I just stopped in at GE Reports and got lost for a few minutes in a story about something called ZeeWeed Membrane Bioreactor, a GE-developed filtering membrane that is saving a New Zealand volcanic lake from gross algae explosions.

I don't live in New Zealand. I don't have a particular interest in algae or volcanoes. At least, I didn't before I read the piece. Yet the story held my attention.

Algae explosions are fascinating? Who knew … ?

GE Reports is an online magazine that shares stories and ideas about science and technology innovation—for example, a recurring feature is The 5 Coolest Things on Earth This Week.

It looks and feels not unlike, say, Popular Science magazine in that it seeks to make science and technology more accessible and meaningful for a general audience.

The award-winning GE Reports is published daily by GE itself, a global conglomerate that's been around since 1892. GE Reports is the hub of a content strategy that extends into various assets, all largely centered on creating awareness and advancing the idea of GE as innovator, and doing so in a neutral, vendor-agnostic way.

GE Reports is not trying to sell jet engines or wind turbines, in other words. There is no call to action with a pop-up order form inviting you to reserve and customize your own airplane.

Instead, GE Reports tells the stories of GE.

It shows how its innovations are helping people globally. It narrates those stories in a human, accessible way. It sparks social conversation and press coverage about the company, its customers, and its employees.

It follows and reports on the stories of its own innovations much like a trade publication might. By doing so it supplements the work of mainstream media and, in some case, replaces it.

GE Reports is a media company, funded by and operating within GE. It feels independent, even if it's not. It feels independent because it brings a reporter's sensibility to its content—an editorial approach to building the GE brand.

There are countless other examples of brands as media companies. Some of my favorites:

• Marriott Bonvoy Traveler inspires travelers to consider new destinations.

  In “Ghana Rising,” for example, Marriott tells the story of Ghana's dark history as well as its current renaissance. Sure, Marriott has a hotel in the capitol city of Accra, but the focus is Ghana's artists, entrepreneurs, restaurant scene, culture, and national parks.

• AKC.TV features dog-related programming produced by the American Kennel Club.

  AKC.TV is an outgrowth of the AKC's education and resources for pet owners, trainers, breeders, and others. (My dog Augie was glued to AKC.TV's recent livestream of its Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Specialty Show, live from Ohio.)

• The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland’s multimedia storytelling makes the bank seem less … well, like a bank. It tells the stories of real people living and working in Ohio communities.

  For example, the Cleveland Fed tells the story of Dayton, Ohio. Dayton was once a thriving city—it's where the cash register was invented, and it has been the center of innovation in aviation and auto.

  More recently, Dayton has struggled with poverty and high crime rates. Local leaders and activists are working to change that, attracting new business and money to revive the city.

  The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland showed up to document the city's turnaround. Through text, photos, and video, Finding Solutions in Dayton doesn't feel like marketing. It's feels like a documentary. And it's great stuff.

In all of these cases, creators like videographers, photographers, and writers are working inside the company—sometimes in Marketing, sometimes in Communications or PR. Their job is to mine an organization to unearth stories, and then publish or produce them in any number of forms: from podcasts to research reports to streaming services to print magazines.

Brands as media companies offer opportunities to do a few things:

• Cover a business and industry with the same depth a trade publication might.
• Advance its thought leadership—to establish itself as a trustworthy source of information and news.
• Be its own PR.
• Spark social conversations.
• Keep investors and analysts in the loop.
• And sometimes generate ad revenue, fuel brand partnerships, and generate valuable data about their audience.

An editorial approach to building a brand is especially useful in a post-truth era, when we all need to place the needs of our audience first. When we need to abandon our corporate-centric messaging to build trust. And when we need to adopt the mindset of a journalist who seeks the best way to tell a story, because journalists hear a little voice in the back of their heads reminding them: Nobody has to read this.

“Facts are the pillars of any good reporting,” said Jesse Noyes, a former reporter for the Boston Business Journal. He worked as a writer at Eloqua (now Oracle) and is now VP of Marketing at Unsupervised.

Inside a company, “what you're after is a story that connects the fact-finding process in a visceral, meaningful way,” Jesse told me. “That means digging up the facts, but also shining a light on the decision-making, the personalities involved, the raw human emotion that goes into any fact-based story.”

That kind of pressure on our content-creation efforts can only benefit our brands. Sure, it can enhance our integrity. But it also makes our content truly gripping, like GE's algae story: It's the way stories are told that makes them so good.

* * *

Brands have always been publishers. John Deere has published The Furrow magazine since 1895. The Michelin Guides series of guidebooks have been published by the French tire company since 1904—the same year Jell-O started printing Jell-O recipe books. The Sears department store launched its own radio station in 1924.

But brands' hiring of journalists and reporters started to gain momentum more recently. In 2004, Larry Light, then McDonald's chief marketing officer, said in a speech at an industry event that McDonald's adopted “brand journalism” as a new marketing tactic.

The term has evolved since then, as have the approaches, capabilities, and goals for the media that are created inside a company. Traditional news companies have gotten in on it, too, launching their own in-house studies to work with brands directly to create journalistic content for them.

But the basic idea of customer-driven versus corporate-driven marketing remains, no matter the size and scope of your own media publishing.