Lars Bredahl is a digital marketer for First Bank. He shares how to use resources within your own company to build your brand. How Lars is building a new community for bank customers via a brand journalism and data-driven content strategy.
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Lars Bredahl has been a storyteller since before he could spell. At age 4, he put together a picture book about teaming up with cartoon characters to fight off a burglar and these days, he helps brands develop compelling narratives across social media, email, and other digital channels. Lars graduated from Elon University with a B.A. in Strategic Communications and a Master’s in Interactive Media. While in school, he collaborated with a team to develop a multimedia-rich website for a Costa Rican nonprofit and coordinated the creation of the nation’s first QR code-powered nature trail at the J.N. Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge. Since grad school, Lars worked on the marketing team at Google-funded startup SCVNGR (now LevelUp) and coordinated social media and digital marketing projects at agencies in Boston and Raleigh. He currently works as the Digital Marketing Coordinator at First Bank where he manages data-driven inbound marketing strategies to help the up-and-coming regional bank take on the “big guys” while maintaining a strong focus on personalized customer service and the local community. Lars was recently named one of the” Top 25 Community Bank Influencers on Twitter” and is a regular speaker at regional marketing conferences. Outside of First Bank, he has worked with a variety of clients including USO of North Carolina, Esurance, Coca-Cola, the American Petroleum Institute, Cree, Visit Milwaukee, Dow Jones, Duke Realty, ATM USA, and The New England Patriots.
Think Like A Journalist Quote
“Brand journalism is ultimately about control. It’s about building and owning an audience versus renting someone else’s audience. Modern consumers aren’t looking to be ‘sold.’ Rather, they are looking for answers to their questions and solutions to their problem.” ~Scott Severson, president of Hopkins, MN-based Brandpoint, a provider of content marketing services. Source.
Success Tip
Use your own brand’s resources to help contribute to your content and social media strategy. Look within.
Career Highlight
Building out the team and media content for First Bank. Find out how the brand journalism strategy is making a big impact on consumers.
When It Didn’t Work
Lars and the marketing team spent a great deal of time building out a platform that made First Bank a thought leader but the content was being overlooked. Find out what Lars did to get the attention of customers and employees and turn them into brand advocates.
Brand Journalism & Marketing Advice
- Become a media organization.
- Use your own employees to help support the content.
- Focus on your specific audiences and provide content that is strategically written for those target audiences.
- Social media is important but consider other distribution sources that are important to those audiences such as email for more rural areas or older audiences.
- Every article/marketing piece must provide value
- Build internal brand advocates: Start internal communication to help employees see content and then use that content to share with customers.
Multimedia Resource
Book, Documentary, Podcast, Internet Channel
A Website That Works, Mark O’Brian
Resource Links
First Bank (Brand Journalism Website)
Self-Storage by First Bank (Brand Journalism Website)
TBJA 002: Nick Paranjape Says Goodbye To Media And Brings Brand Journalism To Healthcare
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