Today the lines have blurred between publishers and brands living in the digital world.  Brands are no longer content to merely rent access to their consumers from publishers.  Instead they are creating their own slick digital hubs that include entertainment, information, communities and more-- offering an experience where they control and ultimately own the links to their customers. 

How will brands and publishers collide and coexist in pursuit of a profitable relationship with consumers?  FOCi Group assembled and moderated a panel at DPAC4 to address this topic.   Participating were Matt Goddard of R2i, Alex Blum of Kick-Apps Media, Andrew Susman of Studio One Networks, Larry Gelfand of NHL.com and Vincent Raguseo of 1800Flowers. FOCi Group’s David Mechlin moderated. In this article we will feature our brand panelists’ views, existing strategies and predictions for brands and publishers in the future.

Matt Goddard, CEO of R2i, has been raising the digital world’s consciousness on this issue and helping his clients find the right path for their brands for some time. He finds brands and publishers on a collision course for consumer eyeballs as well as their hearts and minds. He noted that the independence of publishers is important to consumers and they cannot always get that independence for brands and their content.  But individuals also connect strongly with brands and brands have now discovered ways to deliver compelling content that capture those eyeballs and more.  This is market share and mindshare that is being taken away from the publishers.

Alex Blum, CEO of KickApps,  explained how certain evolved thinkers on the publishing side have woken up and are now realizing if they want  to continue to attract advertisers to their sites it cannot be the same old story about selling insertions orders for display ads next to editorial content  They have to be the ones to also create new micro-social media experiences that hang off the sites that are related to the site but are also free to speak to the brand messages for the brand advertiser that is sponsoring that experience.

Andrew Susman, CEO of Studio One Networks, explained how syndicated content –his business—holds a different point of view towards publishing and brands.  He defines syndicated content as the controlled placement of one piece of content in multiple partnering destinations-to enhance the publisher’s site so visitors are motivated to return, and to aid the advertiser in promoting a controlled environment most in the interests of its brand audience--not necessarily communicating specific brand messages or attributes but providing a genuinely helpful experience to consumers.  This is then perceived as a gift by consumers who, it has been proven, then reward the brand with more awareness, more purchase consideration and indeed more sales.

In this context the brand owners on the panel gave their views-

Vincent Raguseo, VP Interactive Marketing at 1800fLOWERS, shared how the company’s approach to understanding and managing their consumer’s and retail partner’s digital experiences is a key to redefining and growing the brand.  The audience especially responded to Raguseo’s description of their new Celebrations.com and Expressionsexchange.com sites and  these new avenues for real business engagement with consumers across all business lines.  Here are the points from the discussion we found to be of greatest interest:

1800Flowers is building more than a flower delivery company- it is building a premier gift giving brand (and family of brands) for all occasions.  Their key marketing challenge now is to glue together all relevant offers and all the pieces of the consumer relationship chain, from awareness, to consideration, to evaluation, to purchase, to delivery and then repurchase or other brand offer consideration.

The new core truth is that Brand Content is that glue and it comes in three buckets; 1-Syndicated, "expert"-created content, 2)-Company generated content (now including Celebrations.com) and 3)-User generated content, including live chat.
 
The current operational objective for 1800Flowers is to manage all content to build consumer relationships, and control of their own brand experience in order to increase sales for today and tomorrow.  Therefore, the brand is concentrating on developing relationships directly with consumers (and other stakeholders) to own those relationships and is relying less on renting access to customers via more traditional publishers.  On the other hand, however, Raguseo also believes traditional publishers can play a role going forward if they can adapt their content to connect and complement his brand’s own and aggregate their audiences to more closely correspond to 1800Flowers’ evolving target consumer bases.

Larry Gelfand, SVP Digital at NHL.com,, described how the NHL has successfully reinvented itself as a league and a brand in the past three years.  Since the NHL’s core fan/consumer is a hockey fan first and does not cross over automatically to a total sports fan enthusiast, the general sports communication publishers and portals did not satisfy the hockey fan’s desire for hockey content.  Therefore, the NHL needed to create its own content generator and distribution engine---NHL.com.  The NHL’s internal medium is highly desired and valuable to core fans, franchise partners and top advertisers.  Gelfand shared these highlights:

-NHL.com is capturing new hearts and minds of NHL fans everywhere and it is playing a crucial part of the successful NHL Brand renaissance.  New season attendance, site engagement and E-Commerce are up significantly versus a year ago.

-Franchises partners have adopted the NHL.com format to successfully engage and monetize local fan bases.

-Other brands like Army and Dodge have discovered that visitors to NHL.com are valuable targets and prospects to them and advertise there, turning the NHL brand content site into a successful publisher in its own right.

-Unique site content like game highlights is now used in partnership with portal partners to build new businesses, with a burgeoning venture with Yahoo! in Fantasy League presentation being a prime example.

We note that both marketers’ stories are great cases for brands becoming the new publishers and how they can build business success by taking control of their own brand’s content. Already today’s brand owners, with the help of their agencies and other content and service providers are utilizing all the new tools and channels to create, control and exploit their content. This has invented a new practice for brands to remain prosperous and relevant with today’s consumer – Digital Brand Management™.

Brandon Gutman is a Founding Partner of FOCi Group, a Digital Brand Management firm which custom tailors independent “task forces” of brand builders, technology developers and social media innovators who are shaping the digital and social landscape right now.