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CHAPTER 1
DIGITALLY BORN KILLERS (OR WHAT BRANDED ENTERTAINMENT CAN DO FOR BRANDS)
Ricardo Dias, Anheuser-Busch InBev
Gabor Harrach, Consultant, formerly of Red Bull Media House
Call us brand detectives. As we began writing this chapter, something happened in the world (or in the skies above us) that might change the impact of branded entertainment for ever: Elon Musk's SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket was launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida; its payload Musk's personal red Roadster, an electric sports car built by his other brand, Tesla. Its humble mission, to orbit the sun (and Mars) for hundreds of millions of years. Strapped inside the Roadster is the so-called Starman, a mannequin in a branded SpaceX spacesuit.
It happened live on YouTube and everywhere else. It was a breathtaking demonstration of technological and marketing power. It was also beautiful (you know it, because you saw it). David Bowie's Life on Mars? played from the space car radio while our blue planet rotated slowly in the background. And it seemed that this song was written for exactly that magical moment. Days later we and countless others still watched the Starman live on YouTube. The images seemed to pick up where Red Bull's space jump left off in 2012. Was this a marketing film that would last millions of years? Was this a test flight or a real space mission? Or was it just a power demonstration by Elon Musk, because he could? It's probably all of the above. And it taught us a forceful lesson: not only is the threshold for marketing stunts now higher than ever (literally) but also the boundary between branded entertainment and the reality of a brand seems to have shifted to an extent that marketing itself becomes the brand. Only a day after the successful space car launch Tesla reported 'its biggest [quarterly] loss ever'. However, Tesla's stock price continues to soar like Elon Musk's rockets. And only a few weeks later the energy-drink maker Red Bull announced a mission to the moon for 2019, featuring Audi lunar quattro rovers. The moon mission will be aired live across multiple devices and in various forms. Not even the sky seems to be the limit any more.
In this chapter we will look at the role branded entertainment plays as part of an increasingly complex and shifting marketing mix. We investigate a mysterious void that turns customers away from traditional advertising and commercials, and we try to identify the culprit behind the void.
Who or what kills advertising as we know it? Please buckle up. It's quite a ride.
Our detective story starts in Cannes. For most of the year, it is a sleepy resort town on the French Riviera with sandy beaches and palatial hotels, but once a year it becomes ground zero for all things (and everyone) advertising – our crime scene.
The need
'We decided we are not here to teach the world, to teach you guys, what we think branded entertainment was,' said jury president PJ Pereira at the 2017 Lions Entertainment award ceremony in Cannes while more than two thousand delegates anxiously focused on him. 'We didn't pick work that matched what we had been pitching to our clients and that we were trying to get sold during the last few years. We were here with a very humble attitude to learn on behalf of all of you and to try to understand not what branded entertainment is but what it is becoming.'
The two authors of this chapter were part of this journey, learning and investigating to get a grasp on the elusive yet fashionable but still evolving term 'branded entertainment'. Along with PJ and our co-jurors, we spent the better part of a week in a dark, windowless jury room deep in the bowels of the massive concrete structure known as the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès de Cannes – in the middle of June on the French Riviera! The jury rooms are notorious for their freezing air conditioning and even colder food. (Sorry, Cannes Lions, but both rumours are actually true.) At the very least it kept our heads cool and our minds sharp during the sometimes heated debates. When we left the jury room we had found a few hints and clues to the big question. But to fully understand what branded entertainment is becoming we had first to explain its need and answer two fundamental questions:
1. Why do people from all over the world and almost all demographics increasingly ignore content that is being forced upon them (be it by publishers, advertisers or traditional television)?
2. What does branded entertainment ultimately achieve for brands? (Having worked for content-loving brands like Anheuser-Busch and Red Bull, we might have some answers but even more surprises for you.)
At the end of this chapter we offer a few ideas on how to create great branded entertainment. For an in-depth blueprint, please look forward to Part 2 of this book, 'The Art of Branded Entertainment'. Or, to put it in the language of our detective story, it's all about the motive, the means and the opportunity.
Let's start by looking at why so many of us have a motive to avoid advertising.
On-demand lifestyles
The way we consume content is closely linked to our lifestyles. We live in an on-demand economy (or shared society). We move around town on demand (Uber, Lyft, Zipcar). We date (Tinder, Bumble, Raya) and listen to music on demand (Spotify, Apple Music). We have the house cleaned on demand (Handy, Hux, Whizz). We eat on demand (Uber Eats, Deliveroo, Caviar). We watch content on demand (YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video). There's a convenient app for almost everything. We rate services and value experiences and have less time for anything unwanted, random or coincidental. We're accustomed to paying for exactly what we want and when we want it and increasingly refuse to pay for anything (including TV channels) we don't need. We increasingly cut the cord from cable TV companies and use ad blockers, creating a void and leaving traditional advertising platforms behind. PJ is not the only industry professional who felt the seismic shake-up close to home, as he has described in the foreword to this book. Ricardo, one of the authors of this chapter, also experienced how the distaste for commercials has already engulfed his own family members, especially the younger ones, the ones who are 'digital natives' or, in an even stronger and more fashionable term, 'digitally born'.
What happened to my cartoon?
A few years ago Ricardo and his family went to his home country of Brazil for end-of-year festivities. They chose Trancoso as their destination, a beautiful yet remote beach in the northern part of the country, very close to where the Portuguese first settled a little over 500 years ago. Even though the hippie-turned-chic beach had progressed dramatically over the last two decades, their rental property did not have an internet connection, so his four-year-old's content craving had to be met in the good old local TV broadcast – a first for her.
