It seems that brands sponsoring bloggers is picking up steam.

For influential bloggers, sponsorships can be more lucrative than display ads alone, with payments reaching into the thousands for a multipronged campaign stretching over weeks or months. For the brands, it’s a way to market more conversationally to potential customers as well as exert more control over search engine results.

I’m not sure this is an entirely new thought, but it’s one that I’ve liked for a while now. If it’s done right it’s a great tool for both parties. And, I can’t figure out the difference between sponsoring a blogger and sponsoring a celebrity’s clothing on the red carpet.

Monocle magazine is the pioneer of the brand-fueled content. They have reconsidered the advertiser-publisher relationship and created engaging branded content throughout their magazine and into online media like podcasts. It works very well.

Brand-fueled content is content such as articles, videos and events where a brand’s values and briefs on a product where editorial control is given to the site owner (goal being a conversation started, natch). It seems to be the future. Let’s look toward the Old Spice campaign and “the Response Campaign”. Major success.

Beau Colburn captured my feelings on brand-fueled content (and the Old Spice campaign, more specifically) perfectly.

these video responses feel like a dramatic shift in “advertising.” Putting the word in quotes was intentional because I’m not really sure what this is. These responses aren’t ads. I suppose there’s a proper term like “brand extension” or the like for something like this, but this feels new.

I like the way Alex Bogusky responded to the Fast Company article profiling him. Adds context and additional information we as the reader aren’t normally privy to. Be sure to catch part 2 as well.

Brand utility is, essentially, a brand creating *something* useful that is closely aligned with its product that brings an added value to the consumer. For further information, I recommend this great resource for understanding brand utility.

One of the examples mentioned in the above presentation is the Domino’s Pizza Tracker (created by CP+B). In a recent interview, head of interactive production, strategy and business development at CP+B discusses productized marketing (which I consider to be brand utility).

I’m excited to see more brands recognize that their most powerful brand marketing asset is the product – not the marketing message. Because of this shift in strategy, we’re beginning to see more agencies move into the product design and development space. Agencies are no longer confined to crafting the message but also empowered to create both standalone products and enhancements to existing product lines. Since digital is both media and product, it’s an ideal platform to facilitate “productized” marketing. And this means that we’re spending a larger percentage of our days creating tools rather than the ads. I get excited by the idea that I can actually now ‘use’ the marketing we make, not just watch or read it.

I enjoy drinking High Life (bottles only). These ads, which I have most definitely been guilty of on occasion, hit a bit too close to home this morning. But I love them. There seems to be quite a trend in advertising of being “manly”.

When I read an interview like this one with Matt Haughey, I get excited. It’s rather obvious to say “he gets it”, but it’s the truth. Metafilter is an amazing community and as I study how to best build communities, I imagine I will be using MF as a case study. I never realized how MF setup its revenue model (combine it with the bit about ‘exclusivity’).

Me: Do you have streams of revenue besides the signup-fee and advertising?
Matt: That’s pretty much it…The $5 signup fee isn’t subscription revenue [since it's a one-time thing]. It’s mostly just putting a huge hurdle in front of having to deal with new users. ‘Cause it’s such a pain. The last ten years have shown that any time there’s press, like the New York Times writes something about us, 300 people sign up and then wreak havoc for a while, and then go away. [Without barriers to entry] it would just be a nightmare.

So it’s really ad-based. It’s not something I ever set out to establish. I lucked into it, being in the right place at the right time.

Me: So what does your ad revenue look like?
Matt: It’s been really successful. I’m really lucky with the way Ask Metafilter works. Every question’s about a topic that’s easy to match ads to.

The other weird thing is, ads aren’t even shown to members. Members asking about what kind of digital cameras they should get want honest answers. But non-members searching for digital cameras online get [to Ask Metafilter] in that search.

Perfect definition/application of what branded utility is.

Creating something that people need, not aping existing applications because you can, is key, says Palmer. “For the same budget and energy as we expend on current forms of advertising, we could be making something more tangible, useful and reusable that plays a more integral part in the consumer’s life. This is ‘interactive,’ which is not synonymous with ‘online,’ by the way.”

I LOVE Salt 101. Highly educational, interactive, non-preachy and it provides credibility with Alton Brown (loving the bow tie and tweed suit too, ps). It takes some searching to realize that it’s been presented by Diamond Crystal Salt. Smart move and I’d love to know who set this up for them. This is the sort of content I love.

As a side note, I am very curious about the different types of salt and the best uses for them. I’ve heard that regular table salt isn’t the best option for salting food.

Fleur de sel – Or Malden’s or whatever your preference is. Regular table salt isn’t ideal for salting food after it’s served. Malden comes in nice flakes that melt nicely on the food. Meg prefers fleur de sel but I find it too crunchy. A 4 oz. container will cost you $11 — 3 times as much as 3 pounds of table salt — but it’ll last for months or even years.

I love the view the Tyler Brule has taken with Monocle and sponsors.

Everything we do always has a sponsor attached, we took the view very early on that we were not going to expose ourselves by developing a ton of things online and then having this massive sink hole.