Tag Archives: Ethics

New Editorial Rules Nod to Content Marketing

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In revised guidelines issued yesterday, the American Society of Magazine Editors, or ASME, addressed types of potential conflict between editorial and advertising content that have grown like weeds in recent years.

Other observers, including Gawker and Media Week, have covered the more prominent changes, such as advertising on magazine covers and “invasive or interruptive” advertising.

But of greatest interest to B2B Memes is the addition of a sentence to section 9 of the guidelines, “Editorial Participation in Advertising.” It reads as follows:

“Publications engaged in or associated with the manufacturing or marketing of branded products and services should ensure that advertisements or promotions for their own products and services cannot be mistaken for editorial content.”

This stricture can refer to the fairly traditional practice among many publishers of covering their own conferences and trade shows. But my guess is that ASME is adding it now because of the rising trend of publishers selling their own nontraditional products and services.

In taking on this new role, publishers may be finding that associating these products and services with their editorial content—in other words, engaging in content marketing—is a significant challenge to editorial ethics.

As advertisers abandon advertising in favor of their own content marketing, this trend among magazine publishers, which has been noted before on this blog, will only accelerate. In the process, I wonder, will ethical guidelines from ASME and other editorial groups evolve to cover content marketing practices in greater detail?

And more intriguingly, will content marketers from the advertising end of the content marketing–publishing continuum adopt similar ethical standards? The distinctions between advertising and editorial content so clear to traditional publishers may be much less obvious to traditional advertisers.

One way or another, content marketing will get its own code of ethics. But whether that code will call for a clear distinction between editorial and promotional content is still, I fear, an open question.

Editorial Wall, or Prison Wall?

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There’s been some fervent debate in recent days about the risks of an entrepreneurial role for editors. (Note: By the term editor I mean any journalist, whether writer, reporter, or editor.) Does being involved in the business side of a media enterprise mean being involved in sales? And does breaking down the sacred wall between editorial and sales mean that editorial must be tainted?

What set off this latest skirmish was an article in the Guardian by Roy Greenslade (lately a fecund source of inspiration for B2B Memes) concerning UK editor and blogger Marc Reeves. In a speech last June, he argued that editors should get involved in all sides of a business, even if that meant selling advertising. The way Reeves put it was particularly blunt:

“And to all of you who are saying ‘Sorry I’m just a journalist, I don’t sell advertising or organise events…’ I say: tough: that’s just the way it will be from now on.”

I admire the plain speaking, but my first reaction was, Are you nuts? Realistically, the average editor is probably the last person you would want to sell advertising. Compared with the average salesperson, he or she is a relative introvert. Taking advertising orders is one thing, but actively selling is quite another.

But even if this practical objection is sound, the theoretical one—that any involvement by an editor in sales necessarily influences editorial content—is not. Is it really so difficult to honor editorial ethics and pursue business interests at the same time?

Historically, most publishing enterprises have replied that it is, and have discouraged editorial involvement in business. This was the point of a comment in an ongoing discussion of Greenslade’s article on in a LinkedIn group sponsored by The Media Briefing (you’ll need to join the group to see the discussion). Therein, Martin Cloake argued that content creators have been deliberately kept on the sidelines:

“Traditionally, it’s been people from the ad/sales side who have risen to top positions in media companies. They in turn have pushed the view that journalists aren’t commercially savvy. In many cases they are the people who see content as just the stuff between the ads.”

Indeed, you could make the case, twisted though it may sound, that editors did not so much create their codes of conduct as have those codes imposed on them by the business side; that those codes were not about editorial freedom as much as editorial constraint; and that the editorial wall is just as much a prison wall.

My point is not to disparage editorial codes of ethics. I’m a big fan. But we should think of them not as editorial codes but publishing codes. And editors can help make that happen not by remaining imprisoned in their ivory towers but by getting involved in business.

One commenter on Greenslade’s article argued that there is considerable appeal to editors in being able to tell pissed-off advertisers, “I’m nothing to do with advertising.”  I’ve used variations of that line in the past myself. But, really, it’s lame. The advertiser knows it and the editor knows it. Worse, it can sound weak, ignorant, and arrogant. As a representative of your company, you’re telling customers that you couldn’t care less about their business. Spoken from a business point of view, the gist of the answer should be the same (i.e., no bending to advertiser pressure on editorial). But that answer should also be informed by an understanding and appreciation of business, both the editor’s and the advertiser’s.

In another response to Greenslade, Jeff Jarvis argued that editorial codes and walls “turn out to be translucent and leaky moral condoms.” When journalists have key business roles in their enterprises, he said, “they can and must navigate” ethical conflicts and “are in a better position to do so” precisely because they are qualified in business. “Whether or not they sell the ad, the conflict and choices are the same.”

And though he didn’t explicitly make the same conspiratorial argument I’m toying with here, he seemed to suggest that the business deck was deliberately stacked against him in his editorial past:

“I learned this lesson when I started Entertainment Weekly in an industry full of standards and codes and walls and even so found my managers (editorial as well as business) trying to profoundly corrupt the enterprise for the sake of business ends and I did not have sufficient business cred to fight them down.”

I understand why editors have been shackled for so long. By their nature, they are disruptive. In a traditional media business, that was a problem. But in a new-media world that thrives on disruption, editors may at last be breaking through their prison walls.

Journalists as Buzzword Killers

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A post today from Josh Gordon on words to avoid in content marketing gets to the heart of what content marketers must do: think like journalists.

