Brands using Youtubers for content marketing

Brands using YouTubers for content marketing is a good example of back scratching: I have a following and you have cash, let’s help each other. Also we consider Contently’s Content of the Month

YouTubers + brands = content marketing

WPP’s mini network The & Partnership has opened an agency that pairs online celebrities with brands. The agency is called The & Collective.

There is nothing new in this. Content24 has written about numerous brands linking up with bloggers and YouTubers. Aldi is one that springs to mind.

The key advantage is that it’s better for the brands. For a start, Maddie Bruce is going to be cheaper than Fearne Cotton. Second, there are unlikely to be any preconditions over what she can and cannot do. Third, you have a ready-made following to hook into.

Anyone unsure whether this is the rationale should look at this quote from Jenny Halpern Prince, the founder of Halpern PR who set up The & Collective. She said: “I believe that [social media influencers] are the new celebrities.”

“Celebrities have become expensive to hire and they don’t have the value and the transparency that the influencers now have. The influencers are open and vulnerable whereas the celebrities were all about the perfect world.”

The disadvantage is that many consumers know this, too. But as a quick short-term hit it probably works fine for both parties.

It would be interesting to see whether this model could be applied to the B2B sector. There are plenty of business bloggers out there, but a query hangs over whether many are too news dependent to do so successfully.

Content of the month?

There is a common rule that the use of a question mark in a headline means the answer to it is no. It also implies the headline writer is being lazy.

While the second proposition is definitely true, I’m never certain about the first.

In this case we’re talking about Contently’s collection of the best branded content of November.

Interestingly, much of the work is video. However, the one that stood out was Microsoft’s Future Visions campaign. In it, Microsoft gave a science-fiction author access to its R&D in order to write stories about it.

Applications like this, where the distribution is original and innovative, are arguably where it’s at. Another example is GE’s podcast, which we covered yesterday and went to number one in the charts.

Unfortunately, the remaining choices were somewhat uninspiring, although we’re sure they did a good job.

Brands using Youtubers for content marketing is just one theme examined by Content24 – a daily review of content-marketing news from the past 24 hours.