The Spirit of Discovery
An interactive website for the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business and Cossette Vancouver
Media organizations are increasingly looking to branded content — material that blurs the line between advertising and traditional editorial — for new sources of revenue. At the same time, online outlets have created new possibilities for digital storytelling and audience engagement.
So when the opportunity arose to work on a branded content project, we at Discourse Media saw a unique opportunity to explore both this trend and new the interactive multimedia storytelling formats that come with it.
The project was developed by communication and marketing firm Cossette Vancouver for the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business. The result, DiscoverWithSauder.com, is an interactive website exploring three issues impacting business today — innovation, globalism and value-driven business — through articles, video and other digital methods. Our team of journalists reported, wrote, edited and fact-checked the site’s three written chapters, which were designed to be consumed in a non-linear format either on the platform or through social media. We developed and researched interactive infographic concepts and collaborated with Barbershop Films, contributing to the development of six videos that intersect the written content.
While this project was a far cry from traditional journalism, it was an opportunity to test our assumptions about the boundaries of autonomy, independence and authentic journalistic inquiry in different types of partnerships. We learned about branded content and found great value in better understanding advertising trends impacting our field.
