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Hot on the current trend of marketers’ want for articles and videos that feel like editorial work, CNN is creating an in-house studio that will produce news-like content on behalf of advertisers. Otto Bell, the lead of the studio and former creative director at Ogilvy Entertainment says the idea is to work more closely with companies to highlight things that may have news value, such as philanthropic efforts, the building of new plants etc. About a dozen journalists, filmmakers and designers will launch the unit which is called "Courageous". As in "It was very courageous and brave, if not crazy as well" to quote CNN’s Fredricka Whitfield. The unit will be able to deliver branded content across all of CNN's channels, from TV to the web and includes places like Snapchat.
Mr. Bell said that his team would be staffed with “folks who have journalistic instincts” who would go into a company and “find that newsworthy element and extract that.”
CNN is just following suit like so many other outlets who have discovered that traditional advertising - which used to reside next to editorial content - isn't paying the bills in the era of giving the publication away for free, chasing the click high instead of the steady subscriber. News outlets from the New York Times to The Wall Street Journal have units that create advertiser content. Condé Nast recently launched a program where magazine editors work directly with brands, and music companies like iHeartMedia and Pandora offer branded content studios as well. Even Snapchat launched truffle pig, a branded content social media agency to complement their already established "Discover" feature that allows its users to view short videos from publishers like CNN, ESPN, Vice, and Cosmo.
If it seems like "Courageous" will kill what little credibility CNN has left, with the line ever more blurred between editorial and paid for advertising in their content, Dan Weiss, executive vice president of integrated marketing and branded content at Turner, wants you to not worry:
"This isn’t about confusing editorial with advertising, this is about telling advertisers’ stories — telling similar stories but clearly labeling that and differentiating that.
"Thanks to the company’s data-focused approach" Mr. Riess added "CNN has the ability to give a brand’s content wide distribution and then report back on the extent to which it’s driving consumer interest", much like Google's "real-time trends" for journalists .
