Meredith, the publisher of Better Homes and Gardens and several other big magazines, is getting into the branded-content business. The Wall Street Journal has details.

Called Meredith Integrated Marketing, the operation has created custom publishing, email, social media and mobile campaigns for major marketers, including Kraft Foods, Chrysler and Wells Fargo. It recently recruited digital-ad veteran Martin Reidy to lead its marketing arm, and says it is on the prowl for more acquisitions.

I have a hard time putting into words how brilliant this is. And not just because it’s so similar to the work I’ve been doing for Learfield Communications, another major media company.

As I wrote in a comment over at Buzz Machine, advertisers are shifting a lot of marketing dollars toward producing engaging, valuable content for their customers. That content’s not advertising, but it’s marketing. So it makes perfect sense that they would turn to people who’ve been producing content for a living for decades: magazine publishers, radio companies, local TV stations. Workers in those places know how to tell stories, to engage audiences, to inform and entertain people.

My job at Learfield InterAction is built on this premise. Journalists are the best people to create content for audiences of all types — whether it’s the general public listening to a newscast, or a group of 75 donors to a small nonprofit. Why not take some of our journalism expertise and put it to good use for clients? As long as we don’t intermingle that content with our straight-news product (and we don’t), it’s simply another way of engaging audiences.

Disclosure: My employer, Learfield Communications, has a business relationship with Meredith involving one of its magazines. I don’t work on that project.