This article was originally published by Beet.tv.
If advertisers want to be seen alongside news content, they need to employ simple and genuine messaging. But there’s lots of room beyond that type of content in the broader category of “news” to provide useful information that many people are seeking, according to Omnicom’s Catherine Sullivan. “The news environment is a little tricky right now,” says the President of U.S. Investment.
“There’s a lot going on and as a result, I think you as brand need a very clear and concise message. To make sure that what you’re portraying your brand to be, what the attributes are, what the value of that brand is to be very clear,” Sullivan adds in this interview with Beet.TV.
These are the attributes that people are looking for in the broader space of news and information. “They want clear, concise information” informed by fact checking. “They really pay attention now more and more.”
Research done by Omnicom shows that 60% of the people they polled “are paying more attention to where they get their news from, the credibility of that news organization, the fact checking that is done. From a brand perspective, make sure that you are also telling a very true and reliable account of who you are and make the message simple for the consumer.”
Noting that “the news sometimes is just hard to watch,” Sullivan points to vehicles like CNN’s Great Big Storyand branded content studio Courageous as examples of how news is a very broad category beyond the minute-by-minute, oft-volatile headlines. Viewers desire “the ability to learn something new. The ability to get a story that you knew nothing about the topic. They have a voracious appetite to get out there, see the world that they can’t actually maybe physically see. I think as news organizations are branching out into that.”
The more that news organizations are able to tell great stories beyond just the headlines, the more they can satisfy the “tremendous appetite” for reliable information about things like health, fitness, travel, food, music and sports, according to Sullivan.
Research shows that 80% of all Millennials are getting news and information from apps and from social media. “That alone is telling you what’s out there. It’s not just about politics and not just about current affairs. It is about all those other things I just mentioned.”
