Content is king, but distribution is the kingdom

How brands get to own their narrative

Brands still don’t understand how to create content.

According to a 2024 study published by Forbes Advisor at the beginning of this year, the “projected valuation of the content marketing industry” was predicted to reach $600 billion, with over a third of businesses surveyed reporting between 10%-29% of their budgets allocated to content marketing. Even more compellingly, 62% of the survey’s participants indicated that content marketing possesses “the highest ROI from a business perspective.”

Yet, in the very same survey, brands reported outsourcing 48% of their content marketing to agencies and third-party companies. Put another way, what is undoubtedly a brand’s most valuable tool in nurturing connections with consumers is being handed over to outside partners.

Talk about handing the keys over to the kingdom.

On the face of it, the Forbes survey underlines how willing brands are to outsource their content creation capabilities, a practice that has only deepened since the dawn of web 2.0. Far more compellingly, however, is the implicit admission that brand’s either choose, or more likely, don’t possess the in-house expertise, resources, and creativity to be their own storytellers-in-chief.

The question begs: how did brand’s get to here? And more importantly, is there a better model for content creation that brands can learn from and adopt?

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I have done a couple of fun podcasts in the past month, one with Lauren Sherman of Fashion People and another with Phoebe Lovatt of Deep Read. Listen below!

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Answering the first question requires understanding the nature and dynamics of content creation and how it has evolved. During the Web 2.0 era of digital marketing and the introduction of capabilities such as syndication, UGC, trend analysis, and tagging, content creation was oriented towards a strategy which emphasized volume and speed. Back then, the idea was to make plenty of generalized content to fill the day—and do it fast. In order to keep up with the demand for a constant pipeline of content, brand’s looked to outsource creatives—copywriters, designers, strategists, production agencies—feeding the proverbial beast to prop up an “always on” mentality.

That worked then. Today, things are radically different.

A 2024 analysis by Deloitte Digital observed that, with the advent of generative AI and advances in algorithmics and spatial targeting, there has been a shift in the standards of what defines a successful content strategy, marked by a move away from the volume and speed formula to a focus instead upon relevancy and customer centricity. Consumers, especially among the Gen-Z demographic, the report concluded, want community-focused, hyper-relevant content which informs their aesthetic choices while also being additive to the diversity of their media experiences.

Today’s consumers are, in other words, an audience of one, a viewership whose needs and expectations don’t respond to the one-size-fits-all approach to storytelling.

To keep a consumers attention, brands need to offer a supra-attuned point of view, one that can translate numerous inputs—pop culture references, micro-trends, identity aspirations—and form a coherent narrative that puts forward a lifestyle and belief system that they can, quite literally, subscribe to.

Without a doubt, leading competitive brands are aware of the changing habits of their consumers and there is a great deal of attention—and money—spent on the field of consumer insights to understand this. Brands have also been quick to pivot and adapt to the changing technological landscape, eager to harness advances to the benefit their cultural status as trendsetters and enrich their bottom line.

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Hitmakers: How brands influence culture found itself in some distinguished company. You can still order copy as a Christmas present for a member of the Creative Class in your orbit.

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But returning to the first query—the “how did we get here?”—what becomes apparent is that, while most brands remain apace with generational and technological advances, they continue to leverage a model of content creation borrowed from the speed and velocity playbook: spend a lot of money on content and delegate its creation to third parties. Recall that Forbes statistic: 48% of content creation is outsourced. This speed and velocity model generates the kind of generic, value-agnostic content which is the opposite of what a discerning customer responds to and Gen Z, in particular, has demonstrated itself to be hyper-allergic to this sense of inauthenticity. Today’s customer-as-audience wants a direct connection with a brand, curated from the inside, with a discernable personality and point of view.

This brings us to the second question—“is there an alternative model of content creation for brands”—that already exists? The answer is yes: Media.

In short, brand’s need to behave like media companies, acting both as author and distributor of their own content. Building an internal capacity populated by a team of creatives—editors, writers photographers, videographers, designers—all of whom possess a background and direct connection to culture today, brands can become adept at producing content and sharing it directly with their audience-as-consumer. Let’s call this approach the publish model. Companies from the likes of Netflix and Microsoft to Amazon and Walmart already leverage the model, building out strong central creative studios that develop content and oversee its dissemination.

Fashion should take note.

Brands in the apparel space have traditionally relied on an external ecosystem of actors—magazines, guest curators, media agencies, branded advertorial—to connect their creative marketing with targeted audiences. This is a passive approach, a push model of content creation that, by its logic of distribution, requires brands to cede their storytelling autonomy over to intermediary outlets. Consequentially, the push model forces brands to relinquish their claim upon a consumers attention, handing over their stake in viewership to the agents helming the mechanisms of circulation and distribution. If content is king, then attention—our attention—is the subject and, in the calculus of the push model, brands, far from being the leader, stand in the wings watching the plot unfold. If authenticity is to be the byword for content creation in the age of Web 3.0, then the push model has to be pushed out.

In its place, the publish model adopts a strategy borrowed from the playbooks of studio executives and media heads, one in which brands becomes both creator of, and destination for, content. Adopting a publish model requires fashion marketing operations to behave more like studios, cultivating in-house teams to develop and create content, while simultaneously directly engaging with the channels that distribute it.

To be fair, most leading fashion brands have, to one degree or another, engaged with the publish model, but rarely have they deployed it across the entirety of the media landscape. Dior and Hermes have beautiful magazines. Chanel’s various podcast series are phenomenal, as is Loewe’s forays into books and zines. To date, perhaps the most exciting example is Alexis Bittar’s Webby Award-winning fictional series, developed and executed entirely by the jewelers small, but mighty in-house team.

However, as successful as these brands are with such activations, they rely heavily on outsiders to furnish content. In this deviation of the publish model, brands directly manage the channels of media distribution, but still rely on external partners generate content. For the publish model to be most impactful, content generation must come from within the brand. Otherwise, brands risk becoming culture adopters, instead of a culture creators, relying on others to define itself.

Almost certainly, many will argue that brands are not media studios and it’s naïve to think that they can operate in ways that assume such capabilities, either in terms of content creation or the dissemination of content. And yet, the numbers are the numbers: content drives conversion. With that as the case, and if the move is away from the “more is more” approach to content creation, brands should adopt a studio structure capable of developing, creating, and distributing content that is dynamic, hyper-authentic, personalized, and culture-forward in its ambitions. This can consistently be achieved not by looking outward for inspiration and action, but instead through the assembling of creative teams experienced in media and supported by cross-functional business partners. Content remains king—it’s the rules of court which have changed.