ISSUE 3
FINANCIAL SERVICES EDITIONA BRANDED CONTENT MAGAZINE PRESENTED BY PRESSBOARD

From BARACK to Bitcoin: Jamie
Smith’s Leap of Faith Into
the Future
page 3

The Power of Useful Content at
the Right Moment

Metrics that matter: 2017 Branded
Content Benchmarks Report

How to Decide if Your Brand Should
Sponsor Content

page 23

page 37

page 13ISSUE 3: FINANCIAL SERVICES EDITION

2

CONTENTS
From Barack to Bitcoin: Jamie Smith’s
Leap of Faith into the Future

3

BY SHAWN RAGELL

A Note From PRESSBOARD
In his new memoir on the craft of writing, the great horror storyteller Stephen King proclaims
that, “the best stories always end up being about the people rather than the event, which is tosay character-driven.” He makes an incredibly profound point, and the lesson applies to almost
all branded content, including the very magazine you’re reading now. When we set out to create
a new issue of The Science of Storytelling and focus on the financial services industry, we knew
right away that it was the characters within the industry who we wanted to shine a light on, rather
than the industry itself. It’s their stories, dreams and insights that make them true thought leaders,and make this issue worth reading for any marketing or advertising professional. I’m incredibly
grateful to have had the opportunity to sit down with three incredible women in marketing andcommunications whose work spans from credit cards and banking to the White House and Bitcoin.
I hope you find their shared wisdom as valuable as I did.

7

BMO Uses Branded Content to Give
Away a Year of Mortgage-Free Living
CASE STUDY

11

A Lesson in Influencer Marketing with
American Express
BY LEAH BJORNSON

13

How to Decide if Your Brand Should
Sponsor Content
BY SHAWN RAGELL

15

How a Major Bank Used Branded
Content to Make New Immagrants
Feel Welcome
CASE STUDY

19

The 10 Best Branded Content
Partnerships of 2017
BY JERRID GRIMM

23

The Power of Userful Content at the
Right Moment
BY JERRID GRIMM

27

How to Effectively Mention a Brand inSponsored Content (Study)

Jerrid Grimm
CO-FOUNDER, PRESSBOARD

BY LEAH BJORNSON AND DAVID RICHARDS

31This Media Company Went Nude in theName of Branded Content
BY LEAH BJORNSON

33

A Credit Card Brand Uses SponsoredContent to Speak to Travel Fans
CASE STUDY37

2017 Branded Content Benchmarks
Report (Infographic)
BY SHAWN RAGELLSPECIAL THANKS TOSHAWN RAGELL

PHILIP CHEUNGLEAH BJORNSONDAVID RICHARDSEDITORDESIGN

COPY EDITORCONTRIBUTORISSUE 3: FINANCIAL SERVICES EDITION

From Barack to Bitcoin:
Jamie Smith’s Leap of Faith Into
the Future
The conversation surrounding the blockchain and Bitcoin has exploded
in recent months.
BY SHAWN RAGELL
MARKETING MANAGER, PRESSBOARD

Thanks to Bitcoin’s record-breaking rise in 2017, more people than everare intrigued by the world of cryptocurrencies. But the technology that’s
set to revolutionize the business and financial industries still lurks justoutside of the mainstream, seen largely as intangible and confusing —just another digital fad that’s sure to fade.
Jamie Smith, the Chief Communications Officer at Bitfury, one of theleading blockchain infrastructure providers, says that if businesses aren’t
currently figuring out how they can get on board with Bitcoin, they’realready getting left behind.

safe, and create a nest egg for the people
they love,” she says. “And if you have atechnology that allows for those three things
to happen, chances are it’s going to bepretty successful.”
We chatted with Smith about her leap ofdigital faith, the limitless crypto future andwhy and how marketers need to embrace
this change.
You’ve had a remarkable career trajectory.
Most recently you were in a seniorleadership position at Edelman, and before
that you were the Deputy White House
Press Security and Special Assistant to
President Obama. You’re unique in thatyou left those worlds behind to join a major
player in the Bitcoin industry. Could you
walk us through that decision?
I was very happy living my post-government,
White House job life. I was sitting at homewith my beautiful 10-day-old baby boy, mysecond child, and this guy that I worked
with at the White House called me and hesaid, “Hey, I think you should totally leave
your super safe job with two small children
and join this crazy start-up with a bunch ofpeople you’ve never met.” And I was like,“Are you out of your mind? That is criminal
money, and I want nothing to do with it, andyou’re crazy.” And he said, “Well, that’s the
problem, is that that’s what people think, andwe really need to change that narrative.”
Not to say that when you are with a new
baby that you have time on your hands,
but you do have time to read. And I was socompelled by what I was reading. It wasn’t“Right now is the moment to harness thistechnology for your bottom line,” Smith says
over the phone from Washington. “There’s
no reason to be afraid of it.”Smith’s career in crypto seems unlikely given
her pedigree: most recently she served as
Executive Vice President at Edelman Public
Relations, and before that she served asSpecial Assistant and Spokesperson for
President Obama and Deputy White House
Press Secretary. She says that after doing
months of her own research on the services,
she knew this was the industry she wanted

to be a part of, and feels that others’ “a-ha”
moments aren’t far behind.
In many ways, Smith represents the rare
relatable voice in a conversation that’s often
led by the tech and engineering worlds.
While she jokes that it was an “insane
decision” to make the leap to Bitfury, theopportunities Smith saw in matters of
security, identity and equality in Bitcoin’s
future were too inspiring to pass up.
“Most people in this world just want toprovide for their families and keep them

Bitfury Data Center via Bitcoinistthat I wasn’t aware of Bitcoin coming on therise, I just didn’t understand the potential ofit and what it actually meant, and I certainly
did not understand blockchain technology
at all. About three months after I started[researching], I was convinced that this waswhat I was going to do.

It’s been off to the races ever since. It’s awild, exciting, crazy ride. The hardest partof this whole industry is keeping up with it.
It changes so quickly that it’s actually sort ofmind numbing just how fast this happens,and how magnetic it all is and how many
people are getting involved so, so, so fast.

What I’ve found is that people go throughone of three doors as they are navigating
this. One, they either really, really care about
the security and the data integrity, which wasme. Two, they really care about the financepart, like straight-up money movement,
which is frankly not me.

One thing that marketers in the financial
services industry face is the difficult taskof communicating really complicatedproducts to customers. How do you
personally explain Bitcoin to people you
know in your life?

“

I care about it more froma different opportunity
standpoint, and ensuring
people can access more
capital, and frankly just starta business and provide for
their families.
But what really put me over the edge, andI think this is sort of the third door, is the[opportunity] beyond finances. What canthis technology do to take people to awhole other level of imagination? Whether
it’s electronic health records, or identity, ormusic, or movies or really anything. So thatwas really cool and exciting to explore, andto really try and wrap my head around.

