Magazines in the US draw a very thick line between editorial and advertising.

Editorial teams view it as their mission to serve their readers without regard to other influences. Any editorial that has been influenced by advertising is quickly categorized as an “advertorial” or a “sponsored” editorial. They are also redesigned and clearly labeled to avoid possible confusion with the regular editorial product.

Creating branded content with a publishing partner that does not cross into advertorial is extremely difficult. It requires the creation of ideas that the editorial department treats as their own and that fit within their original vision of a product that works for their readers.

We know that C-level executives turn to Wired for the type of inspiration that creates business innovation. The pages of Wired and wired.com were therefore the best place to make our audience aware of the Connective. Promotional ads were run in both places in the months leading up to the issue.

A broader PR and social effort (via Wired’s and Cisco’s social channels) was launched as soon as the issue was released.

The immediate results from these initiatives were overwhelmingly strong:

• The Cisco and Wired living digital issue was downloaded more than 27,000 times—more than any other single Wired digital issue

• More than 537,000 free impressions were generated around the press for the Cisco and Wired partnership

• Time spent with the Cisco content within the Wired issue was nearly six times the average benchmark

At a broader level, Cisco saw strong results from the whole of the campaign. Our key metric of momentum saw significant shifts—three-quarters of our audience now believe that Cisco is on its way up in the business world. More importantly, C-levels’ perceptions of Cisco were shifting from its being a plumber to its being an actual strategic business partner, up by 7% from the campaign start.