David Spark and FEED, Creative Director, discuss how brand journalism can benefit healthcare providers.

1. DavidSparkis a new media consultant and producer with more than
fifteen years knowledge and experience as a journalist reporting on the tech
industry in print, radio, TV, and online. His articles and advice have appeared in
more than 30 publications including eWEEK, Wired News, PC Computing, PC
World, and Smart Computing.

2. 1. Brand journalism is the process of creating and consistently delivering
inexpensive and relevant information that walks people through a system
of getting to know, like, and trust you.
2. Tripwire used brand journalism to “own” the popular term of compliance in
their industry.
3. The health beauty industry is a wide open opportunity for a physician
practice to differentiate and dominate a particular specialty using
compelling brand journalism.
TheIdea
inBrief:
FEED The Agency: David, what’s brand journalism
and why is it relevant in marketing today?
David: In its simplest sense, brand journalism is
just communicating to your audience via traditional
media editorial content, not marketing content but
media and editorial-based content. It may be just
sort of branding oriented stuff like, you know, how
much information do you really need to sell a can
of Coke? But you do need to create content that
creates the image on the brand of Coke.
If you can keep providing information to people that
essentially walks them through that sales cycle,
you are essentially capturing potential customers.
They’re not customers first. What they are, they’re
readers, their consumers. They are fans of your
brand. They are fans of your media. Then the
next step is to convert them to customers and it
becomes very easy. If your only communication is
marketing then they have to go somewhere else to
find that information, and that information may be
drawing traffic to you or away from you. You don’t
know. But the reason it’s really popular now is the
cost to actually produce your own media, publish
it, and look equal to another media outlet, is little to
nothing.

3. FEED The Agency: Would you draw a distinction
with the term brand journalism versus say
content development?
David: You should be perfectly happy, giving what I
call noncustomer customer support, meaning there
are people that are going to come to you that will
never ever become your customers, and you need
to provide them support by providing information,
by writing articles that they read, by letting them
sign up for your newsletter, read stuff. By answering
questions they have via e-mail or via comments
on your blog, or wherever. Why is this important?
Because if you support your noncustomers with
relevant brand information-they will remember and
appreciate it. And being that they did not make a
financial transaction with you they will feel obliged
and although this is very sort of under the radar,
they will feel obliged to repay the favor and, usually,
the way they repay the favor is they talk about you
a lot. They become your word of mouth marketing
force and there are great examples of people who
never became customers that go on to become a
phenomenal word of mouth marketing force. And
that’s why it’s super, super important to supply
those people. Going back to your original question,
I don’t think there is really a big difference between
content marketing, brand journalism, and custom
publishing. These are just new names for the same
darn thing, but I personally detest the term content
marketing.
FEED The Agency: What’s your favorite example of
an organization or event that’s really taken the
principles that you teach in brand journalism
and what were the results?
David: One of my clients, Tripwire is a great
example. Two years ago, they realized that in the
security industry--and, again, we’re talking digital
security information, not physical security. They
realized that the influence that the traditional
analysts had like the Gartners and the Forresters
of the world were starting to kind of fade away or
was not as strong as it was, and who was starting
to get a lot of influence in sort of way people
make decisions are bloggers and Podcasters, and
Twitters, actually. The security industry has really
accepted Twitter as a platform for communications.
And they didn’t have the world’s greatest relations
with a lot of these people. So what they did is we
sat down, which is we’re going to list a bunch
of influencers that were going to be at this big
conference and they said, “David, go find an
interview about whatever that they want to talk

4. about.” And that’s what they did and I interviewed
well over 35 people in a three-day conference and
we produced a ton of videos.
David: So there’s just simple ways to help, but to
sort of fast forward, all I did was interview these
people and just found out what was important on
their minds here at the security conference and
just to sort of hone this even more with regards
to Tripwire. At that time, their big issue that they
solved with their product was an issue of what was
known as compliance. A big issue in the security
industry is you have to be state compliant under a
series of regulatory issues depending on what your
industry is. And the whole issue with compliance
was a very, very big issue in security.
Now, Tripwire is owning the conversation on
compliance. These are the people we’re going out
to talk with about compliance. Now, all these issues
of compliance, compliance, compliance around the
word Tripwire, then becomes the sort of a natural
connection at that point. Also, you’ve got all these
influencers on camera, and that this is kind of an
implied endorsement towards Tripwire even though
they don’t say Tripwire is wonderful. This is how
Tripwire handled things beautifully right afterwards.
After I produced all these videos, made all these
connections with these influencers, they then went
and followed up, and then for the following year,
they just created true relationships with these
influencers throughout the year. And as a result,
they went from, you know, the beginning, that first
year of like, yeah we kind of know Tripwire and we
spoke to influencers. To the following year, people
are saying, “Oh, God. We love Tripwire.”
FEED The Agency: How would you say that
brand journalism could be really relevant and
impactful for physicians or for health and beauty
companies in that environment?
David: Well, I mean, let me ask you a question, how
many people walk into a plastic surgeon’s office or
a doctor’s office and say, “I have no questions, go
right ahead, here’s my money.”
(Laughter)
FEED The Agency: Right.
David: That never happens ever.
David: You just use the questions, there’s a process
of trust that’s there. I would just ask, “What are the
top 10 most frequently asked questions?” And let’s
start creating content around those top 10. And

5. also, how does your audience want to consume
that content? But if you’re dealing with doctors, you
are now required to produce a much higher level of
quality content. It’s because your brand demands it.
FEED The Agency: Right, very true.
David: Your audience is not going to think highly
of you if they see shoddy video production work.
They just simply aren’t--in my industry in tech, heck
we get over it, nobody really cares, you know? As
long as the information gets through, that’s ok.
But with doctors it’s a different ball of wax and
you kind of have to maintain that certain level of
quality. But going back to the questions, you know,
what are the top 10 questions people are asking
when they come through your door? What is the
way they want to consume that, would it be in a
blog post, would it be a professionally made video
with doctors talking about it, should we have the
customers or the patients talking about this as well?
Here is my problem walking in, they explain this,
this, and this. But also don’t make it so salesy or
pushy.
David: Well, again, I don’t know how much brand
journalism and custom publishing is going on in
your industry right now, but if there isn’t much, if
nobody owns it right now, wow, what a spectacular
opportunity for doctors to jump in and go, “Oh my
God, I’m going to own this.” And that’s the amazing
thing about brand is there’s so many sectors that
nobody owns right now. And it’s only like the
traditional industry media outlets that own them.
And there’s no reason they have to. There are cases
where nontraditional, well I mean, excuse me,
brands are owning the sort of editorial mind space
of a certain subject over whatever the industry trade
publication is, and there’s no reason they can’t be
doing that. Again, it takes time and it takes work
to do it, and the unfortunate situation with your
industry is they’re going to have to spend a little bit
more money if they go into video because they’re
going to have to produce at a higher quality. They
don’t have to produce super high graphic intensive
things but bottom line good quality cameras with
good lighting, that’s it. It doesn’t even have to be
spectacular video editing but just good cameras
with good lighting and that’s it.
FEED The Agency: Thanks so much and we’re grateful
for your time.
David: You’re welcome.