I start in a security place. When people
created the internet, it was to move
information, and it changed the world.
But that information had to be stored
somewhere. And so what they did isthey rightly stored it in silos and put it indatabases. But those databases have provento be relatively hackable.
So a bunch of geniuses came up with theconcept of taking all the data in a silo andbreaking it up into millions and billions ofpieces and putting them around the world sothat if you wanted to break into it, you haveto actually break into all of those pieces as
opposed to just one.
And so you sort of start there and people
are like, “Okay that makes sense, that makes
sense. So how does it work, and what isblockchain, and what is Bitcoin, or what’s acryptocurrency?”
And the way that I describe that is that there
are two people wanting to exchange value,

4

ISSUE 3: FINANCIAL SERVICES EDITION

right? You call me and say I need a thousand
dollars, and I say okay, I’ll send it to you.
So you have a wallet on your phone, andI have a wallet on my phone. And I send
you a thousand dollars, and I sent it along
these rails. Think of it like a train track. I’ve
attached that asset to a digital token, andthat token just went across the blockchain.
So think of the blockchain as the train track,
the car on top of the blockchain is a digitaltoken, and that digital token is called abitcoin. So really a bitcoin is just a vehicle
to allow you and I to send each other value
in the most secure way possible on Earthright now.
What people are doing in the FinTech
space is moving money. But what so manyindustries are discovering is it’s just an
asset. It doesn’t have to be money. It canbe anything. It could be your vote, it could
be a piece of music, it could be a piece ofartwork, it could be a diamond. Walmart isusing it to track wheat that comes in and outof the country with the country of origin act.
The possibilities are literally limitless once
you really let yourself think about, “Okay, thisis how this works.”
If I had a baby, I want to stamp the fact thatthat baby exists and put a permanent record
into this blockchain system that that baby isa really person. And so I’ve established theiridentity and I timestamp it onto the Bitcoin
blockchain, and now they have a numberthat says, “This is me. And I grew up, andyou can’t erase it. Can’t go in there, can’tchange it.”
You mentioned that you needed tohelp change the narrative around thetechnology from criminal to worldchanging. Where do you think the publiccurrently is on that spectrum?
My focus is much more on the B2B, or B2I,
as opposed to the B2C. I don’t think we’re
totally B2C yet as an industry. Most people
have never even heard of it. Which is good.
There’s a huge opportunity there from amarketing and communications standpoint.
From the World Economic Forum standpoint— I co-chair their blockchain council withformer President Ilves of Estonia — lastyear there were probably 20 different
discussions going on about blockchain andcryptocurrencies. So that’s a lot in the early,
early years.
And frankly, I’ll tell you why I think that’s thecase. I would argue that somewhere in therange of 60-70% of the world’s population
is just frankly living under really broken
systems. And everybody from your policy
maker, to a business leader, to whatever isjust looking for solutions. Something new.

“

A new tool in our toolbox
that could be utilized to fix
some things that just aren’t
delivering for people. And
like it or not, blockchain andcryptocurrency are it, andthey’re here to stay.
You either can ignore that, or you have tofind some way to embrace it and figure out
how you can use it to advance the world tothe next level. So I think that’s why there’s
such an outpouring about this.
One of the reasons I’m so excited about
blockchain technology is the future
potential to unlock not just capital, but
unlock power in the rest of the world,
especially in underdeveloped nations.
I think it is important for your audience tounderstand there are two tracks working at
the same time. There is the developed-world
conversation, and the developing-world
conversation. And those are actually pretty
different. And unfortunately, I think it’s a signthat we’re not so advanced because the twohave not completely met yet. But they will
really soon. Most people that I talk to who
are sort of part of the original internet feellike it’s like 1993, but it’s moving so much
faster than in the 90’s. Because as hard as it
is to explain blockchain technology, it’s notanywhere near as hard as it was to explain
the internet.
You mentioned that business leaders andpeople in that space should be thinking
about how they can take advantage of theblockchain, and what applications theyneed to start implementing. How do you
think the average business can prepare anorganization for that?
I would go so far as to say that if yourcompany is not at least in the planningstages, it’s bordering on malpractice. Almost
every company out there is doing something
to explore how this technology can be used
as a tool. I think at a certain point, maybe
from a security perspective, people will say,
“Is my information being protected using
blockchain technology?” But if you are abusiness leader, your job is exploring how
this can keep data more secure.
Bitcoin and blockchain have been around foralmost 10 years, and no one’s been able tohack it, and that is unheard of. There are tonsof discussions about why a bitcoin is worth
so much. Surely there’s market speculation

and all the other things going on, but what abitcoin represents is data, and data integrityand being able store a great deal of data ina virtually un-hackable-so-far way, which ispretty valuable.
In advertising right now, everyone’s dealing
with ad-fraud issues and trying to figureout a way to solve that. Is the potential
there to be able to apply this tech toad impressions, clicks and other digital
activities to remove that problem?
From an ad perspective, I just can’t imagine
a world where marketing companies andadvertisements aren’t using this technology
to sort of log all the comings and goingsof all the ads and having that be the backend. Also, at some point, I would be very
willing and happy to pay for certain ads
in micropayments, or to pay for content
through stories. If the New York Times wants
to charge me 35 cents for one story, andfive cents for another story, and $2 for along-form story, I would do that. It may beable to inject a whole new level of money
into various systems that you couldn’t
harness before.
That’s a great point. Media companies arelooking for these new revenue sources.
I come from politics and government, but
I think the two things that make the world
go round, overall, are security and money.
And the thing that is compelling about thistechnology to me is that it’s more securethan anything we know right now, and it’s
so much cheaper. And that’s what truly got
me over the edge and made me jump off
this cliff. The simple reality that there will be
global WiFi, almost everyone in the world
will have a smartphone and now you havea system where people can securely moveassets around the world for almost free. Of
course people are going to use it.
With everything that’s happened in 2017,
I feel like I would be remiss not to ask
and draw some insights from your time inpolitics. I was wondering what you think
about being in the “post-truth” era? And
with the rising public distrust of institutions
like government and media, how canbrands reinforce that trust with the public?
This is not a scientific assessment. I haven’t
seen the market research, but I do live on
Earth, and I feel like I’m seeing the worldfrom frankly just a different perspective notbeing so engaged in the political side, but
still being ever-passionate about it. I think
what we saw — and especially in Edelman’s
Trust Barometer, which is really, incredible
research they’ve been doing for years — isthat for the last five, six, seven years, theresearch has really been clear that you

have to show the world that you stand forsomething. It is no longer okay to say, “wesell vacuum cleaners, and that’s what we do.”People want to know why you sell vacuum
cleaners, what kind of world do you want tocreate and why does that matter? Whatever
it is, you’ve got to stand for something. And
people, consumers especially, younger
consumers, really care about that.
Now it’s like, do you really stand for that?
Show me. Prove it to me. I think Patagonia
is a great example. Taking a stand on
Bears Ears. I think that sort of sincerity is
becoming even more important as people
are evaluating the difference between truth
and lies.

6

ISSUE 3: FINANCIAL SERVICES EDITIONCASE STUDYBMO Uses
BrandedContent toGive Away a Yearof MortgageFree Living

Hottest New Neighbourhoods inTorontoAll stories were presented by BMO

Sept 16, 2016

Neighbourhood by neighbourhood, Toronto
is reinventing itself now more than ever. As
our city grows, we're seeing new pockets of
exciting residential developments and retail
activity taking off. These five Torontoneighbourhoods showcase the best of...

CAMPAIGNHIGHLIGHTS

Campaign
overdelivered on
its goal, resulting inalmost $26,000 in free
media for BMO.

The Challenge
BMO, one of Canada’s major banks, wanted
to raise awareness of a new contest that was
giving away a year of mortgage-free living. The
contest needed to generate excitement andeducate the target demographic of young
families and singles, ages 27-35, that wereconsidering buying their first home or
upgrading to a larger home.

5 Things You Should Know About
Living That Condo Life in Toronto
Sept 26, 2016

If this is your first foray into the world ofreal estate, you're probably a little bit wary
about the whole deal. Let's be real; unless
you've been through the process before,
you're going to be navigating uncharted...

Audiences spent morethan 1 minute on
average readingand engaging witheach story.

