Escalating the Content Arms Race

Make great content. Make it original. And make it meaningful.

Brands becoming publishers is like, so last year. Like it or not, brands are already there – whether it’s through sponsored content, through their social media channels, through a wholly-owned content property or through their CEO’s personal MySpace page – and there’s no going back. Every brand is a media company.

In that distant past of 2012, a brand could differentiate just by consistently publishing editorial content – the “look mom, I’m a publisher!!” school of content marketing. But when everyone’s doing it (and they are), it takes more to stand out. The internet generates 87 zillion pieces of content a day – in that kind of informational deluge, what can a brand do to cut through the noise?

Plenty of very smart people will tell you the answer is more, more more! More blog posts, more keywords, more tweets. But while good SEO practices and consistent publishing are important and necessary, I think the rush to more content misses the point. Standing out requires brands to slow down, think outside the box, and push the limits of storytelling.

Which is all a rather roundabout way of introducing Contently’s latest contribution to the escalating content arms race. Working with Contently’s network of freelance creatives, and the visual design tools offered by Scrollkit, we created “Brooklyn Took It”, a deep look into how one brand – The Brooklyn Nets – used storytelling to re-imagine itself. But more importantly it’s an example of the kind of amazing content any brand – in this case us – can produce with the right tools.

We hope you like it.