An interesting article ran in Adweeka couple weeks ago about the “curation” efforts by various brands which want to use this material they found and repurposed as part of a strategy of overall reputation building. The section that jumped out at me the was this toward the end:
Pictures accompanying stories in a branded context, for example, can be particularly tricky territory to navigate. “If [Pepsi] shows Jay-Z’s image, someone might think that Jay-Z is endorsing Pepsi, and then all of a sudden the lines get blurred,” he said.
Yeah, that’s exactly where the line is when it comes to curating outside news stories and such under a brand umbrella, something I talked about on Voce Nation a while ago. Unfortunately it’s all too easy for that line to get crossed, particularly when the strategy has stories being pulled onto an on-domain page or other owned site as opposed to letting it be part of the community that’s on Twitter or Facebook. The perception in the audience is much different is X brand talks about Y celebrity on Twitter as opposed to taking that story and posting it on a wholly-owned channel.
It’s one thing to take other people’s comments – on Twitter for example – and aggregate them on-domain or using a service like Storify as part of an overall narrative, the very kind of “story-telling” I talked about on VN. But it’s another when it’s not completely clear that what you’re doing is curating stories about a celebrity, event or other notable rallying point it’s important that what you’re doing is building your own brand’s reputation, not in any way implying an endorsement or other form of support from that outside entity.
