Sometimes content marketing goes wrong. Badly.

There's a scandal this month in the content marketing world. 

That's an unusual occurrence.  In its most common forms, content marketing is a bit innocuous.  But sometimes content marketing goes wrong. Badly. And when content marketing does go wrong, it's almost always because a company has decided its content should be more like journalism, but not actually be journalism. 

The embarrassing situation that Sequoia Capital found itself in this month perfectly illustrates this. As Bloomberg News reports, Sequoia is one of a number of venture-capital bigwigs that has invested heavily in long-form content, high-end documentary films and top-tier content creators in an effort to bolster their brand reputations. There's nothing wrong with that, of course. Brand boosting is one of the things content marketing does. 

The problem for Sequoia is that it ran a fawning piece in September about Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of crypto exchange FTX. And in November, FTX collapsed. 

It didn't take long for people to start mocking Sequoia's article. And it didn't take long for Sequoia to panic. Rather than retracting the story publicly, or adding an editor's note, or commissioning a follow-up story or doing any of the things a journalism outfit might do after something like this, Sequoia at first just yanked the story from its website without explanation. That nothing-to-see here reaction by Sequoia seems to have prompted the Bloomberg article. And the Bloomberg article itself seems to have later prompted Sequoia to publish a sort-of, kind-of Editor's Note confirming the story had been pulled.

If you're a longtime reader of mine, you know I've long held hope that content marketing would grow to be more journalistic. (Here's a piece I wrote about exactly this nearly 10 years ago.) I believe that content marketing can do more than move people through a sales funnel, extend brand reach, etc. But if that is ever to happen, the companies that hire content marketers, writers, filmmakers and the rest will need to develop thicker skin. The problem, as I put it in an interview with Jon Bethune 11 years ago, is that "These companies don’t have the stomach for news and the confrontations it can promote. They panic when someone complains. They’re afraid of controversy." 

And as any journalist can tell you, complaints and controversy are nothing to panic about. They are the air we breathe.

Beauty is in the eye of the (AI) beholder

LifeScore Labs is a new client of mine. They use artificial intelligence to improve insurance scoring. They've relaunched their website (LifeScoreLabs.com) with copy written by yours truly.

So, as I tend to do whenever I get the chance to mention artificial intelligence, I want to point out that I won the world's first online beauty contest judged by artificial intelligence back in 2016.

And as I remind my teenage daughter constantly, "No. I will never get tired of bragging about it."

I'm Just Lucky Like That

One of the great mysteries of my career has been that otherwise bright and talented folks in B2B publishing express an interest in working with me.
Even more mysterious is that some people who know me well, and have known me for years, express that interest too.
I chalk it up to combination of factors:
a) good luck. I have an enormous amount of it. Always have. I hope I always will.
b) dumb luck. Over the years I've had an extraordinary number of ideas about how to do things in B2B media. The sheer volume of those ideas dictated that some small number of them would turn out to be good ideas.
c) blind luck. I have a remarkable tendency to show up at parties, sporting events, restaurants, etc. and just happen to run into B2B executives and entrepreneurs just as they happen to be looking around for a consultant or adviser.
All of which explains how I found myself a few months ago at a small gathering in an apartment overlooking the Brooklyn Bridge chatting about B2B journalism with a gentleman from Switzerland I worked with a few years ago. It also explains how that man wound up bringing me aboard his latest publishing venture.

A new opportunity

So now I'm Content Adviser to Daily Fintech, a remarkable publication that covers that fast-changing world of financial technology. You can read more about my appointment, and sign up for our fintech newsletter, by visiting the site.
What's most interesting to me about this role is that the gentleman from Switzerland I mentioned earlier -- Bernard Lunn -- has a long history of finding varied and interesting ways to monetize B2B editorial.
That fits well with one of the goals I set  at the start of this year to "expand my B2B consulting business by adding clients who are willing to consider new approaches to content and new methods of building revenue." Because as I said then, "The content revolution may be over. But I'm convinced there are still some revolutionary breakthroughs available for companies bold enough to try."

Off to a lucky start

Fintech today is often a wild and scandalous place. Whereas the first stage of the financial-technology revolution yielded some truly wonderful publications like PYMNTS and The Financial Brand, the recent history of Fintech news is somewhat less professional.
I think that creates an opportunity for a brand that won't shy away from the more complex and controversial subjects in Fintech (Blockchain, cyrpto currencies, etc.) and is able to adhere to the nobler aspects of B2B journalism.
The trick, of course, is for Daily Fintech to separate itself from its numerous, less-than-ethical rivals.
Normally, that would be a time-consuming and difficult task.
But here's the thing. Just a few hours after Daily Fintech announced I was joining the company as an adviser, Breaker magazine published an expose of how some of our rivals in the crypto-fintech space are engaged in unethical forms of content marketing.
I didn't have anything to do with the article.
I'm just lucky like that.