How do brands cut through the noise and genuinely connect with their customers? With the increasing amount of content produced each day, the answer to standing out lies in a strategic shift from being a salesperson to becoming a storyteller. This is the heart of the brand journalism approach, where companies act as their own newsroom, creating compelling content that informs, engages, and builds trust with their target market.
Brand journalism goes beyond traditional marketing, shifting the focus from product-centric messaging to authentic, valuable narratives around topics that a brand's customers love. It's about finding and telling stories that matter to your audience, turning your brand into a trusted source of information and a recognised voice in your industry. This shift is reshaping public relations and content marketing, proving that what you stand for—and the stories you tell—can be just as impactful as what you sell.
Want to learn how a journalistic mindset can transform your communications and help you forge deeper connections with your audience? Let's dive in.
What is Brand Journalism?
Instead of a traditional sales pitch, brand journalism is a strategic approach that utilises journalistic principles, such as objective storytelling, fact-checking, and a focus on what’s genuinely interesting, to create valuable content for an audience – building trust and connection.
It’s about a company becoming its own media outlet, publishing content that informs and builds trust. The goal isn't to sell a product directly, but to establish the brand as a credible, trusted voice in its industry. By sharing authentic stories that resonate, brands can cultivate a loyal community centred around their values and expertise.
Brands adopt a newsroom mindset – reporting on topics their target audience cares about. By doing so, they position themselves as credible voices within their industry, earning trust and attention whilst entertaining their target market and increasing brand alignment in their niche.
From long-form articles to short-form videos, brand journalists choose formats that suit the message, the platform and the people you want to reach, helping your brand stay visible, relevant and front of mind. Importantly, the focus is on compelling storytelling: connecting with people with content that resonates.
Many brands are now thinking like editors, not just marketers. They’re hiring good brand journalists to write articles, curate content, and bring a level of credibility and structure to create content that educates and inspires their audience to engage.
Where to Publish Brand Stories
Where stories are published is just as important as how they’re told. No longer reliant on traditional media outlets for publicity, companies now have a multitude of ‘owned media’ platforms, platforms that they control where they can publish material.
Choosing the right distribution channels – especially those with strong content-sharing potential – can help you attract new audiences and build brand awareness. You might consider some of the following:
- A company website or blog often acts as the central hub or shop window, much like a newspaper’s front page. It’s where in-depth features, interviews, commentary and timely updates can sit – all crafted to reflect your voice and values.
- Social media functions like ‘distribution’ in a modern newsroom: short headlines, teasers and excerpts are designed to draw attention and drive traffic back to the source. Utilising various social media channels can help amplify the story – but it’s essential to select the most suitable platforms for your target audience.
- Podcasts, newsletters, and even print formats, such as brand magazines, offer space for more in-depth and detailed narratives – the kind that help establish authority over time.
How Brand Journalism fits into your Communications Strategy
Brand Journalism and Content Marketing
You’d be forgiven for thinking that brand journalism and content marketing are virtually the same thing, as there are a number of similarities, but they serve distinct roles within a communications strategy.
The key difference is their intent:
- Brand journalism aims to build brand awareness, credibility, engagement, and trust through storytelling, with a focus on establishing an emotional connection with the target audience. It’s aim isn’t to directly move a person through the customer journey towards a sale. Instead, it aims to align the brand within a particular niche or demographic and build brand visibility with a particular target audience. It’s far more of a relational engagement than it is a sales one, but as any good marketer knows, people buy from brands they love and stay loyal.
- Content marketing, on the other hand, often focuses on a transactional, sales-oriented approach, aiming to drive specific consumer actions, such as making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter. Providing guides that position the brand as a solution to a particular problem is a common technique in content marketing. Though building awareness and trust is an important part of the customer journey, each touchpoint has a targeted agenda, and often the person consuming the content feels that.
While brand journalism relies heavily on storytelling techniques borrowed from general journalism, a content communications strategy tends to use content forms such as blog posts, social media updates and email campaigns.
When you combine brand journalism with content marketing, you deliver a range of high-quality content that gently guides your audience toward purchasing while enhancing your brand’s reputation and perception.
Traditional PR and Brand Journalism
Traditional PR and brand journalism both have a place in a communications strategy, each bringing something different to the table:
- Traditional PR focuses on earned media, aiming to secure your brand's feature in external publications, such as news outlets. This approach leverages third-party validation to amplify your message and attract new audiences – but doesn’t offer you the same level of control over the content produced.
- Brand journalism, on the other hand, leans on owned media to share content. This method enables you to control your narrative, establishing a direct line of communication with your audience.
A combined approach using both earned and owned media is key to a successful marketing or comms strategy. Traditional PR can unlock new opportunities and audiences, while brand journalism strengthens the connection with your existing audience.
Creating Brand Journalism Content
Creating effective brand journalism content requires a deep understanding of the target audience and the industry in which you operate. Content writers need to be skilled at crafting compelling stories and providing valuable information, rather than simply promoting a product or service. The content should be high-quality, engaging and relevant to the audience, and should be optimised for search engines to improve visibility.
You can use a variety of formats, including articles, videos and podcasts, to share your brand’s story and provide timely and reliable content to your audience.
Here are a few key tips and ideas to help get you started:
- Identify the core message and values that define your brand.
- Research your audience to understand their interests, pain points, and needs, so you can offer solutions or insights that address them.
- Prioritise building a content plan rooted in these insights.
- Ensure your content is up-to-date, accurate and fact-checked, and relies on credible, verifiable sources.
- Stick to language that is fact-based and objective.
- Tell stories that connect with your audience on both an emotional and intellectual level.
- Tailor your content carefully for each platform.
- Encourage interaction and feedback from your audience.
