech-industry-video/).
11
Source: “Whither the Brand Website?” eMarketer, January 7, 2013 (http://www.emarketer.com/Article.
aspx?R=1009585).
12
Source: Ernan Roman, “Coke’s 7 Smart Social Media Rules for Success,” The Huffington Post, January 24,
2013 (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ernan-roman/cokes-7-smart-social-medi_b_2528038.html).
13
The Chipotle film arguably blurs the line between content and advertising. It began as an online film,
but was catapulted into buzz-worthiness when it ran as a commercial during the Grammy awards in
2011. The film also won Cannes’ first grand prize for branded content. Source: Elizabeth Olson, “An
Animated Ad With a Plot Line and a Moral,” The New York Times, February 9, 2012 (http://www.nytimes.
com/2012/02/10/business/media/chipotle-ad-promotes-sustainable-farming.html).
14
Source: Natalie Zmuda, “Solving the Content Creation Conundrum,” Advertising Age, January 14, 2013
(http://adage.com/article/news/marketers-solve-content-creation/239149/?utm_source=daily_email&utm_
medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=adage).
15
Source: David Edelman, “Communicating in pictures: The rise of the image,” LinkedIn, January 7, 2013
(http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130107112258-1816165-communicating-in-pictures-therise-of-the-image).
16
Republican Senator Marc Rubio awkwardly paused and gulped from a just-out-of-reach bottle of Poland
Spring water 11 minutes into his speech. But the Nestlé brand waited until the middle of the next
day to comment on it on Twitter, missing a big opportunity for prime time retweets. Source: Quentin
Fottrell, “How Poland Spring fumbled its Rubio moment,” MarketWatch, February 14, 2013 (http://www.
marketwatch.com/story/did-poland-spring-fumble-its-rubio-moment-2013-02-13).
17
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March 21, 2013
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