Context is King
What an interesting time we’re in for those of us in PR, and media, and certainly those of us who have traveled between the two.
In the old days, like five or 10 years ago, it was somewhat of a big deal when reporters crossed over to the other side and became PR people. Of course, it seemed to be even bigger news when PR people crossed back to the news side (remember when Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams became an NBC News correspondent covering the Supreme Court?)
What we’re seeing today though is all together different. I’m reminded of this by the recent move by a former colleague of mine, Sue Kwon, with whom I worked years ago when I did local news in the San Francisco Bay Area. Sue has always been a top notch storyteller, she jumped the fence not too long ago, joining The Gap, then back to KPIX, the CBS affiliate in San Francisco, and now, as of this weekend, she has become the senior director of content strategy and storytelling at security powerhouse Symantec Corp. (Full disclosure, we do quite a bit of work with McAfee so I for one will certainly be keeping an eye on what Sue is up to.)
But Sue isn’t the only, merely the latest, high profile reporter to become key content providers for some forward-looking, and forward-thinking, companies. There was Ben Worthen, the former Wall Street Journal reporter who joined the venture capital firm Sequoia Partners; his former colleague Rebecca Buckman left the Journal to join Battery Ventures; Wired’s Michael Copeland left the magazine to join Andressen Horowitz. Don’t forget former Electronic Engineering Times’ former editor in chief, and my first boss, Brian Fuller, who’s now the editor in chief at Cadence Design Systems (check out his web-only Youtube show “Unhinged” to show you another direction internal content creation is headed); and then of course the recent news from David Pogue that he’s leaving the New York Times to become an internal content generator and guru inside of Yahoo! Of course, this is just a partial list but it speaks to an overall trend: What PR folks used to call “earned” content is quickly becoming “owned” content because they’re snapping up all the content creators.
Why is this happening? Companies are coming around to the idea that content may matter, but it’s context that matters more. Up until recently, companies would generate their own content, post it on their own websites and hope it resonated. Typically that content would be fairly limited to the companies’ own perspectives, dwell on their own initiatives, focus on their own products and points of view. Those limitations usually limited the content’s traction.
Outside content creators, like former journalists who have spent their careers creatively looking at an entire industrial or competitive landscape can offer a context that might go otherwise unnoticed, or unaddressed. This is the power of the new media landscape and why journalists can find such value in their skills outside the traditional world of, well, journalism.
Storytelling matters. Lou Hoffman, the sagely leader of his namesake agency in Silicon Valley drives this point home often, that storytelling matters. His Ishmael’s Corner blog (ishmaelscorner.com) regularly features the notion of just how powerful storytelling, compelling corporate narratives, have become. I’d add that compelling content becomes that much more valuable when it properly contextualizes the story being told. Executive thought leadership and platforms might be interesting, but what do they mean, how do they compare, what’s at stake, why does it matter? Context.
Journalists have a knack for getting to the crux of that kind of thing and that’s why we’re seeing so many of them think more broadly about how to apply their unique skillset, and what it can mean for clients.
Since I’m one of those folks who left the reporting side of things more than three years ago, it’s the kind of thing I’ve been counseling numerous clients about. It’s one of the hallmarks of what we do at Zeno, and some of the most fun I have in working with new, current and prospective clients. There’s so much noise today; so much content; Tier 1 media might be CNBC one day, and an influencer’s op-ed on LinkedIn the next. It’s easy for that well-crafted content to get lost in a sea of other content. Nope. Content is no longer king; context is.
Sometimes, when content is properly contextualized and it begins to resonate, companies don’t even need to rely on media outlets to get the story picked up. Youtube, and blogs, and company and customer websites get the great stories out there without having to worry about a media filter or prism. And as more companies embrace that concept, we’ll see more well-known reporters hop the fence and take a deep breath, inhaling the sweet smell of that greener grass.