Marketing Technology for Growth

Almost two years ago, the social team at Cisco realized they needed a new communication strategy. Having spent a great deal of time in the past focusing on very traditional corporate communiqué, Cisco began to brainstorm a new approach to their “newsroom” and from this, The Network was born. Instead of producing typical corporate content like press releases, Cisco is leading the way as a frontrunner of Brand Journalism. The creators of the project, including Karen Snell, Digital Lead for the social media team, understand that traditional methods of communicating are no longer working or have become largely irrelevant to their customers. They also realize that there are a high percentage of quality writers with backgrounds in journalism out of work in today’s economy. 

A recent graduate of Journalism school, I spent the last few months of college hearing that my choice of major would ultimately result in unemployment. Newspaper is dying, they told me. The Internet doesn’t need journalists to create content, they said. No offense to my former professors, but Journalism, as I see it, is alive and well. The only difference is that instead of just writing for newspapers, journalists are reporting for brands. The phenomenon is called brand journalism, and it’s changing the role of journalists from that of reporters to marketers