In an increasingly cluttered media environment, finding the best way to be heard is an everyday struggle for advertisers and marketers. It requires great engaging ads across all possible channels, a perfectly tailored online environment to accompany it, an animated conversation on social media platforms and a powerful (therefore expensive) media plan… Amongst other cleverly though schemes.
One of these other cleverly thought schemes is creating branded content. It is not an ad, or an advertorial of any kind, it is purely content but produced by a brand. Some define it as narrowly as product placement. Brands pay for content that are not ads but which will display their products. The simpler way of seeing branded content is by just considering it as quality content, paid for by brands. Sometimes, there will be product placement, but it can also be where the content is hosted (website or branded YouTube channel for example) or who is it attributed to in the credits (“Presented By”).
Take American Family Insurance for example; it is exactly what it sounds like: an American company selling insurance to people. In an effort to create a “multichannel campaign”, they decided to produce a web series named “In Gayle We Trust”. A web series that worked so well, they are actually broadcasting season two as we speak. Why does it work? Well, I don’t have any insider information on the project but it might be because it is produced by NBC Digital, written by Brent Forrester (who wrote episodes for The Simpsons and The Office) and starring Elisa Donovan (“Clueless,” “Beverly Hills, 90210,” “Sabrina The Teenage Witch”). But it could also be simply because the episodes were entertaining and people could relate with the content. “In Gayle We Trust” narrates the tribulations of insurance agent Gayle Evans trying to advise the idiosyncratic residents of made-up town Maple Grove. This could be a surprising posture for a brand like American Family Insurance but it worked because they respected all the golden rules of branded content.
Of course not everyone is going as far as American Family Insurance but the thought process is similar, from a small product placement to creating entire seasons of a show. There seems to be one product people seem to remember easily from the show House M.D., because it is perfectly on brand. Can you tell what brand of computer Gregory House uses? Do you remember any other brand he seems to be regularly consuming?
How to do it well?
Firstly, you need to be on brand. Exactly like anything you do in advertising. The key to producing effective brand content is to have the story perfectly in line with the strategy. Just like any other marketing effort, if the positioning is well defined and the content produced is coherent with the brand identity, you are on the road to success. If you don’t do that, however good the content is, it is not going to serve your brand. How many times have we seen great content but are not able to remember which brand was behind it.
There is another effort to make. The problem is this is not just advertising, it is content. So there is one more layer to your strategy: You also need to connect with your audience and give a convincing and compelling point of view about the world. The content needs to be of quality and relevant to your audience.
Finally, behind content, there is a media plan. If it is product placement, you don’t have to worry about it but if you are co-producing content that you will own as a brand then you need to make it easily accessible for your audience. That issue is critical and all channels’ strengths and weaknesses have to be carefully evaluated. It can range from a short time slot on national TV to a YouTube channel or a free downloadable program from your own website or content platforms (like iTunes).
You need all four aspects of your strategy switched on: It is about being “on brand”, “on target”, “on trend” and “on air”!
Why do we bother with branded content? It has a bright future, because the lines between editorial and advertising have been blurring. Brands are becoming publishers because people don’t want to see as many ads anymore and brands still want to be seen. The hope I have is that it could lead to a good economic model that could help the content industry: We download a lot of media and we don’t seem to really want to pay for content. Brands want to communicate in other ways than advertising and are willing to pay for it. Brand sponsorship could be a good way to make everyone financially “viable”.
Note: For people who are not viewers of House M.D., Gregory House uses an Apple laptop. “Think Different”, right?
