A couple of weeks ago, Northland’s arts development body Creative Northland needed a sponsored award turned into a news story.
We call this advertorial – where advertising meets editorial.
The requirements of all advertorials are:
- Meeting the word count of the publication due to space constraints
- Ensuring buy-in and approval from the client/s being written about
- Ensuring fact-checking is complete. After all, advertising has to meet certain standards to be published, and it’s not okay to have erroneous statistics or claims in a piece
- Keeping all the partners happy. This can involve a lot of checking of spellings, dates and attribution, especially when giving recognition to sponsors.
- With this particular advertorial – about artist Jessie Rose Foote receiving an important Creative Industries business award – there was the requirement to double-check the children pictured in the photograph with Jessie were named correctly and their parents approved
- Lastly, there were the conventions of the publication, and checking the processes, rules and expectations of the publisher (in this case, NZME’s Business Advocate)
In the end, we got the advertorial completed, in impressive time, saving everybody money and keeping all stakeholders happy. If you would like your own advertorial content written for any publication, get in touch – mike@michaelboturwriter / phone 021 299 0984.