On Thursday, Contently, a hot little company, held a buzzy conference at the Bowery Hotel on a very of-the-moment topic.
Caleb Ferguson for The New York Times
Dave Goldberg, left, Shane Snow and Joe Coleman founded Contently, which aims to be the "anticontent farm."
The conference, the Brand Publishing Summit, included clients, agencies and publishers, with a lot of chatter about brands going direct to the consumer and cutting out the middle man. (Which come to think of it, would be people like me, but let's not dwell on that.)
But as Tomas Kellner, managing editor of GE Reports, a publication put out by General Electric, reminded people, the trend of the moment has been around for a long time. In 1947, General Electric had an in-house reporter telling the company's stories — a guy named Kurt Vonnegut.
The founders of Contently like that anecdote a lot. Three young men — Joe Coleman, Dave Goldberg and Shane Snow — started the company in 2010 after the rise and crash of so-called content farms. They believed there was room for a company that enabled high-quality stories told on behalf of commercial clients, what is now known as branded content.
Over the years, this content has had an unsavory reputation — most have been infomercials masquerading as editorial content. But the bar has been raised by companies like Red Bull, whose incredibly popular extreme sports videos almost make it seem like a media company that sells beverages on the side.
Contently, which grew out of the TechStars incubator program in New York, developed a roster of writers and journalists for hire and a software application that helps companies tell their own stories as well. Three years later, the company has raised $2.3 million in financing, developed a roster of 27,000 writers, grown to 24 employees and has 40 Fortune 500 companies among its clients. Some of its customers include American Express, Anheuser-Busch and PepsiCo.
When you walk into the Contently office in SoHo, as I did on Tuesday, you can't help noticing the large slogan on the wall: "Those who tell the stories rule the world." There's a wall of books as well — the company gave employees $20 each and turned them loose at the Strand bookstore — and another wall with photos of famous writers, including Oscar Wilde, Philip K. Dick and Hunter S. Thompson. The company also produces a print magazine called Contently Quarterly.
A cynic might suggest the furnishings are just a way to drape a cravenly commercial enterprise in the trappings of literature — akin to a Williamsburg hipster in a fedora — but part of the company's mission is to help people who type for a living actually make a living at it.
Mr. Snow, the chief creative officer, is a graduate of the Columbia Journalism School and a writer for Wired and Fast Company magazines, among others. He suggested that in the thriving mix of custom-sponsored content, there was one way to stick out.
"We decided to plant a flag on quality, get good writers to buy in and make sure they are paid well," Mr. Snow said. "We wanted to be the anticontent farm."
Now Contently is helping companies produce articles that appear on their own websites, are used in native ad placements and are spread through social media — in essence helping their clients compete in a cluttered media environment.
Scott Roen, vice president of American Express Open, a small-business network, used Contently to produce high-end coverage about its online forums.
"By working with them, you get access to a network of really good writers, but they also help manage the work and integrate it into what we do," Mr. Roen said. "We've learned a lot about publishing from working with them."
Sitting with Mr. Coleman, the chief executive of Contently, and Sam Slaughter, the vice president for content, in a conference room decorated with tiny robots, Mr. Snow said that when he attended Columbia the most persistent question was building a sustainable business model for journalism.
"It was clear with the fragmentation of traditional media, we were in a kind of freelance revolution and it was also clear that brands wanted to connect directly with their audience," he said.
About the same time, Mr. Coleman, who has known Mr. Snow since their days in middle school in Idaho Falls, Idaho, was working on a start-up he founded in Las Vegas called CashCrate. He needed some high-quality content. "I could find you a developer in Russia pretty easily, but I had no idea where to go to find a good writer," he said.
He called Mr. Snow, an idea was born, and Mr. Goldberg built a platform for story-telling — for both clients and writers. At a time when advertising is achieving diminishing returns and public relations has trouble breaking through, companies are learning the value of putting their names around — but not in the middle — of memorable stories.
Email: carr@nytimes.com;
Twitter: @carr2n
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