And the walls are tumbling down…

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Two big announcements this week have “media” people (journalists, PR folks, social media peeps) wondering is this truly the beginning of the end.

And the interesting thing is the announcements come from organizations on the opposite ends of the media world.

First, Condé Nast, home to such high-regarded media brands like The New Yorker, GQ, Vanity Fair, etc., announced the birth of 23 Stories. This new “studio” gives brands and marketers direct access to editors at Condé Nast magazines to create “branded” content designed to fit in nicely with other editorial in the magazine.

The sense here is that this is much more than your grandfather’s advertorial. So much so that there’s already rumored push back from within the 23 stories of the Condé Nast Building in New York.

It’s become a very popular topic in Wall Street Journal ad and marketing writer Suzanne Vranica’s Twitter stream. Here’s she’s wondering if staff will get paid extra for these extra duties.

On the opposite end is the announcement of social media darling for the tween set Snapchat.

Its announcement of Snapchat Discover is sure to rock my 15-year-old daughter’s world. This new effort will give advertisers, right now mainly media companies, the ability to provide their own version of sponsored content directly to Snapchat users.

As you can see in the TechCrunch piece, content providers ranging from CNN to ESPN to Nat Geo and others are now permanently (as long as they pay for it) available within Snapchat, making their brands available to users. This is quite different than the original Snapchat which allowed users to send short video messages to their friends and then have them magically disappear.

What to make of this? In both cases, it’s about making money, being relevant and—at the end of the day—survival. Condé Nast is making its venerable pages available to brands so they will continue to pay for the space with the lines blurred between editorial and sponsored content. Snapchat is making its platform available because it needs to figure out a way to make money in the first place.

For PR, ad, and marketing folks it is just more of the bricks on the wall tumbling down.

Whether you are old school or the new cool, great content, more than ever before, is the key.

Figuring out how to get it in front of people is now the challenge.

Money to do that is more important than ever.

Your thoughts?





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Jon Newman

In 2002 Jon cofounded The Hodges Partnership and has helped to grow it into one of the country’s largest public relations firms (based on O’Dwyer’s annual rankings). Jon has taught communications as an adjunct professor at VCU, speaks regularly at conferences and meetings and blogs and tweets about public relations and marketing issues.

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