Brand journalism works for corporate brands, non-profits, products, services, etc. People want information, both good and bad, and they remember it if it is told to them as a story. News organizations focus on conflict and bad news. There is a lot more information that is relevant and interesting than that. Tell the good news using a journalistic style, add a bit of conflict or potential bad news, and you have a winner. Johnson & Johnson has great examples in their “Our Stories” section: http://www.jnj.com/connect/caring/patient-stories Great post David!

David: I've produced no-budget videos, to use in sales meetings and as examples to customers in the same industry, that have won small sales of a few thousand to a sale to the Vatican for $50 million. They work locally and globally. One video I produced for the presentation to the Premier of China when he visited the U.S. helped win a $1.2 billion order. Budget on that video: $15 thousand. Not a bad ROI. Now some of those same videos are online on my blog and giving me Google juice and starting to move my very common name to the first page. Web video is starting to be huge and production costs have gone through the floor. As George Lucas said to me in the 1990's, "Everybody is going to become a producer." He was right and it's happening. My prototype multimedia studio at IBM in the 1980's was $300K - just for experimentation. My full-blown studio at Motorola in the 1990's was $5 million. Now, you can replace most of that with what amounts to tip money for a month in nice restaurants. And most importantly, folks are watching and listening! Bottom line, even though I started out as a print guy, people would rather watch than read. That's why I started learning how to produce video. If you keep it simple, it's easy, cheap, and it sells!

David: Bill Sledzik has it exactly right. Personal relationships with media pros get your story published or broadcast. Social media and all the tips from your book "New Rules" are for the rest you don't have personal relationships with. Mike

David: I've got the answer - they hire you and you fix it. I know you'll turn it into a customer focused program rather than product focused. And you'll turn it around to be interaction with customers instead of a "push" strategy that you can choke on. Mike