This year, in my role at LMA/LMF, I had the pleasure of assisting our team with two programs I hadn’t been involved in before: the Meta Branded Content Project and the Lab for Journalism Funding.
On the surface, these two programs couldn’t appear to be more opposite, right? The Branded Content Project, led by Julia Campbell in collaboration with the Local Media Consortium, trains media companies on how to use storytelling expertise to tell the story of an advertiser. The LMA Lab for Journalism Funding, led by Frank Mungeam, teaches news organizations how to launch a philanthropic fundraising strategy.
Yet the more I immersed myself in the curriculum and knowledge sharing in each program, the more I found myself discovering similarities in the way media companies should pitch philanthropic support for their journalism and pitch the value of their audience to businesses.
Here are some of the ways these media revenue streams overlap:
Every good proposal – whether sales or philanthropic – starts with a good pitch
One of the key outcomes for the Lab for Journalism Funding is creating a pitch deck that can be shared with funders. Some lab participants are surprised that this is such a key part of their work. Mungeam talks about how good funding proposals tell a good story, just the way your journalism does.
“Newsrooms often assume that the public — and funders — understand the value of our journalism. That’s just not true,” says Mungeam. “We are skilled at telling the stories of others. But in order to earn community and funder support, we also need to better tell the story of how our journalism serves and supports civic health.”
In the Branded Content Project, the goal of pitching to advertisers is less about pitching a transactional advertising campaign. Instead, you are pitching the importance of telling a good story about their business.
In a boot camp session on improving your presentation skills, Nannette Fevola, senior director of national sales marketing and client solutions for Newsday, said every good pitch deck should focus on how you can provide solutions for them and how you can align with their interests.
Media companies need to uniquely position themselves as the solution to the problem: show, not just tell.
One of the key slides in the LFJ pitch deck template is the slide that talks about how your company is able to help find the solution to the problem the community faces. Often, as journalists, we assume every reader reads every story when the reality is most readers don’t read everything. When making the case for philanthropic support, you can’t make the same mistake. You have to show how you’ve uncovered corruption, helped save taxpayer dollars, or shed light on an issue that otherwise wouldn’t have been addressed.
In the Pathways to Philanthropy report, Mungeam writes this about the slide explaining journalism as the solution: “The best descriptions will detail the ways in which a local news outlet is uniquely qualified — through trusted, rigorous reporting — to address the problem.”
A type of sponsored content that is growing at the local level is cause marketing: A collaboration between a for-profit business and a nonprofit organization for a common community benefit.
A great example of this is FWD>DFW, created by The Dallas Morning News. The site includes original content featuring the good work of nonprofits, and is sponsored by local businesses.
Gillian Breidenbach, chief community officer for Medium Giant, the marketing agency that leads the project, said this type of project is a good way for a media company to be part of the solution and highlight the good work happening in the community.
“Cause marketing gives us a different platform versus traditional advertising to maximize that good we’re able to amplify and leverage our earned media by accessing those dollars through various long-term campaigns,” she said.
The industry is shifting to measuring impact in different ways, for both funders and advertisers
As more news organizations develop branded content strategies that focus on quality storytelling about a company that aligns with the media company’s values, we have found a shift away from the emphasis of clicks on ads as a key metric. Yes, that’s still a standard part of reporting, but often, reports will also show how the content is displayed, how many page views it received, and how good the content was at hitting the agreed-upon themes as part of a campaign.
Megan Finnerty, who has worked on branded content campaigns at Gannett/The USA TODAY Network and Vox Media’s Epic Stories, made this point at a training about mission alignment for the Branded Content Project:
“Traditional sales are more transactional. A buyer is looking at your numbers and your trusted audience. With branded content, you’re offering an opportunity for an advertiser to powerfully tell their story with a call to action that is close to their heart,” she said.
Mungeam also challenges lab participants to think about the impact of their work in different ways as well, beyond story count and audience metrics. Funders will want to know if policies are changed, lives could be saved, or civic engagement can be increased, he says.
Sales and philanthropy both start with listening
You may be surprised to learn that early in the Lab curriculum, Mungeam walks newsrooms through several listening exercises to do with community stakeholders. Why is listening so important when asking for money? Mungeam said that starting with listening makes both funding asks and the newsroom’s reporting stronger.
Joaquin Alvarado, a coach in the lab, said this about doing listening for your community in the pathways report: “Listening tours are essential for establishing open channels of communication between the newsroom and the communities it seeks to serve through the community-funded model for local journalism.”
Of course, those who work in sales know the importance of listening when it comes to developing relationships, but listening is also important when developing custom branded content campaigns for clients.
The branded content team at NOLA.com/The Advocate takes the storytelling part seriously when developing campaigns. Despite some advertisers’ interest in submitting their own content, the team insists on creating the original content for the campaign in order to ensure high quality, said Robert Young, vice president for digital solutions.
Branded Content Specialist Amanda McElfresh shared on a monthly Big Branded call how she spends a lot of time talking with the clients about their businesses and what stories they want to highlight. Active listening is very important in getting the right message for the advertiser, she said.