ST35 : Stephen Interviews Melanie Deziel

Melanie Deziel is an award-winning branded content strategist and consultant, and the founder of The Overlap League native ad newsletter. She is on the board of the Native Advertising Institute and travels the world teaching branded content strategy, best practices, and growth strategies to content creators, marketers and brands. Melanie was the first editor of branded content at The New York Times where she wrote the “Women Inmates” piece for Netflix, which won the OMMA for Best Native Advertising in 2014, and the "Grit & Grace" piece for Cole Haan that won the same award in 2015. She has also done content strategy work for Time Inc's 35+ US magazines, the Huffington Post, and a number of other publishers and brands. As an Expert in Residence with BRaVe Ventures, she offered content strategy consulting, training and advisory to Turner, Viacom, and other major media companies. Learn more about Melanie at mdeziel.com

The Overlap League: overlapleague.com It's a biweekly dispatch of the latest news, recent branded content examples, resources and open jobs designed to help those working in brand storytelling stay informed.

Summary-

In this episode Stephen interviews Melanie Deziel, founder of The Overlap League native add newsletter. Melanie started out getting her masters in journalism, and moved to being a branded content educator. She not only helps educate, but also works with content directly, and helps content creators produce better content. She works with every kind of business, mostly bigger ones from insurance companies to jewelry companies, to start ups. The goal of a branded content strategist is to give the content a native feel, instead of interrupting the consumer’s life.  After Melanie got her masters in journalism she found there weren’t a lot of jobs out there, so she looked for something that she could use her journalism skills in. First she went to the Huffington post, then the New York Times, and in February 2016 she branched out on her own. Not only does she run her Brand content company, she also runs the native add news letter, writes a column for Ink, and is a professor at Syracuse university. Although she doesn’t know where she will be in 10-20 years from now she intends on just listening and adapting to what the world of brand content needs. Getting into contact with Melanie is as easy as going to her website, where she loves to receive, and share new stories, and even occasionally help out.