Content Strategy Practice
Rachel Lovinger's 2007 article that gave the emerging discipline a name and a framework.
In March 2007, Rachel Lovinger published "Content Strategy: The Philosophy of Data" on Boxes and Arrows. It was the first article to articulate content strategy as a distinct discipline within the "we make websites" field. For years, people had been doing this work—but it had no name, no definition, no framework. Lovinger gave it all three.
Content Strategy is to Copywriting
as
Information Architecture is to Design
Messaging & Sourcing
What are we trying to say, and to whom? Where is our content coming from? Define the message strategy and identify content sources before production.
Engagement & Findability
How do people find and connect with our content? Content must be discoverable, navigable, and structured for user goals—not just organization charts.
Planning & Strategy
The strategic layer that sits above execution. Plan before you produce. Define objectives, audiences, and success metrics. Strategy drives tactics.
Delivery & Management
How are we going to deliver and maintain it? Content needs systems, workflows, governance. It's not fire-and-forget—it requires ongoing care.
Content Strategy Is Interdisciplinary
Content strategy sits at the intersection—bridging disciplines that typically work in silos.
Lovinger's insight: content strategy isn't just copywriting, and it isn't just information architecture. It's the layer that connects them—the planning, sourcing, and governance that makes both work. It gave people doing this hybrid work a name and a framework to defend their role.
Rachel Lovinger had been doing content strategy work for years without calling it that. She started at Time Inc. in 1999, making and organizing websites for Entertainment Weekly. By the time she joined Razorfish in the mid-2000s, she had a job title that included "content strategy"—but explaining what that meant was a constant struggle.
In March 2007, she published "Content Strategy: The Philosophy of Data" on Boxes and Arrows, a respected UX publication. The article defined content strategy, distinguished it from copywriting and information architecture, and outlined its core principles. It became a watershed moment.
Kristina Halvorson later recalled: "That was a real watershed moment for me and I think at least 12 other content strategists around the country because that's about all there were of us. Seeing that article and going, 'Oh, this is what I do. And there's a name for it. And it's a thing.'"
Lovinger went on to build Razorfish's content strategy practice, author influential reports on digital publishing, pioneer content modeling frameworks, and become a recognized thought leader in the discipline. Her work at Razorfish (later Publicis Sapient) established governance frameworks and content systems that became industry standards.
2007: The Web 2.0 Era. By 2007, websites had evolved from static brochures to complex systems. CMSs existed. UX was established. Information architecture had frameworks. But content—the actual substance—was still treated as someone else's problem. Projects had designers, developers, and IAs, but nobody owned the words.
The Job Title Problem. People were doing content strategy work under various titles: information architect, content manager, web writer, digital strategist. Lovinger herself had "content strategy" in her job title at Razorfish, but explaining it was exhausting. Most people assumed it meant copywriting. It didn't.
The IA Connection. Information architecture was the closest precedent. Six years earlier, in 2001, nobody knew what "information architect" meant either. But by 2007, IA was recognized. Lovinger's analogy—"content strategy is to copywriting as information architecture is to design"—gave content strategists a reference point. If IA was legitimate, so was content strategy.
Boxes and Arrows as Platform. Boxes and Arrows was a peer-reviewed publication for the IA and UX community—the right audience to understand the need. When Lovinger's article appeared, it reached practitioners who had been struggling with the same problems. The response was immediate: "Oh, this is what I do."
Search Visibility Explosion. Rachel Lovinger later tracked Google search results for "content strategy." In 2000: 880 results. In 2007: Still minimal. In 2008 (after her article and Halvorson's A List Apart piece): 286,000 results. By 2009: 4,210,000 results. The term had gone viral.
Building at Razorfish. Lovinger didn't just write an article—she built a practice at Razorfish, one of the leading digital agencies. She developed governance frameworks, content modeling approaches, and metadata strategies for major clients. Razorfish became known for content strategy, training an entire generation of practitioners.
The 2009 Consortium. By March 2009, the first Content Strategy Consortium convened at the IA Summit. Organized by Kristina Halvorson and Karen McGrane, it brought together about 20 practitioners—including Lovinger—to formalize the discipline. The community was small but growing fast.
Why It Mattered. Lovinger's article gave scattered practitioners a shared identity and vocabulary. Before March 2007, you were alone. After, you were part of a movement. The article didn't invent the work—people had been doing it. But it named it, framed it, and made it defensible. That changed everything.