90% of readers foundthe stories via social
media, as friends
shared stories andadvice with each other.

our solution
BMO used Pressboard’s platform to create
branded content with five influential English andFrench media publications. The content was
tracked and measured through the Pressboard
platform and published natively on eachpublisher’s website. Each piece highlighted thenuances of buying a home and reinforced BMO’s
core message: “We’re here to help.” The branded
content generated contest entries while also
advising, educating and helping BMO’s audience
research their home purchase.

TOP 5 des meilleurs quartiers deMontréal
Sept 9, 2016

Déménager, c’est souvent un casse-tête.
Quand on y pense, il y a tellement de choix
et de décisions à prendre. En plus, ce sonttous des choses à ne pas prendre à lalégère ! Choisir un coloc, choisir ta déco...

Branded footer and footer image
accompanied each story

8

ISSUE 3: FINANCIAL SERVICES EDITION

Always ask ‘how is this adding value to yourconsumer and why would they care?’
LAUREN DINEEN DUARTEDIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS AND SOCIAL MEDIA,
AMERICAN EXPRESS CANADA

10ISSUE 3: FINANCIAL SERVICES EDITION

A Lesson in Influencer Marketingwith American Express
What can you learn from the credit card giant’s killer video content strategy?
BY LEAH BJORNSONCONTENT MANAGER, PRESSBOARD

has allowed us to personalize the stories wetell, reach more people and develop moreauthentic content.”

with influencers as partners rather thantreating them as actors that can be moldedand fit into your brand’s voice.

That search for authenticity in theirstorytelling has lead American Express tocreate video series such as “My Travel Style”,
a YouTube series that asks major social
media players like Marcus Troy, Krystin Lee
and Adam van Koeverden, questions about
their personal travel style like “What’s yourpacking style?” and “What do you bring withyou every time you travel?” The responses
from the influencers are warm and full of
personality; there’s a reason they’ve each
amassed such formidable followings.

“It’s crucial to understand what’s importantto them as people and as a business andtruly see what their life moments are,” says
Duarte. “What’s more, there must be anappreciation for how your brand can fit into
their story and enhance their content in ameaningful and authentic way.”

Another American Express video features apartnership with influencer and Toronto Blue
Jays pitcher Marcus Stroman. The camera
follows Stroman as he sweeps through a day
in Toronto with his trademark effortless cool.
“Before moving up here, I’d never been to
Canada,” Stroman says. “But it wasn’t long
before I fell in love.”“In the last year, we have seen tremendous
success as a result of our video campaigns,”
she says. “Not only have we achieved better
engagement, we have been able to tie video
content to business results, showcasing just
how much this type of content resonateswith consumers.”

Avoiding the pitfall of inauthenticity

Getting receipts: what to measure

Advertisers looking to get into influencer
marketing, beware: it’s paramount to work

When it comes to metrics, American Express
uses a flexible approach, tailored to the

Clip from “The NEW American Express Cobalt™ Card - Marcus Stroman - You Do You” on YouTube.

“Influencer marketing” has become much
more than a buzzword — it’s an entire worldof tools, methods, conferences and major
brand players.
Brands large and small are incorporating
influencer content into their marketingstrategy. A recent survey found that awhopping 85% of marketers are planningto execute at least one influencer marketing
campaign over the next 12 months.
In a predictive Forbes article, titled “WhyInfluencer Marketing Will Explode In 2017,”
the writer surmised, “The best influencers
work to integrate their branded campaigns
into their unique stories without skipping abeat. They know their audiences are fickle
and can quickly leave, so they treat each andevery post with care.”
The same care has to be taken by brands
who wade into creating content with social
media influencers. Today’s viewers are
so overwhelmed by the abundance ofstories being told on their screens every day,that they are loathe to give any precious

It’s clear that, when done right, working
with influencers can lead to morehonest storytelling. For Duarte, the proofof influencer content marketing is in
the metrics.

screen time to content that doesn’t seem
worth viewing.
American Express is a brand that showcases
deliberation in their approach to partnerships
with influencers. Lauren Dineen Duarte,
Director of Public Affairs & Communications
for American Express Canada, lives andbreathes social media, and in her role, sheconsistently challenges her team to “findnew and exciting ways to break throughthe noise and reach target audiences more
effectively and creatively.”

Putting emphasis on video
Duarte and her team have steered American
Express towards branded video content,
making it an essential part of their overallmarketing strategy.
Duarte explains, “We have prioritized video
campaigns having worked with a numberof notable influencers to create engaging
content. Working with bloggers, athletes
and recognizable Canadian personalities

Clips from “a” on YouTube.

particular campaign. Duarte explains that the
metrics they use change based on the goal,
though there are a few key things they focus
on throughout most projects.
When it comes to content that is posted
to the influencers’ owned channels, “wemeasure success with organic metrics likecomments, views, likes and how it’s received
by their audience. We essentially want a postthat is extremely engaging and encourages
and influencer’s following to participate in
the post,” says Duarte.
On American Express’ own platforms,
they measure based on views and landing
page visits, and their ultimate metric is thepercentage of viewers they are able todirect towards downstream metrics such as
conversions.
No matter your company’s story andvoice, tapping into an influencer’s uniquestorytelling abilities is an amazing way tocreate content for your audience that they’llfind valuable, relatable and — mostimportantly — watchable.

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ISSUE 3: FINANCIAL SERVICES EDITION

Do I have the resources to create
the content?

How to Decide if Your Brand
Should Sponsor Content
A simple framework for marketers to choose between sponsoring apiece of content or publishing it themselves.
BY SHAWN RAGELL
MARKETING MANAGER, PRESSBOARDSHOULD MY BRAND CREATE OR SPONSOR A PIECE OF CONTENT?
DO I HAVE THE RESOURCES TO
CREATE THE CONTENT?
YESNODO I HAVE THE AUTHORITY TO
SPEAK ON THIS SUBJECT?
YESNODO I HAVE THE AUDIENCE I
WANT TO REACH?
YES

WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?
BOB’S YOUR UNCLE!

We’re well into the era of branded content,with more and more brands recognizing that
consumers find content more engaging than
traditional forms of advertising. New researchfrom the Content Marketing Institute showsthat 83% of marketers expect the amountof budget they allocate towards content
marketing to remain steady or increase in
2018. But how should they allocate thoseresources?
Should budgets be spent on creating andpublishing content in-house, or moved
towards sponsoring content created by media
publishers? At Pressboard, we believe thatany well-rounded content marketing planIf you have industry experts and brandambassadors within your team that can speakwith authority on topics relevant to yourspace, consider recruiting them to support
your brand’s content efforts. It’s also important
to determine whether your team members
can articulate their ideas into a story format. In
addition to effective writing, various content
creation skills are required to produce andpresent your stories as a full package, such as
photo-sourcing, copy editing and managing
the publication and distribution of content. If
you currently have these resources in-house,
then you should be creating and publishingcontent for your business. Research showsthat 92.34% of companies using inboundmarketing increase their traffic. It can be as
simple as a company blog or as robust as ascripted video series, but either way, content
should be at least one part of your brand’s
marketing mix if you have the resources tocreate it in-house.
If you’re not confident you have everything
you need to fulfill your content objectives,
or if you would prefer to focus your time andresources on other business objectives, thenyou should consider sponsoring content.
When you work with a media publisher, you
get more than a spot on their website; you get
to leverage their content creation expertise.
When collaborating, take their advice to heart
and consider how you can balance their
input with your brand’s needs. After all, thepublisher wants your content to perform wellas much as you do.

NOHowever, for each individual piece of content
or campaign, the question remains: should
this be created and published by your brand,or created with a publisher as sponsoredcontent? While there are many circumstances
specific to your brand that should factor intothat decision, we created this simple decision
tree as a framework that every brand can use
to help make that decision.

