While journalists may not be in demand, the skills of a journalist are becoming invaluable. Magazine content is a familiar way to tell a story, engage an audience and ultimately influence them. Those who can create powerful, purposeful content are in a unique position. Traditional magazines may be dying out or becoming slimmer but the life of the corporate magazine only seems to be beginning and that’s a great thing for content creators.
Brands are looking for dynamic ways to drive their brand narrative and deliver stories that last. This is why brands are increasingly looking at how magazines can be used to create multiple touch points with their audience and shape who they are in front of prospects.
In November 2012, Coca-Cola Company replaced its corporate website with a digital magazine. The Coca-Cola Journey website’s content focuses on a range of topics that feed the Coke story. Coke has opted to use a digital magazine format to deliver its message online because magazine content will work harder for the brand. This taps a community that often already exists instead of using the corporate website to build community around a brand.
Its digital magazine creates another touch point for a company that has prided itself on being everywhere. Its magazine covers all topics from food and health to brand and business. In a way, this looks like a very clever way to be omnipresent online with extreme efficiency.
There aren’t any contests splashed across the home page with an overhyped Facebook integration. Instead the reader is greeted with a format that would be easily confused with a newspaper or consumer magazine. Instead of covering sports, entertainment or current affairs with a common thread like a genre, activity or community, the common thread is Coke.
The magazine approach unlocks opportunities to shape the opinions and influence consumers beyond the high school crowd, which may be thought of as the typical Coke consumer. Coke’s portfolio of products is much bigger than that and its content mirrors this.
Coke is in a unique position in that it is one of the most recognisable brands globally but it is also being clever in how it is using reading habits of online viewers to tell their story and ensure Coke is a part of a plethora of online conversations. Some of these conversations focus on creating goodwill like CSR but others actually drill down to the product showing that an online presence can help a brand to transcend its category.
What Coke’s content creators will have to do is get the content right and deliver something unique without letting product, slogans or corporate messaging become too prominent. If a balance is struck and the content they create is useful to the audiences they are tapping, they will have created an online presence that presents them as not only everywhere but genuinely interesting and that breeds much sought after brand engagement.