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It's Complicated: Hollywood's Long Relationship with Branded Entertainment

09/05/2024
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Superbloom's head of branded entertainment Adam Milano on why the origin of soap operas lies in soap manufacturers like Procter & Gamble

I don鈥檛 think my father knows what I do for a living. When I told him I had moved from film and to branded entertainment, he looked at me with confusion and surmised, 鈥淟ike The Carnation Hour?鈥 I had to Google that - turns out he does know what I do.

was a radio series sponsored by Carnation Milk Company. It premiered in 1931 on the then-regional . The format ran for two decades until its final broadcast in 1951. The show gave platforms to entertainers like Buddy Clark and Dinah Shore, and was the earliest and most overtly branded form of entertainment I had ever seen.

That was until this year, when the transformed the real world into a pink fever dream. Although 70 years apart, these two references point to Hollywood鈥檚 longstanding relationship with branded entertainment. Here鈥檚 what we can learn from this rich history.

The roots of branded entertainment

The concept dates back to the 1950s, an era of broadcasting when radio and television programs were controlled by their sponsors and branded with company names. Shows like , Hallmark Hall of Fame and Westinghouse Studio One were simply part of the television genre.

Out of these shows came stories and characters that were (not-so-secretly) brand-fuelled. For instance, Columbo first appeared on television in a 1960 episode of the branded anthology series The Chevy Mystery Show. The term 'soap opera' originated from the fact that serialised dramas were sponsored by soap manufacturers like to promote products to a mostly female, daytime audience.

Today the relationship between advertisers and studios looks very different. For so long we operated under the longstanding cultural agreement 鈥済ive me Friends, OK I鈥檒l watch your Gap commercial鈥 until streaming came along. As a result of this shift, you have an entirely new audience who isn鈥檛 willing to watch commercials. This is problematic because recently, streaming platforms have built ad-supported networks to increase revenue and reach subscribers willing to trade their time for a lower monthly fee.

recently revealed its ad tier continues add users, with membership up almost 70% quarter over quarter. The majority of Peacock and sign-ups are ad-supported and, even though their overall subs fell, since launching ads late last year 40% of have signed up for ads. With set to kick off its ad-supported offering next year, we are now staring down the barrel of more ads at scale, something network television hasn鈥檛 been able to offer advertisers outside of sports in a very long time.

When you consider these two trends together - a commercial-averse gen z audience and an uptick in ad-supported streaming offerings - it begs the question: Who is going to watch all of these commercials that streamers are creating space for? 鈥淲e imagine that gen z is going to take a lot of bathroom breaks just to reap the benefits of a lower subscription fee, which means a lot of ads will go unwatched. The opportunity to change that is now,鈥 said SuperBloom House co-founder and CEO Briony McCarthy.

Could this mean a renaissance for branded entertainment? A recent survey found that 69% of 13- to 39-year-olds use streaming services to avoid ads, and the solution could be 鈥渉aving advertisers create their own content for the new on-demand services.鈥 But what does that look like?

Give the people what they want

When we talk about branded entertainment, we鈥檙e not talking about sponsorship. This form of advertising emerged in the 1950s and allowed companies to get their goods and brand names out there without disrupting the stories. Ford gave the production of Rebel Without a Cause automobiles, which became an integral part of early car culture and product placement appeal.

Culture has historically driven product sales. Just recently, sales of white Vans were up a post-Squid Games. But this isn鈥檛 what we mean by brands playing in entertainment.

What we鈥檙e talking about in 2023 is the brands becoming studios. Telling stories that are born from what they stand for or how they want to be perceived. This content can live in a theatre like Barbie did, on a streamer like Nike鈥檚 The Day Sports Stood Still, or simply can be shared on any of the other dozens of digital distribution mechanisms available to our eyeballs.

Recently brands like Nike, AB InBev and Saint Laurent have launched their own in-house entertainment studios to create stories that will reach audiences beyond a commercial break. Our clients are beginning to ask for it too. Mark DiCristina, vp of brand experience at Mailchimp Studios, launched back in 2019 to work directly with production companies on branded content.

鈥淧aid advertising is foundational to our success as a brand, but if it鈥檚 all we鈥檙e doing, then we only ever have people鈥檚 attention when we鈥檙e interrupting them from the thing they actually want to be doing - and we鈥檙e only interrupting them when we鈥檙e paying for the impression,鈥 he said. 鈥淏y making content people actually want to consume, we expand our relationship with our audience, and we expand the meaning of our brand.鈥

Success depends on a few things

One, the entertainment has to be good. For audiences to willingly gravitate to a brand-fuelled movie or series, they need to be made by different types of creatives. Outside of the celebrity-backed companies, most ad agencies aren鈥檛 made up of people who are conventionally trained in entertainment development, packaging or longer-form storytelling.

Secondly, the brands need to get a lot out of their investment. This means you need an entirely separate engine of a company dedicated to executing their goals. This is a major opportunity because the brands have incredible global reach. If activated properly, they could really change the calculus of how something performs.

Imagine if HBO鈥檚 docuseries 100 Foot Wave were powered by a brand like Corona that has aligned with surf culture for decades. HBO would have had both a marketing partner and a passionate audience of beer drinkers, who make up 46% of the US population. We have to imagine this is valuable to a streamer when they are working with decreasing marketing budgets and an abundance of content choices. A brand like Corona could really help a series break through the noise.

So how do we get more brands to see themselves as studios and get them excited about the ROI of making their own entertainment? We (the audience) already see them that way. I think of Stanley Tucci鈥檚 character鈥檚 quote in Devil Wears Prada: 鈥淲hat they created was greater than art because you live your life in it.鈥 The same can be said for the brands we use and love because we have memories attached to them.

Let鈥檚 take those emotional touch points across sports, music, culture, food, fashion, comedy and social interest, and build entertaining stories that can become not a replacement but a more resonant alternative to commercials.

This article was first published on .

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