Good afternoon everyone, again. We have a new guest with us to keep talking about stories and brand content; more specifically, and as we have been doing lately, we will talk about brand journalism. This is Iván Pino, Associate and Brand Journalism Director at LLORENTE & CUENCA. He is a wonderfully well-prepared person to talk about what interests us. Thank you so much for being here. -My pleasure. Firstly, Iván, I know it is difficult to make time in your busy agenda. Nice to be here. Well, throughout the course, we have talked about how, in communication, we get confused by terms that often mean the same. Terms that are not clearly differentiated. Terms as 'content marketing', 'brand content', 'consumer content' or 'brand journalism'. You are a benchmark in a field in which I am personally interested, and that we call brand journalism. The reasons for the rapid growth of this field, which is a new business sector, are obviously related to the change of business model for newspapers, the technological revolution and a series of factors that we have known for a decade. To begin with, I would like to ask you, as Associate and Director of a company belonging to this sector with a global view of the business, if you think that there are other reasons that I have not mentioned, apart from the typical ones, for the consolidation of brand journalism as a genre. Well, the context here is digitalization. That is beyond doubt. It has provoked a change in the audience. It has empowered people, users and clients. And it is the client who has the capacity to influence and position a brand in a negative or positive way, with their opinions and feedback. They decide what contents they consume. Before the digital world, that was more directed or controlled. The user had less power. You had a limited offer of global content through the mass media and you were more or less captive. That's what we thought. That's the great change. From a company's point of view, you now realize this doesn't work the way it used to. So you need to create content that attracts that kind of user, that client. Genres? You can go for entertainment, which ultimately is very close to advertising. The 'spot' genre has led to the viral phenomenon on the internet. Or films, fiction. There are several content developments in this sense. Or you can explore brand journalism to become the media. That's the trend. Brands are becoming mass media of their own, generating content for that purpose. The difference here is very close to the digital world, right? That's very trendy now, with the 'fake news' thing. Actually, brand journalism is a claim of veracity, of authenticity, of reality. And of creating stories that connect with this reality and with the client, with the final user. But not from fiction, but using the journalism part included in this discipline, which is related to veracity, current affairs and public interest. I think that veracity, reality, public interest and current affairs are the factors that actually make brand journalism content. You mean, among other things, interesting journalistic pieces, wherever they are published. Even if we forget about the brand itself, or not... What's your opinion? Could you give any examples? Well. Probably, the challenge is the opposite thing. The brand adds difficulty. I mean... Talking about the brand itself? Exactly. The brand must play a quiet role. Actually, the real exercise of brand journalism is when... Well, the first thing you need when you are doing brand journalism is outlining an editorial approach. Which is rarely seen. And that's the job we do... A previous work. -Previous work. Deciding what is the editorial approach as the media. The brand has become the media. What is the editorial approach that connects with the audience, with their concerns and interests? Just the way mass media would do. General media, not specialist. And that's where marketing is involved, not only from a market-product-service point of view, but also from a reputation approach, which is more and more important in the digital world. How is the brand linked to other concerns that are not solely marketing-oriented? As social concerns... -Ethics... -Community... -Of all kind. And that's where brand journalism finds its own identity. The connection is not provoked by selling the product or service using that content, but by the fact that there is a kinship between the audience expectations and the editorial approach: the purpose of the brand. But it has to be discreet. It cannot be the focus. The focus should be the brand interest groups. That's how it works. From a business point of view, I have two questions. In the last five years, how do you think brand journalism has evolved as a discipline? That's the first question. The second one is more than a curiosity for all our students. What percentage of trained journalists or even former journalists, professionally speaking, are there in the newsrooms or editorial agencies like yours? Well, the percentage of journalists is quite high, as we need their skills, basically. You talk about former journalists or is there a growing profile of graduates that directly work on brand content? That's starting to happen. -Exactly. -Yes. I think that the evolution you mentioned is just starting now. It is part of the digital transformation process. A digital transformation which is actually cultural. It is not technological. Technologies are there. They are accessible to everyone. The difficult thing is to change the cultural framework. In brand journalism, you need the brand to understand that the audience needs to be captivated. And that it has its own agenda. Not the brand's or the company's agenda. Most corporate media content are based on the own company's agenda. And not on the people, on the audience. Culturally, this is a huge change. To stop thinking about what we want to tell about ourselves and what actually interests the audience we want to captivate and attract. I think we do not realize the magnitude of this change because it has been very quick. We are on it. But it is extraordinary. It affects absolutely everything related to communication and marketing, right? No exaggerating. -Sure, you are right. It seems very serious, but it is completely true. And it is related to the empowerment of the 'persona'. That's the change, indeed. The end of information monopolies, right? Yes, and their distribution. On the other hand, there are new filters. Many of us are trying to raise awareness for people to see it. Obviously, there are filters and a price we need to pay for the content to be opened. -Yes. -But evolution is unstoppable. And maybe we are just in the initial phase. I think so. Don't you think that there is consensus in the industry about the fact that we are on the verge of a revolution that, probably, will bring a change we have not even imagined in the short term? Yes. There will be a change. But the key is in the change of the business models, which belong to another century. -Absolutely. And there are several options. New technologies will come. Now we have the blockchain. Blockchain will change everything. It will enhance the power of the node, of the individual, not the intermediary. This is escalating. It is. Blockchain has completed the disintermediation process. Yes. This trend will continue. But we have to change the cultural framework that shapes and plans communication and marketing. And we still have many habits. Really interesting, Iván. Thank you, but please don't leave, as we have one more interview to conduct. All right. -Thank you so much.