- Ensure content is consistent and regular to build a loyal following.
- Consider collaborating with other brands or figures to expand your reach.
Benefits of Embracing Brand Journalism
Brand journalism provides a strategic approach for companies to improve their credibility, increase visibility, and build customer loyalty.
Building Trust and Authority
By adopting journalistic principles such as accuracy, relevance, storytelling, engagement and timeliness, brands can move beyond promotional messaging and position themselves as trusted sources of information, insight and entertainment. If you want your target market to love your brand, then providing value you to them without directly selling is the best way to go about it.
When audiences repeatedly encounter well-crafted articles and thoughtful commentary, they begin to associate those qualities with the brand itself. But fact-checking is crucial to ensure the accuracy and credibility of your content.
Enhancing Brand Visibility
High-quality stories and content, including industry news, are more likely to be shared, linked to and featured, which leads to increased visibility across search, AI mentions and social platforms. This is fundamental to how digital PR works but brand journalism takes it a step further, relying not just on earned media but a higher proportion of owned media too.
By targeting specific industries or interest groups you increase engagement with niche audiences on platforms they visit often. A consistent tone and style across all content reinforces your brand identity, making it easier for audiences to recognise and engage with it. This recognisability supports broader brand awareness and recall.
Building Customer Loyalty
When readers feel informed, understood or supported by a brand’s content, they’re more likely to return — and to trust the brand behind it.
Stories that contain authentic narratives reflecting brand values go a long way to enhancing connections with your target audience. Stories that feature customer perspectives or employee voices are particularly good at creating a sense of connection beyond the product.
Brands that regularly publish thoughtful, relevant and reliable content stay present in the minds of their audience. Over time, this approach helps turn casual readers into loyal customers; and loyal customers into brand advocates.
Examples of Brand Journalism: Case Studies
McDonald's – or, to be more precise, its then Chief Marketing Officer Larry Light, is often cited as one of the early pioneers of brand journalism. In the early 2000s, the fast food chain was in decline. Light took a different approach and decided to move away from distilling the brand into a single message; instead, he shifted towards creating messages across various channels and audiences. Light's philosophy was that a brand, like a person, is a complex story, and marketing should be about creating a "dynamic, creative chronicle" rather than simply repeating a single message.
While the term has evolved and is now more closely associated with a company acting as its own newsroom and publishing content directly, its origins lie in Light's strategic shift at McDonald's. His "I'm Lovin' It" campaign was the most visible manifestation of this new philosophy, showcasing how a brand could have a singular attitude while being expressed in countless ways across different channels and to different audiences. Ad Age even recognised his concept of "brand journalism" as one of the most realistic descriptions of modern marketing.
Since then, several brands have successfully embraced brand journalism, too:
More examples
- Red Bull now has its own media company, which specialises in sport, lifestyle, music and games. It encompasses everything from an online TV channel and a YouTube channel to several magazines, including the lifestyle title The Red Bulletin. Its documentaries, articles and live coverage all reinforce a brand identity closely associated with extreme sports, adventuring and pushing boundaries.
- Nike has its own digital newsroom, offering exclusive content and insights, such as athlete interviews.
- Marriott’s online publication, Marriott Bonvoy Traveller, aims to ‘tell stories about the power of travel’. It provides value for travellers by offering recommendations for art, neighbourhoods, and food, as well as travel guides.
- Ben & Jerry’s uses its website and social media platforms to discuss human rights, social justice, and sustainability, creating a narrative that resonates with its audience and reflects its brand values.
Measuring the Impact of Brand Journalism
Tracking the performance of brand journalism gives you a clearer picture of what resonates with your audience — and where to improve. Understanding which stories are being read, shared or ignored can help you refine your strategy and ensure your efforts deliver the best possible results.
Visibility can be measured. Tools such as Google Analytics can show how visitors interact with your content: which pages they read, how long they stay, and where they go next. Share of Voice metrics can benchmark how visible your brand is compared to competitors. Social media platforms also offer engagement data such as shares, comments and reach – all indicators of how well your stories are landing with people.
Beyond the numbers, it’s also worth collecting qualitative feedback through surveys, comment sections or direct conversations with focus groups – to understand how your content is perceived. Doing so helps identify whether you’re connecting and positioning your brand effectively.
Over time, brand journalism can positively impact key business metrics, including website traffic, search performance, lead quality, and customer retention. Tracking this impact will enable you to make smarter, more informed marketing decisions.
Getting Started with Brand Journalism
PR professionals are experts in telling meaningful stories that inform, engage, and reflect the values of your brand. They can leverage various platforms and strategies to help you build and maintain effective communication with your audience and develop a robust PR strategy.
This is where experience matters. At We Do Stories, we help brands apply newsroom thinking to their communications. We work closely with clients to uncover relevant stories, structure them with editorial clarity, and publish them in the most suitable formats across the appropriate channels – leading to increased visibility and engagement.
Our background in journalism means we approach content with integrity, consistency and purpose – whether we’re writing a good story, managing a content hub, or developing a long-term brand narrative.
If you’re looking to build credibility, grow visibility, and publish content your audience actually wants to read, brand journalism is a smart place to start — and we’re here to help you make it work.
Summary
Brand journalism is a powerful and practical way to build trust in your brand, establish your authority, enhance your profile, and connect with people on a deeper, more personal level. Its reliance on powerful stories, told using journalistic techniques, means that it offers audiences something of genuine value instead of just trying to sell them things.
Strong and effective brand journalism can also impact your bottom line. It supports your long-term marketing goals, strengthens customer loyalty, reaches new audiences and helps you stand out from the crowd.
To explore how we can help you boost your marketing strategy by taking a brand journalism approach, contact our team today.