In essence they have adopted a relatively low-cost, high value approach to managing editorial content. Instead of sponsoring articles within a magazine with advertorial, it has recruited journalists from eWeek, The 451 Group and ZDNet who have a strong record in the anti-virus space to produce content for Kaspersky Lab. All three do this under the banner of Threatpost, it’s security news site, which hasn’t been designed to compete with security titles but it has been written, in a non-salesy fashion that is proving popular. From a PR perspective, Kaspersky Lab have a very powerful tool which ensures that a load of thought leadership and the SEO savvy content benefits the company and a tool that their sales team are always happy to point potential customers towards.

Vikki’s article was based upon a post by the ever influential Todd Defren of PR Squared fame which is well worth a read. In fact, scrolling through the comments on his original post it was interesting to see that this is a phenomenon that is fast becoming popular in the US. According to a comment from Lou Hoffman the Business Week alumni can be found now working on similar projects for other blue chip organisations (Steve Hamm – IBM and Stephen Wildstrom – Nvidia).

At a time when we are increasingly seeing UK journalists moving to the dark side are we about to see another option. One where journalists can find the job security that they crave while still have the opportunity to remain a hack at heart. We are in an age when every person is a mouth piece for a company and so much thought and opinion is put into the public domain via blogs and Twitter, surely the approach of bringing an editorial expert into the mix improves the quality and thus makes it more interesting for the end user. I can’t believe any journalist worth their weight would agree to put their name to content that is basically advertorial, but if it is handled appropriately, with the right people and clear boundaries, I’m sure we will see more companies adopting this approach.

Paul Stallard