How Brand Content Managers fit into Organizations

Have you ever wondered what Brand Content Managers do? They seem to be popping up in organizations and marketing structures around the world. Who they are and what they do might not be very clear. Earlier this month I gave a talk at the Head of Brand Content event organized by DII where I talked precisely about the role of brand content managers and how they fit (or don’t fit) into businesses and brand teams.

Leveraging my experience at L’Oréal and comparing that to the structure at Shiseido, I presented the following presentation. Enjoy!

To understand Brand Content Managers, it’s important to go back to the time when social networks started to be taken seriously by brands.

Just like the Community Manager, the Brand Content Manager was born out of a real need.

The profiles of people who started assuming Brand Content roles were rather varied. Like other new areas of expertise, the types of skills needed could be taken from different experiences. When put together, they make up the unique profile of Brand Content Manager.

These skills come together to address the primary missions of brand content managers in large organizations.

All of that sounds fine and dandy, but the reality is much different. Brand Content Managers – like any new role in any organization – need to fight to find their place, as they will overlap with certain responsibilities that already exist, imposing new needs and structures that might oftentimes be at direct odds against what exists.

In order to make the job of Brand Content Managers more feasible, organizations should try to position brand content strategy higher up in the organizational ladder so that managers can exert both downward influence and upward influence.