Tag Archives: Marketing and Advertising

The dilemma of paid content

In this world nearly everything has a price tag. And in the past few years, paid editorial has become an attractive commodity to advertisers. This is obviously a great extra sales tool for ad managers, but I’m interested to know if a moral dilemma kicks in? I recently took a great sales call with a company that are willing to start a partnership with my brand. I am quietly confident that ads and sponsorship will be booked, alongside editorial. However they also suggested a great idea for a sponsored round table. Now the sales machine in me would tend to go “Great, the costs for venue, branding, promotions would be..” But I know the value of editorial. I know that if this is published as a paid for feature, not as many people will read this. So I told them that’s what I thought. Sometimes it not all about the sale, up-selling, upgrading, adding a price tag to everything because that’s what your job description says. A competitor of mine is fast becoming notorious for taking the booking, and not following up with any of the deliverables. No after-care, customer service or on-going support to the client. And for that reason they’ve lost business from one of the world’s most valuable companies to me.