How 2 brands have harnessed brand journalism

Brands have been talking to their users for over a century and a half now. We have moved from extremely straightforward ads soliciting business for tractors and cigarettes to refined hyper-targeted ads offering communications relevant to what the user is doing at that very minute.

Related: How These 10 Marketing Campaigns Became Viral Hits

In spite of advertising’s move toward customization, response to good old advertising overall has been dropping consistently. Consumers simply trust the opinions of other users over brand-sponsored content that is clearly biased. Here’s where content marketing comes in—a life raft thrown to brands struggling to stay afloat in the choppy waters of marketing.

In short, brands are slowly but surely transforming into publishers in their own right—just another way in which content is now being presented to users.