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There is not enough research to assess the impact and reception of the brand’s journalistic content in audiences. However, we can explore some evidence about the reactions provoked by this content related to the more conventionally journalistic, following the lines of some isolated works that have been written around the topic. Van Reijmersdal et al. (2010) looked at whether the balance or imbalance between commercial and editorial content was affecting the way publications were perceived by the readers of client magazines like Kraft Foods’ Food & Family or Home Depot’s Style Ideas. Their analysis confirmed what should be expected after more generic studies into content credibility and the persuasion process: the more the commercial orientation of a publication, the less was the credibility perceived by readers and the more persuasive intent was perceived by magazine readers. Cole II and Greer (2013) linked those findings to brand journalism and researched the effect of ‘commercial frames’ and ‘editorial frames’ for the perception of the contents of two hypothetical client magazines in the same product category. They reached the conclusion that the editorial frame improved the perception of message credibility and positive attitudes towards the brands that were mentioned. The study also showed that identifying corporate sources of content did not diminish message credibility – the opposite was more likely – unless the ‘commercial frame’ and corporate sources were united, which was especially damaging to credibility. Finally, those attitudes and evaluations were related to readers’ involvement with the product category. According to the study, “product involvement plays a significant role in explaining variation in all attitudes examined. Involvement also produces an interesting interactive effect when examined in light of the source. For low-involved consumers, corporate sources led to the highest credibility ratings; for medium involvement consumers, peer sources made content seem most credible. High involvement participants rated content from both sources as highly credible” (Cole, Greer 2013, p. 683). Finally, Baetzgen and Tropp (2015) reach similar conclusions when studying the keys to success of brand-owned media. According to them, the success depends on a complex interrelation of factors, but “content-centric factors such as content quality and the non-advertising character of brand-owned media are most important for creating relevant content and for achieving media success in terms of reach and frequency” (Baetzgen, Tropp 2015, p. 135). It seems that these conclusions justify brands’ growing interest in brand journalism with the above mentioned philosophy of “more journalism, less 130 Ángel Arrese and Francisco J. Pérez-Latre Unauthenticated Download Date | 4/13/17 5:35 PM branding”. But of course, the goals of improving credibility and brands’ desire to be perceived as institutions that offer “insights that add value to customers’ lives” (Cole, Greer 2013, p. 684), can only be managed through measures of traffic, reach, interactivity and circulation of a brand’s media, in the same way that those parameters assess the impact of communication media and other marketing actions in general. The metrics of brand journalism should be proxies for relationship-building, not vanity stats of page views (NewsCred 2015). The sequence reach – engagement – conversions gives shape to the basic structure of the measures that are typically used to evaluate content marketing effects, as Figure 1 indicates. Excluding the last conversion metrics (around lead generation), which are not necessarily included in most brand’s media basic goals, the rest apply soundly to brand journalism’s logic. Beyond the evolution of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and their possible relation to brand business indicators, the daily life of brand journalism is full of events and situations that demand special initiatives that are difficult to evaluate in the short term. There are two examples that could be considered paradigmatic: brand journalism around the launch of new products or projects, and the role of brand media in crisis situations or around problems generated by negative media coverage. As for the first situations, MediaSource explains in some detail how one of its clients, Ohio State’s University Wexner Medical Center, took advantage of a new project to experiment with “Google glasses” (The Google Glass Project) to foster its visibility in markets and society. The total project achieved an audience topping 320 million across company-owned and news media channels with an advertising value exceeding $1.1 million. All brand journalism content was shared via company-owned social media channels, including more than 73,000 YouTube plays, totaling 135,867 minutes of playing time – which is more than 94 days of continuous play. The estimated Twitter audience alone was 1.7 million people. The content was also prominently featured on the company intranet, reaching key internal stakeholders and influencers (MediaSource 2013). Regarding crisis situations, there have been some interesting recent cases that show opportunities to react that are facilitated by brand journalism. Edgecliffe-Johnson (2015) has written in the Financial Times about the ways in which companies like Amazon or Theranos have responded to negative coverage at the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, respectively, publishing long replies in “neutral” content platforms like Medium; or about how the Chinese company Alibaba, after a Barron’s story that suggested that its stock value could fall by 50%, answered with a 2,000 word letter to the publisher in Alizila, the news site of their own company