Chase Bank recognized this when theywanted to promote their Southwest Rapid
Rewards Card to audiences interested in travel
content. They used the Pressboard platform
to create sponsored content that relied on
Mashable’s authority on the subject matter.

Do I have the audience I want to reach?
Even if you’re creating great content in-house,
it won’t have any effect if it never gets seen.
Within the crowded content landscape,companies need to ask themselves thefollowing question for each piece of content
or campaign: does your brand reach theaudience you wish to target?
If you know your market well and believe you
can reach the target audience through yourown platforms and properties, then you havea strong case for creating and publishing apiece of content yourself. Since social media
and more specifically, Facebook, drives themost traffic to branded content, determine
whether the target audience is contained
within your brand’s Facebook following.

NO WORRIES, LET’S GETYOU PARTNERED UP!

needs to allocate resources to both. Brands
need to begin to see themselves as media
outlets while also leveraging the expertise of
publishers that have spent years mastering
the craft.

However, there are many instances wherebrands can benefit from creating content that
falls outside their traditional areas of expertise.
A major bank is an authority figure on the
topic of financial services, but they might also
benefit from creating travel content to promote
their new travel rewards card. In this instance,
it might be inadvisable for the company tostart publishing travel stories on their own blog
or YouTube channel, because audiences don’t
view them as an authority on the subject. This
is where a partnership with a media publisher
can provide support.

Do I have the authority to speak on
this subject?
By giving your audience reliable knowledge
about your industry, you position your brandas a trusted leader in your field. If you alreadyhave voices within your organization that canoffer helpful and interesting information to
your audience, great! You can begin by asking
them to write evergreen, SEO-friendly content
for your blog, create a Q&A section for yoursupport page, or build case studies andcustomer experience stories for your website.

If the audience you want to target is outsideof your brand’s existing reach, teaming up
with the right media publisher is a great
way to speak to them. By partnering witha publication, brands can leverage thepublisher’s established audience to reachmore potential customers than ever before.
You want to be where your target audience isalready consuming content and looking for asolution that you might offer.
When asked why brands should work withmedia publishers to create sponsoredcontent, Nicola Elliot, Head of Content at BBC
StoryWorks, had the following to say:“

My best piece of advice would
be to really take the time tolisten to what publishers haveto say about their audience,and the type of content thatworks best on their platforms.
One of the key advantages
that publishers have inthis area is their extensive
knowledge of and relationshipwith their readers. Thisknowledge can help shape
your content strategy on theirplatform to achieve maximum
results.
A good example of reaching new audiences
through sponsored content comes fromMastercard, who wanted to raise awarenessfor a contest that was catered to small
businesses. They knew they wanted to reachsmall business owners in the Boston area, sousing Pressboard’s platform, they partneredwith The Boston Globe to sponsor an article
that gave the target audience businessadvice. By doing so, Mastercard was able
to reach a specific audience and offer themengaging and informative content. Onceyou’ve captured the interest of the publisher’s
readership, your brand will be better
positioned to earn their trust – and, hopefully,
their business.

For almost any content campaign, examine
your brand’s resources, authority andaudience when determining whether thecontent should be created and publishedby your brand or as sponsored content witha media publisher. Every content marketingplan should contain both, but this framework
will help your brand find the right balance
between the two.

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ISSUE 3: FINANCIAL SERVICES EDITION

All stories were presented by TD

CASE STUDY

How a Major
Bank Used
BrandedContent to Make
New Immigrants
Feel Welcome

Helping Your Kids Make Friends in
a New Country
Mar 29, 2017

For some kids, making friends comes easy.
They simply run up to a group of children
and join in the fun without a second
thought. For others, making friends is moreof a difficult task. Being shy or scared candefinitely affect social interaction as a child.

CAMPAIGNHIGHLIGHTS

Campaign exceeded
targets, resulting inover $13,000 in free
media value for TD.

5 Tips For Landing a Job After
Moving to Canada
Mar 29, 2017

The ChallengeTD, one of Canada’s five big banks, neededa marketing campaign that highlighted theirrange of product offerings that make thetransition of moving to Canada easier. They
needed to let new immigrants know that TD isthere to help them.

For 150 years, Canada has developed basedon the principle that it embraces all
religions, nationalities, ethnicities, andcultures and offers opportunities for all
those who venture across its borders.

Average reader spentover 42 seconds
actively engaged withthe branded stories.

Over 1.5K social
engagements
as readers liked,
commented andshared the stories withfriends and family.

our solution
Pressboard worked with TD to build acomprehensive content campaign that generated
eight original pieces of custom branded content.
All content was created and measured throughthe Pressboard platform and published natively
on four leading national digital publications. The
content was designed to resonate with recent
immigrants and provide them with helpful,engaging information that could jump-start their
new lives in Canada, all through the unique voiceof each media publisher.

TD Helps Newcomers Build aFoundation For Their New Lives in
CanadaMay 15, 2017

In 2017, Canada is set to welcome 300,000
new immigrants, enriching the country’s
already diverse mosaic of cultures.
Canada’s renowned enthusiasm for...

Branded footer and footer image
accompanied each story

16

ISSUE 3: FINANCIAL SERVICES EDITION“You’ve got to stand for something.”
JAMIE SMITH
CHIEF COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER, BITFURY

18

ISSUE 3: FINANCIAL SERVICES EDITION

3. The secret to your DiscoverPlaylist? A “cyborg” approach: Vox +Spotify

The 10 Best Branded Content
Partnerships of 2017
This article was originally published on AdAge.com.
BY JERRID GRIMM
CO-FOUNDER, PRESSBOARD

Branded content partnerships continue to grow in popularity, withadvertisers allocating larger budgets towards the practice. This year,
we saw an increased focus on inspirational content, which could be
one of the factors that has led to a rise in audience attention. Hereare the 10 best branded content partnerships of 2017.

This Spotify partnership helped launch
Vox’s new Explainer Studio, a branded
video offering that applies Vox’s signature
deep dives to brand stories. Learning how
Spotify’s customized Discover Playlists arebuilt is intriguing for anyone into musicor technology, but it’s the story of how an
obscure 70’s synth-funk artist helped shapethat process that really captures
your attention.

Clip from “The Secret to Your Discover Playlist? A “Cyborg” Approach” on YouTube.

4. Project Five by Five: Sundance TV +Visit Seattle
Visit Seattle kicked off the new year by
debuting five incredible short films withSundance TV. Ali Daniels, Visit Seattle’s VP
of Marketing, explains that the partnership
was the result of challenging media partners
to find more creative storytelling solutions.
Daniels and her team understood that nonresidents would bring a new perspective tothe story of Seattle that they couldn’t do as
locals. As proof that you can move quickly
without sacrificing quality, each of the videos
was shot in a single day.

1. Equalizing music: Vice + Smirnoff
When Vice’s electronic music publication,
Thump, crunched the numbers last year
and revealed that women make up only
17% of the acts at major electronic music
festivals, they partnered with Smirnoff to dosomething about it. By embarking on a joint
mission to “double the women headliners inelectronic music,” they’ve created somethingeven more impactful than the content itself –purpose. Content that stands for somethingalways stands out, especially with the 90% of
millennials who would switch brands to one
associated with a cause.

Clip from “Visit Seattle | Sundance TV Project Five by Five” on YouTube.

Smirnoff Equalizing Music.

5. Inside the moment: The Wall Street
Journal + Chase
AR promises to transport us to newplaces, without us ever leaving our chairs.
The Wall Street Journal Custom Studios
and Chase’s Ritz-Carlton Rewards Card
have done just that, taking audiences on
360-degree tours of three cities and ninemust-see neighborhoods. At The Scienceof Storytelling conference in Toronto, WSJ’s
Jordan Hyman and Fara Warner sharedthat the risk of the new approach paid off,
generating over half a million page views
with a bounce rate of only 7%.

