Is Hunterbrook the future of brand-owned content?

Welcome back to your essential weekly Briefing on what’s happening in brand content and why it matters. News meets a hedge fund: Is this the future of brand-owned content? Hunterbrook, the hedge fund that plans to pair original investigative journalism with a long-short hedge fund business says it has raised $100 million. Hunterbrook will place trades based on the stories broken by reporters it hires. Hunterbrook Media and Hunterbrook Capital – the newsroom and the fund itself – act as separate entities, with General counsel Fitzann Reid deciding whether an article published by Hunterbrook Media can be shared with its hedge fund ahead of publication. How the experiment actually operates was made evident last week. The fund launched with a sensational scoop about how the biggest mortgage lender in the U.S., United Wholesale Mortgage, has been incentivizing independent brokers to funnel business to itself. It’s a classic investigative piece, with veteran journalists Matt Murray and Bethany McLean listed as editors.The story included a disclosure statement saying that Hunterbrook Capital was shorting UWM pre-publication and was placing a long position on UWM’s main competitor, Rocket Mortgage. The FT reports that Hunterbrook said it also plans to explore a class action lawsuit against UWM via a “non-profit affiliate.” The story’s statement (it’s lengthy, read the entire thing here) included a full rundown of how the story came to be and why the company’s editorial board believed it should be shared with its investment affiliate, Hunterbrook Capital. A UWM spokesperson called the model “unethical” in a statement. But despite potentially thorny compliance issues, the fact is that people have traded off the work journalists do for years – albeit with the reporters themselves never seeing any of the profits. The firm is essentially putting together two of the worst-kept secrets in finance and financial journalism. As co-founder Nathaniel Horowitz told the FT: “It is at the intersection of that affects a lot of people, that people should know about, and a business model that can fund more of that work.” Brands are hiring the wrong editorial talent Brands are hiring editorial talent that simply isn’t the right fit, leading to wasted time and money and fallout that is negative for all parties. The crux of the issue is that brand content has its own set of rules. Marketers looking to develop content operations usually do so in service of a larger goal or priority. The content operation supports a wider business: It may be used to showcase executive thinking, or translate and present company perspectives. That means marketers should look for former journalists, reporters and editors who can understand that the job is intrinsically different. Brand content also usually is much more stringent about KPIs or goals: Editors or reporters working inside brands are often much more involved in ensuring what they do is connected with results, far more so than at a typical news organization. READ MORE ▸ Chase digs into media JPMorgan Chase – already a heavy hitter when it comes to owned content – is getting deeper into the “media” business with a new subsidiary that will let brands market directly to the bank’s 80 million customers. Chase Media Solutions will let businesses target users with discounts using the transaction data it has on customers. It’s the first retail media-style solution of its kind from a bank. Most of the players in the space have been retailers like Walmart, Home Depot and of course, Amazon. Brands willl only pay Chase if someone takes advantage of those discounts and makes a purchase.As more companies dive deep into creating owned content as a way to attract and retain customers, many are also trying to break into “media” on the sales side – trying to figure out how they can use the data they have to sell attractive ad products to other brands. While in the case of Chase, it’s unlikely that advertising will replace the bank’s core business (it made $158 billion in revenue last year) it may end up becoming at least a hefty source of pocket money. A new episode of The Toolkits Show In each episode, we explore how publishers are monetizing digital content, how content is transforming modern brands and companies, and hear from the people and personalities at the industry’s cutting edge. Check out this week’s episode. How SMBs are using gen AI Generative AI has its issues. But for smaller businesses, it can be a way to crack the code of content marketing. According to a piece by trade group Association of National Advertisers, more small businesses are beginning to experiment with gen AI to create content, as well as help with analyzing performance and making suggestions. Hodinkee's big bet falters Timepiece-focused publisher Hodinkee’s acquisition of used watch marketplace Crown and Caliber was heralded as an example of how bright the future of content and commerce could be. But Adweek reports that the entity is suffering due to an overall economic downturn and “erosion of reader trust.” One last thing I called it: “Go direct” is back.

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