In his post,  he reports on an effort by PR strategist Adam Sherk to enumerate the frequency of 98 marketing buzzwords in current press releases.  As Sherk acknowledges, he is building upon a list David Meerman Scott compiled last year of “top gobbledygook phrases used in 2008.”

Here are the top 12 offenders:

  1. leader
  2. leading
  3. best
  4. top
  5. unique
  6. great
  7. solution
  8. largest
  9. innovative
  10. innovator
  11. award winning
  12. exclusive

Now as Gordon notes, such words are bad enough when they appear in press releases. But in content marketing, they are disastrous. As he says, “when content marketing looks like a product promotion it gets ignored like a product promotion.”

For anyone trained in B2B journalism, the terms in the above list (and the remaining 86 in Shirk’s list) are obvious no-nos. Many B2B editors cut their teeth rewriting press releases for their publication’s product and services section. Their first lesson was almost always to remove any form of endorsement language. It might not be practical to personally review products, but it was an absolute obligation to remove any promotional overtones and stick to the facts in the release, even in supplier quotes. (Sadly, as advertising has gotten scarcer, editorial standards have gotten laxer, resulting in such over-the-top quotes as—really, I did not make this up—“the outstanding part quality produced is outstanding—just awesome.”)

Though it’s been said here before,  it’s worth repeating: If content marketing is to fulfill its promise, it must adopt a journalistic ethos. That can be done through PR or marketing people learning to think like journalists, or by hiring journalists. But one way or another, it must be done.

Content’s Evil Twin: Advertorial

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This morning, the Los Angeles Times passed yet another milestone on the road to ruin of what was once a great newspaper. When I opened it to section two (the awkwardly named “LATEXTRA”), I experienced the following sequence of thoughts:

  1. Wow, Universal Studios burned down yesterday.
  2. Hold on, it says “ADVERTISEMENT” above the photo.
  3. Oh, this whole thing is just an ad for Universal Studio’s new King Kong attraction.
  4. Unseemly expletive.

As explained in detail on Charles Apple’s blog, what I mistook for a real newspaper was in fact a four-page advertising wrap. In other words, an advertorial.

Los Angeles Times LATEXTRA Universal Studios advertising wrap

When I was in traditional publishing, I fought to set limits to advertorials, but ultimately had to tolerate them. In my liberated state, though, I can finally say it: Advertorials are evil.

When I say advertorial, I’m not talking about all sponsored content that appears in a publication. Rather, I’m referring to any sponsored content that attempts to deceive the reader, even briefly, into mistaking it for something it’s not.

I’ve talked here before about how publishing and content marketing exist on a continuum, not distinctly separate, but more like siblings. Well, advertorial is like an evil twin, lurking in a vague netherworld between or above or below journalism and content marketing.

Its modus operandi is deception, not transparency. Both publishers and content marketers should disavow it, now and forever.

Wine, Roses, and Oil: PR and the Truth

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Days of Wine and RosesLast night I happened to watch  Days of Wine and Roses, a Jack Lemmon-Lee Remick movie from 1962 that, perhaps because of the overexposed theme song, I had resisted for years.

My mistake.  It is a powerful, compelling story of an alcoholic couple whose refusal to acknowledge their alcoholism destroys their relationship. For a movie made nearly 50 years ago, it remains remarkably relevant, not just for its treatment of addiction, but also, surprisingly, for its critique of corporate marketing and PR.

It’s no coincidence that Jack Lemmon’s character works in public relations. In his career, as in his personal life, he papers over the ugly truth until it’s too late. The parallel becomes clear when Lee Remick takes Lemmon to introduce him to her father, played by Charles Bickford. When Bickford asks what Lemmon does for a living, things go rapidly downhill.  Watching the exchange, it’s hard not to think of British Petroleum’s disastrous handling of the Gulf oil spill.

Charles Bickford: What kind of work you do?

Jack Lemmon: Um, uh, public relations.

CB: Public relations?

Lee Remick: Uh, you know, Daddy, um, well, uh, it’s hard to explain.

JL: Well, err, I, I suppose you might say my job is, uh, to sort of help my client, uh, create a public image, uh, by—well, for an example, um, let’s say my client—Corporation X!—uh, does some good. Or something of, uh, benefit to the public, or something that could conceivably be conceived as, uh …. benefit to the uh… Well, my job is to see that the public, uh, knows it.

CB: And what if this X Corporation does something bad?

JL: Well . . . . [chuckles nervously] Well, theoretically they don’t . . . um, theoretically. Well, uh, part of my job is to, uh, help my client to, um, to think of ways to operate, uh, in a way that the public would, you know, approve.

CB: But if your X Corporation makes a mistake, and the thing turns out bad?

JL: Well, uh, haha! I guess I try to make it look not quite so bad. [chuckles nervously]  Well, there’s more to it than that, sir, actually—

LR: It’s terrifically complicated, Daddy.

CB: I don’t understand that kind of work.

The movie holds out hope for alcoholics through the intercession of Alcoholics Anonymous. It offers no similar shot at redemption for corporate PR. This was, after all, the 1960s, the zenith of corporate marketing and advertising (think Mad Men). PR was about controlling the message, not addressing the truth.

Now, though, in the era of social media and content marketing, corporate communications is increasingly less about “control over your messaging,” as Frank Reed put it recently, and more about “telling the truth and being accountable.”

As the movie shows, and as, one hopes, corporations are learning, the failure to face up to the truth and acknowledge your mistakes only compounds and delays your day of reckoning.