I had the pleasure of being at the ABM/FIPP Global Media Conference for the past few days in New York City. One of the panels was on the growth of custom media solutions, featuring Jane Ottenberg (The Magazine Group), Kirk Cheyfitz (Story Worldwide) and Michael Hofelich (Forum Corporate Publishing/Germany).

There were a lot of takeaways, but the key finding from the panel was that the future of marketing is a combination of journalism and marketing.

Kirk Cheyfitz's presentation hit on key points for marketers...

In the advertising age, 2% conversion on any ad is considered a success.  That model is not only deteriorating, it's simply not enough.  Our goal must be 100% engagement in the brand.

To do this, marketers must learn the best practices of journalism and execute that through their marketing programs. Journalism is the key word here.  This means hiring the best journalists in your industry to "tell the story."

Marketers today have two choices when communicating to customers - either give them relevant, compelling information or give them a good time.  Without either one, engagement is impossible.

Ups_compass Kirk used an example from the UPS custom magazine/microsite Compass. Before Story took on the Compass project, they were sending up to four different magazines/newsletters to customers, each of which were disjointed, and were not driven by "true" journalistic principles.

Over the past few years those four communication vehicles transformed into Compass, a quarterly magazine to UPS business customers that include nine different versions specific to each customer segment. Story hired freelance journalists from the leading business publications in North America to help tell the UPS customer story.

The results: Over 90% actively read and benefit from the UPS case studies. But more importantly, 35% have been prompted to try a specific UPS product or service after reading the magazine.  Now that's engagement.

They key: invest in your own content.  Stop renting media...own the media, be the media.

This is not just a trend, this IS the future of marketing. Most business and consumer brands haven't realized this yet. We are still in the first inning of this transformation.  Those that step to the plate now will be ahead of the game.