<aside> ⌛ Estimated student time on platform: 60 minutes (+ blending)
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<aside> 🗣 Lesson host: Emily Withrow, Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications
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<aside> 1️⃣ Difficulty level: 4.5 (for high school and higher education)
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<aside> ✔️ Assessments: 6 total ****(3 auto-graded and 3 teacher-evaluable)
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<aside> 🗒️ Standards: This lesson has Common Core, ISTE, C3 and state-specific alignments. Find your standards in the Checkology alignments dropdown menu to learn more.
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Learning objectives:
Essential questions:
Background:
Most people know that businesses, political candidates, government agencies and other organizations adopt a wide variety of approaches to marketing their products, services and social or political goals to the public. Indeed, marketing is an extremely robust and dynamic part of the economy — and of today’s information landscape.
In recent years, the rise of the internet and the development of digital media have given advertisers previously unimagined options for reaching consumers with marketing messages. This has resulted in two big hits on news organizations, particularly newspapers — the decline of advertising sales in their print editions and the loss of subscriptions (since many outlets made their news available online at no charge). As a result, news organizations have experienced cutbacks and mergers — even as they attempt to develop new sources of revenue, such as new kinds of advertisements that break from the conventions and procedures of the pre-internet age.
One of the most significant of these new kinds of ads is frequently referred to as “branded content” or “content marketing” — terms that are used in different ways in different contexts to refer to a style of marketing that attempts to reach a specific audience by delivering information of some genuine value to them. Understanding this sector of today’s information ecosystem is important, but it can be extremely difficult.
The primary cause of this difficulty is that branded content is typically designed not to feel or look like a traditional ad. This, of course, is nothing new. Because most consumers approach information they can easily identify as an advertisement differently (generally with more caution and skepticism) than they do other information, marketers have long sought ways to distribute marketing messages and brand mentions in more subtle, less transparent ways; such was the strategy behind such marketing techniques as product placement, influencer marketing, publicity hoaxes and guerrilla marketing. And though some examples of branded content are somewhat transparent about the fact that the information is paid for and placed by a third party, others are designed to be extremely difficult, or even impossible, for people to detect.
The wide variety of names used to refer to this kind of advertising — “sponsored content,” “native advertising,” “advertorial,” “brand experiences,” “paid content,” “brand journalism” and “brand storytelling” — can also make identifying this type of ad challenging. The entities that create these ads also go by a variety of names, such as “brand studio,” “content initiative,” “content partnership” and “content agency.”
These kinds of ads present particular challenges for news organizations, most of which have policies designed to separate the business operations (including the sale and placement of ads) from the editorial operations (the newsroom). Typically, these two divisions have separate staffs, occupy different parts of a building or office, and may even use different entrances or elevators. This “firewall,” as it is often called, has historically extended into the news itself, through policies aimed at making sure that readers, viewers and listeners can tell the difference between pieces of journalism and the ads that help support the news outlet’s work. As more advertisers start to favor branded content instead of traditional ads, however, the firewall has come under pressure.
This lesson explores the rise of branded content, helps students learn to identify it, helps them understand the pressure on news organizations and other media companies to allow these types of ads, and calls on them to reflect on the ethical, journalistic and business considerations introduced by this type of marketing. It also asks students to consider the ways in which some pieces of branded content might be a significant improvement over more traditional ads.
NOTE: Like the “Understanding Bias” lesson, this lesson has the potential to bring to the surface your students’ cynicism about both advertising and news organizations — the assumption that each systematically operates in ways that intentionally subvert the public good. We recommend that you explore these views by introducing questions and examples designed to help guide students to positions that are more accurate, nuanced and fair. Be aware that some of the examples in this lesson contain staged (faked) images and video about disturbing subjects, so be sure to review them before your students begin the lesson.
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