2. Chasing a moment: National
Geographic + Tourism New ZealandAs with New Zealand, this campaign has it
all: a celebrity, jaw-dropping views and food,wine and festival guides for every season.
Featuring actress and filmmaker Bryce Dallas
Howard, the series of videos and articles
takes you across New Zealand and does anincredible job of showcasing everything theisland nation has to offer.

Inside the Moment: San Francisco.

Photograph by Julian Apse.

20

ISSUE 3: FINANCIAL SERVICES EDITION

6. Inspiration of Japan: Great Big Story+ All Nippon Airways

9. The Adventurist: Men’s Health +FitbitThis video series features ordinary
individuals with incredible stories, reminding
us all how storytelling is such a powerful way
to showcase a brand. Each video offers up
insight into what makes Japan a truly uniquedestination, focusing on the human aspect ofeveryday life to engage and inspire us.

In this partnership, writer Clint Carter was put
up to the task of mastering three extreme
sports in only five days, while tracking hisheart rate and steps with a Fitbit. The series
includes articles, short films and a full printfeature in Men’s Health magazine. Men’s
Health felt so strongly about the potentialof the concept that they pitched the idea to
Fitbit, not the other way around.

Clip from “A Homemade Meal...From a Vending Machine” on YouTube.

Photo by Matt Nager.

7. Family trips: Fatherly + Airbnb

10. “.future”: Gimlet Media + Microsoft

As a father myself, this series featuring dads
sharing stories and photos from their family
trips resonates in a profound way. It takes
travel from the hypothetical to the practical,
with Airbnb acting as a facilitator of thefamily bond.

Coming off the success of branded
podcasts for advertisers such as Tinder andeBay, Gimlet Creative launched “.future”
with Microsoft this summer. The podcast
explores new and future technologies, andexamines how they’re going to affect future
generations. We’re still in the early daysof branded audio content, but this series
demonstrates that good storytelling will
always be heard.

Photo by Ryan Flood.

8. Photographer Sophie Gamand andpitbulls: The Dodo + Samsung
This short film about the photographer who
snaps adorable shots of pitbulls in floral
might be one of the most viewed videos on
this list, racking up an incredible 12M views
on Facebook alone. The brand integration
is subtle at first, with Sophie snapping a
few photos on a Samsung device, then is
woven in again via an interactive gallery
using Samsung’s Gear VR device, before
you finally realize that the entire video wascreated on a Samsung Galaxy S8.

Clip from The Dodo’s Facebook page.

Photo by Gimlet Media.

22

ISSUE 3: FINANCIAL SERVICES EDITION

The Power of Useful Content at
the Right Moment
TD’s CMO for Canadian Banking explains how customer-centric content
for key life moments creates lifelong customers.
BY JERRID GRIMM
CO-FOUNDER, PRESSBOARD

A famous proverb says that if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want
to go far, go together.
It’s also a good way to explain the sponsored content strategy at the TD.

“I actually started my career at TD Canada
Trust,” she explained. “I started when I was
18, and I was at three branches. Even backthen I remember what a customer-centric
place it was to work.”
After working in the branches for five years,
Chung left TD to continue her career. Still,
she kept her eye on the company and its
content efforts, following its journey over
the years.
“I envied the brand because it was a brandthat was not only familiar to me, but it’s
probably the preeminent brand in thebanking industry right now. That appealed alot,” she said.

TD is a major player when it comes tocontent marketing and sponsored content.
What they’ve learned through theirexperience is that it’s especially importantto reach customers at key life stages, whenthey’re looking for advice about things
like buying a home, saving for their child’s
college tuition or opening an RRSP.
By helping customers navigate these andother financial challenges, the company
hopes to show customers that they’re there
to support them — not just when they walk
into the branch, but in all aspects of theirfinancial lives.

This strategy may require more time andeffort than implementing a traditional
advertising campaign, but by doing so, TD
builds trust with their audience and creates
customers for life.
This mindset is part of what drives Betsey
Chung, TD’s SVP and Chief Marketing Officer
of Canadian Banking, to create powerful,
useful content both in-house and withpublishing partners.
Chung took on the role of CMO for Canadian
Banking in the summer of 2017, but her
experience with the organization beganmuch earlier in her life.

As part of her homecoming to the company
with which she began her career, Chungbrought with her a new mindset of being
customer-centric. We spoke to her about
what that means, what impact newtechnologies will have on marketing, andhow she’s preparing her team to meet any
challenges head on.
You joined TD this year with a mandate tolead the organization from doing digital tobeing digital. I’m curious, what does “being
digital” mean to you?
Digital for me is just one of many ways
customers interact with us. I think it’s really
important, in terms of being digital, torealize that it’s about deeply understanding
customers’ needs. This includes knowing
what their journey is as they make apurchase decision, so that we understandthat across the multiple touchpoints and are
actually meeting their needs.

“

Really for me it’s about being
customer-centric.
What role do you see content playing inyour larger marketing mix?
I think content is everything. I think that it’s
so much more than what it used to be. What
it used to be was a focus on SEO and on
our websites, and making sure that we hadcontent on our websites to optimize search.
Now, I think it’s everything.
From a customer perspective, it’s all about
their customer journey, and it’s importantto provide relevant and valuable pieces
of information during that journey. I think
there is a lot of room for banks across North
America to get better at this.
This whole evolution towards helping
customers at every single stage is anevolution that needs to happen. In this day
and age, there’s an empowerment that
consumers feel, and it’s very true and real.
The opportunity for all of us, whether you’reat TD or whether you’re in any other industry
or working with any other player, is really tohelp your customers throughout their lives
with valuable and relevant content.
How do you define whether the content
that you have in market is successful or notwith that customer journey?
It’s interesting because when you lookat it for any one of our customer needs,
customers go through a number oftouchpoints, whether physical or digital, andoftentimes it’s in excess of 25 touchpoints
before they become a customer. Sometimes
it’s even 200 touchpoints.
I think that the way to define success can’t
be linear because a customer’s path topurchase isn’t linear. There are tools like
multi-touch attribution that do a betterjob at defining, for every touchpoint, whatthat contributes in terms of conversion.
However, I think that’s only one of many
tools. The success factor is about customer
engagement.
Gone are the days where you define successin terms of a monetary success. Because
customers are complex, and they’ve got
complex needs with complex pathways,
you actually need to think through morecustomer loyalty metrics as success.
Consider things like attrition. If I could
decrease attrition over time of my customers,then that’s success. Essentially, if you areable to use content to drive customer loyalty,
then that’s a different barometer of successthan customer acquisition, for instance.
You were talking about the customer
touchpoints. Some players in the customer
service industry are focused on devoting
resources towards AI-based customer
service solutions. What challenges doesbringing AI solutions to the market present
for you as a marketer?
AI is just so interesting. I was at Google last
week in Mountain View and we talked aboutmachine learning. I think that voice and how
customers interact using voice is an area that
we really need to continue to understand.

24

ISSUE 3: FINANCIAL SERVICES EDITION

A certain percentage of customers are now
using voice activated search rather thantyping in their search queries. These areareas of AI that we need to make sure weunderstand to improve customer interaction.
The other element of AI that providers
like Google are utilizing involves the way
we do search. People used to do manual
bidding. Now it’s all automated bidding. It’sso automated, in fact, that now it learns. It’s
almost one of those things where you could
rely upon the algorithm to learn, and thento improve, and to optimize. That wholeevolution is really, really something that
could allow marketers spend their time on
the strategy rather than the operations piece.
What are some things that you can do
as a leader within your organization to
get your organization better versed inthese technologies?
It’s been really interesting for me coming
to TD because we invest so much in our
employee base in terms of their employee
experience and their learning. I’ve neverseen anything like it. We’ve now designed
something called digital IQ, which is 14
modules of learning in terms of digitalmarketing fundamentals. It ranges from
SEM, to SEO, to display, to content, toeven technologies and capabilities likedata management platforms. It’s a hugeinvestment in people and their learning inthis space that continues to evolve.

industry whose content marketing efforts
might not be as mature as they are at TD?

