The content marketing report card Coke, Uber and 12 other brands never asked for

One of the most common failings of journalism -- and I can say this, because I am one -- is that we often cover the beginnings of a story but fail to follow up afterwards to see what happened.

We'll show up the press conference and relay what's said at the podium, for instance, but neglect to check back and see that a politician delivered on their promises. We'll report on the opening of a new business but completely overlook the fact it quietly shuts down a year later. It's no different with the evolution of content marketing. In fact, it may be worse.

A few years ago, for instance, there were many publications, including major newspapers and magazines, who were anxiously looking at the rise of content marketing programs that tried to take a more editorial approach to their work. In other words, they were creating their own publications that looked a lot like the ones that were already covering them.

Outside of marketing and ad industry, this idea was greeted with skepticism, if not alarm. "Brace yourself for the corporate journalism wave," Quartz warned. The Financial Times was even more dire as it described "the invasion of corporate news." Some traditional media outlets seemed threatened. Others dismissed the idea that brands could create their own editorial-style content with any real integrity, assuming profit would be put before the truth.

You don't see a lot of those stories in the mainstream press anymore, probably because it's no longer news that a brand might launch its own magazine (online or even print), podcast, video channel or other form of media.

Within the marketing and ad industry, there is still some who see such content as PR by another name (usually by people who don't realize that PR is about generating earned media from traditional publications) or those who see it as simply an extension of paid media (ie, another form of ad, even if it never appears as native content on someone else's site).

New owned media projects and programs sometimes get profiled, or are celebrated in content marketing awards programs, but they are rarely studied in detail. Conference speakers don't look beyond the common tactics they employ to see how well they actually serve their intended audience -- by, you know, actually consuming it like that audience.

This was the inspiration for a podcast I launched last Fall, which I've called The Owned Media Observer, and which recently wrapped up its Winter season. So far I've looked at 14 different brands, all of whom have either hired editors and those with journalistic skills, or who have trained their marketing teams to develop such skills.

My podcast is aimed at three audiences:

• The general population who want to understand all these new sources of information popping up everywhere around them
• Journalists who want to size up their new "competition"
• Content marketers who want to do better work

Not every brand is going to (or should) launch an owned media property, of course, but as someone who helps brands with editorial strategies via my content marketing practice, this seemed like a good time to reflect on what I've noticed before Season 3 launches this Spring:

Editorial Is An Algorithm For Authenticity

Like many people in the marketing sector, I've sat through countless events where brands talked about the importance of being authentic and genuine, and their efforts to basically shout it from the rooftops. As a consumer, of course, when I heard this I tended to either doubt them, or just tuned out.

Brands want authenticity because it shows their customers trust them, but it's hard to do that with ads. Even if the ad doesn't focus on the brand's products directly and speak to some social issue, it's still an ad, and usually offers no value other than the message that the issue is important and that the brand cares.

Some of the best owned media I've studied proves the old adage "show, don't tell" applies well in terms of brand authenticity. What better way for a company like Dollar Shave Club to show it understand the needs of modern men than by publishing Mel Magazine, in which its logo is practically nowhere to be seen?

What could be more authentic than Wealthsimple's 'The Money Diaries,' which almost never mention its robo-advisory services but instead get real -- incredibly real -- about personal finance by directly interviewing the likes of Margaret Atwood and Kim Kardashian?

Imagine the degree to which a venture capital firm like First Round builds trust with entrepreneurs by telling stories of building and scaling startups featuring some of Silicon Valley's most successful people on the First Round Review?

Brands should stop telling everyone they're authentic and prove it by telling stories about other people.

Marketers Have An Editorial Advantage That Publishers Have Mostly Lost

I still remember a rather terrifying exercise many years ago when the publisher I was working for paired me with a consultant to go through a "cost-per-page" analysis.

This was basically a way to figure out, based on headcount, freelance costs and other expenses, what it took to put together each page in a print magazine. Math is never fun for journalists, but in this case the totals usually led to bad things.

At the other end of the spectrum are owned media properties that seem to know no bounds in terms of investing in editorial quality.

Even if you're a traditional digital magazine that's trying to cover stories for a global audience, you'll probably never have the money to customize content into regional editions the way Coke did with the Coca-Cola Journey.

It's nearly impossible for traditional media to justify the cost of printing anything, let alone a magazine with the stock, glam photography and design aesthetic of Airbnb Magazine or California Closet's Ideas of Order.

Even just having the staff to write, edit or solicit top-notch guest posts the way Lithub, Kickstarter's The Creative Independent or The Player's Tribune do seems like a bygone luxury to old-school journalists like me.

Marketing departments may sometimes still struggle to justify where their money goes, but they have an opportunity to do things "regular" editors only dream about today.

Pivoting May Be Necessary Before You Master Publishing

A great journalist I once knew said if you're running a newspaper or magazine you should never redesign, because people will know your publication is probably going through trouble, and that if you do redesign, it should be almost unnoticeable.

Hardly anyone in the media heeds this advice -- new editors are notorious for wanting to put their personal stamp on a publication -- but it struck me that in some ways, titles like The New Yorker maintain a lot of the elements they had nearly 100 years ago.

Marketing departments don't tend to think as long-term as that, and perhaps that's best. Few traditional publishers would completely switch gears after getting an editorial plan in place, but brands that stick with owned media tend to improve as they go along.

I loved reading Van Winkle's, a digital magazine produced by mattress company Casper, for example, but after studying it in detail I realized why they closed it and later launched Wolly instead. Before Airbnb Magazine, there was Pineapple Magazine. Before Ideas of Order, California Closets produced Hush magazine.

The poster child for not giving up on owned media, however, is Uber, which has (so far) produced three different publications, all pretty good but with very different directions.

Owned media, overall, be still a work in progress for most marketers, but that's okay. In most cases it's been worth it for them to stick with it, and for me, tracking its progress more closely has been incredibly worthwhile -- and hopefully for my listeners, too.