I think that’s unique for TD amongst its
competitors. We designed the program,and it’s one of many examples of how we’reensuring that our people stay on top of theevolving needs of the customer.

If you’re in this space, you’ve got to get
comfortable with not knowing everything
because things move every single week.
There’s a new player, there’s a new pieceof technology to learn. If you want to be aconstant student and you’ve got an innate
curiosity either personally or as a corporate
culture, that’s going to pay off for you. It
pays off for people personally. It pays off forcorporations that are willing to be students.

With all this knowledge base that you’rebuilding internally for your team, are you
inclined to bring some of the marketing
functions that were traditionally outsourced
and conduct them in-house?
I think at TD, we’ve got some amazing
agency partners. It’s a collaboration model
rather than an in-house model. I thinkthat it really depends on what the corecompetency of a bank is, and whether you
want to stick to the core competency and dothat incredibly, incredibly well, or you want
to bring some of the things that aren’t corecompetencies in-house. I’m of the generalview that there’s core competencies thatagencies have that they’ll continue to have,and there’s core competencies that the bankhas that we will continue to have. I think thatthe collaboration model is a better model
than one where we’re going to take things
in-house.

Outside of the financial industry, are there
any brands when it comes to content
that you think are really setting a highwatermark or a brand that you aspire TD toact like in the content space?
I think Nike’s interesting. They seem to havea good understanding of how they’re going
to leverage their content in one voice acrossvarious channels. I think that’s a player tolook at in terms of what they’ve done andwhat are the lessons learned there.

What advice do you have for other brands
or marketers in the financial services

I think content is everything. I think thatit’s so much more than what it used to be.
From a customer perspective, it’s all about
their customer journey, and it’s importantto provide relevant and valuable pieces of
information during that journey.
BETSEY CHUNGCMO CANADIAN BANKING, TD CANADA TRUST26

ISSUE 3: FINANCIAL SERVICES EDITIONBY LEAH BJORNSON AND DAVID RICHARDSCONTENT MANAGER AND DATA SCIENCE SPECIALIST, PRESSBOARD

It’s a question that brands and publishers have pondered for a long time:
how and when should a brand be integrated into sponsored content?
Thanks to a new study of over 300 pieces of sponsored content, wefinally have the data to answer it.

As it turns out, sponsored content in whichbrand mentions are placed sparingly andstrategically actually perform better thansponsored content devoid of any brandmentions. Many in the industry have often
assumed otherwise: that sponsored content
performs better when the brand isn’t
mentioned at all. However, it appears thata thoughtfully placed brand mention canactually engage readers and encouragethem to read more of the content.
Sponsored articles without any brandmentions performed well (with an average
active reading time of 63.5 seconds and ascroll rate of 78%), but still failed to outpace
content with one brand mention.
That said, two words here are key: sparingly
and strategically. Where and how manytimes the brand is mentioned can have asignificant impact on the effectiveness ofsponsored content, so it’s important to get
it right.
To help advertisers and content creators
produce more impactful content, we’ve
outlined the effect that placement andoccurrence of brand mentions have onreader engagement.

When done well, integrating the brand can
supplement sponsored content with thecompany’s expertise to create something
meaningful and valuable for audiences.
When done poorly, it can result in aFrankenstein-like mix of the brand’s andpublisher’s voices that feels more like a
traditional ad than actual content.

we dug through that data to answer thefollowing questions:

We all know how quickly readers canfigure out which is which. We see it in thecomments section or in the amount of timereaders spend on the page. So, we turned tothe experts (the readers) to see if we could
learn a thing or two from them.

The results finally prove what content
experts’ instincts have been telling them allalong:

Pressboard collects tens of thousands ofdata points every day from the sponsoredcontent created through our platform, mostof which is related to how readers areinteracting with the content. To understandthe impact of brand mentions in that content,

1. How early in a piece of sponsored content
should a brand be mentioned?
2. How many times should a brand be
mentioned in a piece of sponsored content?

If the brand is mentioned too close to thestart of a sponsored article, engagementlevels will be negatively affected. On
average, readers spent 12 seconds longer
reading articles when the brand was
mentioned halfway through the article as
opposed to when the brand was mentioned
in the first 100 words.

The Data
For this analysis, we considered two
factors: placement (where the first brandmention occurs in the sponsored article) andoccurrence (the number of brand mentions
in a sponsored article). We then analysed
their impact on two metrics:• Active Reading Time: How long thereader is actively engaging with thebranded content. Unlike Google’s Timeon Page metric, Pressboard’s Active
Reading Time measure all visitors toa page and analyzes how active andengaged they are.
• Scrolling Behavior: What percentageof the piece of content a user scrolled
through before leaving. Scrolling is a key
indicator of content interest, and better
content will mean that users scroll further
down.
Our sample comprised 331 sponsoredcontent pieces that were published andPlacement: How early in a piece of sponsored content should a brandbe mentioned?
Placement vs. active reading time
Average Active Reading Time (Seconds)

First-of-its-kind data analysis shows that it’s better to mention yourbrand strategically than repeatedly.

The study also highlighted a few insights that
we didn’t expect.

measured through the Pressboard platform by North America’s top brands and publishers. To
ensure the statistics were consistent, we normalized the content to calculate reading time andscrolling behavior as if the length of each article was 750 words. You can read more about thisin our methodology section.

75

68.1s

70
65

63.5s

66.3s

62.8s
56.2s

60
55
50
45

No Mention

1 - 99100 - 299

300 - 599

600 - 750

Placement of First Brand Mention (Words)

Placement’s Effect on Active Reading Time
When the first brand mention occurred later in a sponsored story, readers were likely to spend
more time engaging with the content.
Articles in which the brand was mentioned in the first 100 words saw an average active reading
time of 56.2 seconds. Compare this to articles in which the brand was mentioned after the first
300 words, which saw an average active reading time of 68.1 seconds. That’s a difference of 12
seconds that a reader is spending engaging with (or not engaging with) your content.
This essentially gives us a sweet spot for brand mentions, letting content creators thoughtfully
integrate a brand while also improving the overall performance of the story.
However, there are limits to how late in the article a brand should be mentioned. The results
show that when the first brand mention appeared near the bottom of a sponsored piece, in the
600-750-word range, active reading time was reduced, falling to 66.3 seconds.
Sweet Spot: 300-600-word range

Placement vs. PERCENT SCROLLED
Average Percent of Article Scrolled (%)

How to Effectively Mention a Brand
in Sponsored Content (Study)

When the brand’s name appears multiple
times in a piece of sponsored content,
it negatively affects the amount of timereaders spend engaging with it. When abrand was mentioned only once, readers
spent an average of 69.6 seconds reading
the article. As more brand mentions wereadded, reading time fell dramatically.

85

78.6%

78.1%

80.5%

81.5%

300 - 599

600 - 750

80

72.2%

75
70
65
60

No Mention

1 - 99100 - 299

Placement of First Brand Mention (Words)

Placement’s Effect on Percent Scrolled
Where a brand mention was placed had a slightly less dramatic effect on the percentage of thecontent a user scrolled through. Still, the results are in line with active reading time.
Data shows that if the brand mention happened in the first 100 words of the piece, readers only
scrolled through an average of 72% of the article.

28

ISSUE 3: FINANCIAL SERVICES EDITION

When the first brand mention occurred in the 300-600-word range, readers scrolled through
80.5% of the article. Scrolling behavior continued to improve when the brand mention occurred
late in the article, with readers making their way down an average of 81.5% of the page.
This is interesting because while a late mention negatively affected active reading time, it had
the opposite effect on scrolling behavior. A reader will still make it most of the way down thepage, regardless of where the brand is placed.

As brand mentions increased, thepercentage of the page that readers scrolled
through fell: in articles with two brandmentions, readers scrolled down 76.8% on
average; in articles with three to four brandmentions, the number was 76.4%; articles
with more than five brand mentions saw thelowest scroll rate, of 74%.

Sweet Spot: 300-600-word range
Though there is an evident correlation
between occurrence and percent scrolledfrom examining the data, the relationship is
not statistically significant. With more data, it
is likely that we’d see a strong relationshipdevelop.

Occurrence: How many times should a brand be mentioned in a piece ofsponsored content?

Average Active Reading Time (Seconds)

Occurrence vs. active reading time
75

63.6s

61s

57.3s

60

Does Not Mentioning Your Brand Helpor Hurt You?
55.5s

55
50

0

1

2

3-4

One challenge this study presented was
ensuring that we captured every possible
instance where the sponsoring brand was
mentioned in a piece of sponsored content.
With tens of thousands of data points toanalyze, manually verifying each client
mention would have taken us years toaccomplish!

If the product messaging doesn’t naturally fit within the article itself, it might be better to include
it in a branded footer at the end of the content. Every sponsored article published through ourplatform includes a branded footer that we encourage advertisers to use to include key brandmessaging and a strong call to action.

Branded header presented by
the brand

In reviewing the data, something thatsurprised us was that leaving the brand outof the article entirely doesn’t always result in
more engaging content.

Occurrence’s Effect on Active Reading TimeThe most dramatic result we saw concerns the effect the number of brand mentions had on
active reading time.
When a brand was mentioned only once, readers spent an average of 69.6 seconds reading thearticle. As soon as another mention occurred, that number dropped to 61 seconds, and as morebrand mentions were added, reading time continued to fall. Readers spent an average of 57.3
seconds with articles with three to four brand mentions, and 55.5 seconds with articles with fiveor more.
This is consistent with most marketers’ expectations. If a reader feels that the focus of the article
is more on your brand than on the story you’re telling, they’re less likely to engage with it.

occurrence vs. PERCENT SCROLLED
85

80%
77.9%

76.8%

76.4%

74.1%

75
70
65
60
0

1

Branded content that mentioned the brand in
the 300-750-word range had a higher active
reading time than content that didn’t mention
the brand. Readers also scrolled further
down the page when the brand appeared
after the first 100 words than they did whenno brand was mentioned.

The amount of time readers spend engaging
with branded content is obviously impacted
by the length of the content. To makesure that stories of different lengths wereanalyzed equally in the study, we useda normalization method that divided theaverage time spent on page by the numberof words in the article and then multiplied by
750. That calculation computes the averagetime of engagement for every piece ofsponsored content as if the length was 750
words. We also limited the analysis to stories
between 250-1000 words in length.

Occurrence:
Sponsored articles without any brandmentions performed well (with an average
active reading time of 63.6 seconds and ascroll rate of 77.9%), but still failed to outpace
content with one brand mention.

2

3-4

5 - 15

Number of Brand Mention (Number)

Key Takeaways
The findings related to both active reading
time and percent scrolled support theconclusion that brands should be mentioned
sparingly and strategically in branded
content. With that in mind, the study
produced important insights that should help
guide your content creation efforts:

Occurrence’s Effect on Percent Scrolled

Q. How early in a piece of sponsoredcontent should a brand be mentioned?

In content where the brand mention occurred only once, readers made it an average of 80% of
the way through the article.

A. The best place to first mention the brandTo speed up the process, we used a natural
language processing system to identify
named entities within the text and countany entities that were similar to the brand’sname. The similarities between these namedentities and the brand names was calculatedusing Jaro-Winkler similarity measurement.
All entities that had a similarity above aprespecified cutoff (0.7) were consideredbrand mentions. For example, phrases like“TD Investments” or “TD Line of Credit” werecounted as a mention of the brand TD.

Length of Articles

This is a good lesson to marketers andcontent creators that you don’t have to hideor bury the brand when creating sponsoredcontent. By being thoughtful about where andhow it’s being mentioned, you can actually
drive curiosity with readers and encouragethem to engage more with your content.

Sweet Spot: 1 brand mention

Defining a Brand Mention

We excluded articles from the analysis
where the sponsored content was not about
the brand directly. For example, articles
sponsored by tourism boards, which often
promote businesses and events in theregion, were not included in the study.

5 - 15

Number of Brand Mention (Number)

Average Percent of Article Scrolled (%)

That said, a brand shouldn’t wait until the very end of the article to surprise the audience with
their integration. Doing so may cause readers to exit the article due to perception of having
been tricked into reading to the end of a story that turns out to be branded.

Placement:

45

80

Methodology Note

Sweet Spot: 1 brand mention

69.6s

70
65

is part-way through the article, in the 300-600-word range. By introducing the brand after the
introduction, it enables the brand to add value or insights in a supportive role, as opposed tobeing positioned as the focus of the piece, which may not be as interesting for readers.

Statistical Significance:
Branded footer and footer image
accompanied each story

Q. How many times should a brand be mentioned in a piece of sponsored content?
A. When it comes to deciding how many times your brand should be mentioned in the article,
the rule is simple: less is more. Mentioning your brand doesn’t penalize you – in fact, the datasuggests that it’s better to introduce your brand than to avoid including it at all. But advertisers
and their content partners should do so sparingly, as with each additional mention, readers lose
interest and disengage.

Statistical analysis was run using SciPy and
NumPy. The relationships were tested usinga One-Way ANOVA test. The F-statistics
calculated were under the null hypothesisthat the group means are equal. The
alternative hypothesis was that at least one
group is not equal.

30

ISSUE 3: FINANCIAL SERVICES EDITION

This Media Company Went Nude in
the Name of Branded Content
The cheeky move earned their client 2,500 new followers.
BY LEAH BJORNSONCONTENT MANAGER, PRESSBOARD

On November 27th, the 180,000 Instagram followers of Daily Hive
Vancouver noticed something strange. The massively popular
Instagram account for the local media publisher had been wiped clearof all content.

Fans reacted immediately. Calls and emails
flooded in. Many worried that the accounthad been hacked or that the popular feed,
known for its stunning Vancouver-centric
lifestyle photography, had been wiped for
good.

Total Instagram Blackout
A few hours after the initial activation,
the motive was revealed. Six new posts
appeared announcing a partnership between
Daily Hive Vancouver and Nude Vodka Soda.
To celebrate the launch of their most recent
flavour, Nude was hosting a contest with apretty luxurious prize: an all-expenses-paid
trip to Whistler for four, including limo, hotel,
dinner, spa trip and, naturally, a solid supplyof Nude soda. Entrants merely had to tag thethree friends they’d want to travel with.

Call me a content geek (I won’t beoffended!), but I found a total Instagram
blackout even more interesting than theprospect of a weekend away at BC’s most
famous slopes.
Taking advantage of Instagram’s newarchive feature, Daily Hive was able totemporarily hide all of their existing content
to showcase their sponsored partnershipand contest with Nude. Archiving images
is an easily reversible way to totally disrupt
your audience’s visual routine while scrollingthrough the feed. By allowing a brand thechance to be the only content visible on adigital platform, the publisher was able toentice consumers in a more focused way. It’sa bold statement, and one that certainly got
a lot of attention.

I immediately reached out to the creatives
behind the blackout to learn more about
what inspired the partnership, and how
the chips all fell after Daily Hive’s content
returned to its regular programming.
Speaking to Alex Harvey, co-founder andmanaging director of Colony Digital, thein-house creative division of Daily Hive, I
got a glimpse into how they pulled off theactivation.
Nude Vodka Soda had approached the teamat Colony for their marketing needs, knowing
they wanted to do something that hadn’t
been done before. They got what they
hoped for with an Instagram blackout. “It wasalmost a no-brainer in terms of marketingand the incredible impact we knew this kindof activation could have, in how it could
disrupt the status quo of advertising,” said
Harvey.

“In an agile space such as
digital, it could be seen
as pretty surprising thatsomething as simple asdisrupting a social media
profile could cause so muchstress and concern in themarket. But it also revealed
the attention and degree ofconnection followers havewith Daily Hive through social
media – and the responsibility
we took on to deliver
something great that provided
their fans with real value.
Behind the Partnership
A young Vancouver-based startup, Nude
launched this year and set a new standard
within the alcohol industry: an entirely sugar
and sweetener-free alcoholic beveragewith only 100 calories per can. Using triple
distilled vodka, sparkling water and allnatural fruit extracts, Nude positions itself asa healthier, more natural product.
Daily Hive Vancouver’s audience is, like themajority of young Vancouverites, focused onhealthy living by day, and dining and excitingnightlife when the sun goes down. Theirsimilar audiences made Nude and Daily Hivea perfect pair; this is incredibly importantwhen a brand selects a media publisher
for sponsored content, but even more sowith something as significant as a total
advertising blackout.
“We had to ensure that Daily Hive’s own
brand was honoured. They take extreme
care in serving their social media followers
with valuable content,” said Harvey. “In theend, we delivered something that worked for
not just Nude Soda, but also for Daily Hive’s
audience. It was entertaining, interesting– and the social media engagement that
resulted was proof of that in both cases.”
With a 2.5% engagement rate, the response
was benchmark-blowing compared totypical sponsored Instagram posts. The
activation was commented on 5,704 times
and garnered 8,456 likes. At the end of thecampaign, Nude’s Instagram account hadearned 2,500 new followers.
Nude Vodka had a vision of where theywanted to be, and we at Colony Digital
helped accelerate the process, making Nude
Vodka Soda number one in the Canadiancooler category, said Harvey.

What’s Next?
Sponsored content pushes your brand’s
story in front of an existing audience in a

relevant, engaging way. A social media
blackout pushes the limits of what we
typically consider sponsored content, but it
certainly tells a story.

“

The idea inspired us toreframe how we think about
our Instagram advertising
placements, and in this way,show that we stand behind thebrands we help promote on
the platform.
As for future Instagram partnerships with
Daily Hive or other publishers, Harvey
is quick to note that in order for thesecampaigns to be impactful, they have to be
rare. “Think of it as a lightning strike in the
middle of the night – much more effective
and enticing than a redundant strobe light.”

32

ISSUE 3: FINANCIAL SERVICES EDITIONCASE STUDYA Credit Card
Brand Uses
Sponsored
Content toSpeak to Travel
Fans

CAMPAIGN HIGHLIGHTS

Content overdeliveredon its goal byalmost 160%!

Generated over
3.2K social media
engagements!

Average reader
consumed 63% of
the content.
All stories were presented by theSouthwest Rapid Rewards® Credit
Card from Chase

The Challenge
Chase needed a way to promote theirSouthwest Airlines Rapid Rewards card online.
They knew that the card’s primary audience
was travel enthusiasts and that they wanted
to reach them through content. The problem?
Chase is a major financial services company,
and is not recognized by audiences as an
authority in travel.

our solution
Chase used the Pressboard platform to partnerwith popular lifestyle publisher, Mashable, andplace a piece of sponsored content on their site
about affordable travel. The story on Mashable
was designed to build excitement and awarenessaround the card by tapping into readers’ interestin summer travel.

How to achieve your summer
travel goals without breaking
the bank
Jun 15, 2017

We all have responsibilities that need tobe accounted for when we're thinking ofplanning a summer trip. Whether it's yourrent, your bills, or some other expense thatis making you hesitate to book your dreamvacation, we can all relate to that travel
FOMO.
Branded footer and footer image
accompanied each story

34

ISSUE 3: FINANCIAL SERVICES EDITION

I think the best stories always end up being
about the people rather than the event,which is to say character-driven.
STEPHEN KING36

ISSUE 3: FINANCIAL SERVICES EDITION

2017 Branded
Content
Benchmarks
Report(Infographic)
This newly updated reporthighlights the most important
branded content benchmarks
for marketers.
BY SHAWN RAGELL
MARKETING MANAGER, PRESSBOARD

At Pressboard, we believethat content is the mostpowerful way for brands tocommunicate with consumers.
That’s why we built a platformthat makes it easy for brands
to collaborate with hundreds of
media publishers to create andmeasure branded content —instead of ads.
To date, we’ve worked with over 400 brands
and digital publishers across North America
to help create branded articles and videos
that have been consumed by millions
of people. This means we’re constantly
receiving an incredible amount of data thatgives us exclusive insight into how branded
content actually performs. And we want toshare it with you!
Since releasing our first Branded Content
Benchmarks Report last year, we’ve received
messages from marketers and media
companies all over the world who havefound it helpful for understanding what
metrics they should be using to evaluate
branded content campaigns. Using data
pulled from over 1,300 pieces of sponsoredcontent created by brands and publishers
through Pressboard’s platform, we’ve
compiled an updated 2017 Branded Content
Benchmarks Report that details how branded
content performed in 2017. The report aims
to help marketers go beyond impressions
and clicks to better understand the metrics
and benchmarks they should be using tomeasure branded content.
This infographic breaks down a few of the
key insights we found:

Reflecting on all the data collected andanalyzed in this report, it’s clear thatbranded content is an increasingly powerfuland essential part of the media mix foradvertisers of all sizes and across allindustries. By releasing this data publicly,
our hope is to help the entire industry growglobally, and inspire advertisers and media
publishers to continually work towards
crafting better content together.

38

ISSUE 3: FINANCIAL SERVICES EDITION

Download Your Free Media buyer’s
guide to branded content

40

About Pressboard
The #1 Platform For Buying Sponsored Content
Drive brand awareness and acquisition by placing
your brand’s content on the world’s most influential media properties.

Over 50 pages of free advice on branded content from the world’s leading
media buyers, brands, and publishers! From ideation to execution, learn how
to create successful branded content partnerships.
Download your copy at
get.pressboardmedia.com/media-buyers-guide-branded-content

Reach New Audiences in a
Brand-Safe Environment
Your brand has a story to tell. Pressboard’sMarketplace is packed with influential andtrusted media publishers that are ready to shareit with their audiences.

The Guaranteed Way to Raise
Brand AwarenessTake the guesswork out of PR. Simply select apublisher you want to work with and upload yourbrand’s content. All content is published natively
and is clearly labeled as being presented byyour brand.

DeviceLocationsTraffic Sources

In-Depth Analytics and Reporting
Pressboard’s dashboard tracks who’s viewing yourcontent and measures exactly how engaged they
are across a wide range of metrics. Optimize yourbrand’s content in real time and easily prove ROI.

Total Reads/Average Reading Time

Reads: 895

Ready to tell your brand’s story? Contact us at info@pressboardmedia.com
pressboardmedia.com | Vancouver | Toronto | New York