On their first night, while Ricardo and his wife were having dinner with their friends, their daughter was enjoying her coconut ice cream and watching a Brazilian cartoon on TV in the family room next door. All of a sudden she shouted, 'Daddy!' He immediately ran over, thinking something must have happened, to find her looking at him, pointing at the TV in disgust. She then asked him, 'What happened to my cartoon?' He looked over to the TV and back at her and reluctantly broke the news: 'This is a commercial, sweetie.'
The void
Notable dictionaries describe a void as 'an emptiness caused by the loss of something'.
Let's translate this into marketing lingo. The void is 'the absence of an audience caused by the loss of interest of consumers in advertising'. This results in the audience leaving traditional distribution platforms such as cable TV, a process described as 'cord-cutting'. Others, like Ricardo's daughter, are too young and too 'digitally born' even to remember linear television. They are 'cord nevers'.
Both having worked for major brands in the past ten years, we had no choice other than to develop strategies on how to engage the developing void crisis.
Engaging the void
When thinking of brand communication, marketers have to keep in mind what their consumers – loyal and potential – want from them. It is now clear that people no longer want to be interrupted. They don't want to have products pushed at them while their time is being taken away. However, one thing has not changed over time: they do like being entertained.
Our logical conclusion: branded entertainment needs to fill the void. As with so many other recipes for success, this sounds much easier to do than actually getting it done.
With an abundance of entertainment options nowadays, consumers are still on the hunt for a product that resolves a specific need. Because people still like to hear from brands, there is opportunity in making their time valuable. However, consumer habits are changing faster than ever, leading to elusive audiences.
Let's try to paint a more detailed picture of this mysterious void. Since almost all marketers are now storytellers, we keep approaching it like a detective story. Changing lifestyles have created a motive for the void. But it is technology that provides the means and opportunity for the consumer to kill traditional advertising by avoidance.
Avoidance by technology
An entry from our detective's notebook: easy-to-obtain technology has enabled media avoidance owing to many factors, and some of the following are culprits:
Shift to mobile across global markets
Ad blockers
Ad-free media platforms (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Spotify)
The DVR (digital video recorder) effect
The void in numbers
We didn't come to Cannes to judge creative work by the numbers. We watched the work as it is and then put its impact in context.
You didn't buy this book to get filibustered by statistics. You're looking for insights and clarity.
But this is a detective story. And we need to put two and two together. So let us measure how technology helped the consumer avoid advertising and extend the void.
The consumer-research platform eMarketer surveyed the growth of the void and cord-cutting. In 2017, before the year was even over, 22.2 million adults in the USA had already cut the cord on cable, satellite or telco TV services (that's up a frightening 33% from 16.7 million in 2016): 94% of consumers skip TV ads completely, and 236 million desktop browsers and 380 million mobile browsers were using ad-blocking software by the end of 2016 (up 38% from a year prior).
Media fragmentation
If this testimony wasn't alarming enough for advertisers and publishers, let us take a look at the collateral damage that media fragmentation is bringing about to the traditional advertising model. Currently, there is an abundance of choices in entertainment and media, with weekly emergences of new distributors and content creators.
There used to be half-a-dozen major studios competing in Hollywood. Now several dozen streaming services and production entities have disrupted and fragmented the film business. The same fragmentation happened in the TV and music industry. Where a handful of serious competitors once dominated the market, a multitude of new competitors are now fighting over audience and revenue.
We wonder, is the newly emerged, easy-to-obtain technology the elusive, digitally born killer of the old advertising model, or does it merely play the part of an enabler for the real killer?
Overstimulated communities
Throughout the industry there has been a dramatic increase in the amount of content consumed as well as produced, with non-ad-supported platforms increasingly winning over more viewers. Reportedly, the video-streaming service Netflix will invest $8 billion in creating original content in 2018 and add to the total of more than 500 scripted shows already developed and produced in 2017.
Of the many millions who are watching the content (and this development) there is one group with a particularly keen interest in the fragmentation: the brands.
Brands don't want to fall victim to the overstimulated communities and have their messages lost in the void – too much is at stake.
Many brands believe that to remain relevant the move from an interruptive advertiser to one that attracts an audience is inevitable. There are quite a few examples of brands that became successful entertainers. The list starts to shine a light on what branded entertainment can do for brands.
Over the past twenty years LEGO has transformed itself from a traditional toymaker into a media powerhouse. Its beloved toy characters rival Disney's on the small, large and digital screens.
At the beginning of the century the German car-maker BMW stunned the advertising world with a series of action-packed short films by notable directors such as Guy Ritchie, Tony Scott, John Frankenheimer, Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Ang Lee, Wong Kar-wai and Neill Blomkamp, which put high-performing BMW automobiles at the centre of the action. Fifteen years later the film series made a comeback starring Clive Owen.
Marriott International produces content for next-gen travellers, most of which is produced in-house. Not only do they produce social media content for about nineteen global hotel brands and a personalized online travel magazine (Marriott Traveler) but they also make TV shows (The Navigator Live), short movies (Two Bellmen, French Kiss), web series on YouTube and Instagram and a virtual reality (VR) experience in partnership with Facebook's Oculus Rift. One of Marriott's movies apparently resulted in $500,000 in hotel bookings in the first sixty days alone, the Marriott Traveler drove 7,200 room bookings in ninety days and the brand's interactive website is leveraging a built-in audience of 40 million visitors monthly.
Red Bull is not only known for its state-of-the-art movies, documentaries and digital content (the brand's YouTube channel currently has almost 7 million subscribers, more than 7,000 videos and more than 2 billion views), the energy-drink maker's media arm is also a successful publisher (The Red Bulletin) and has built its own digital content platform (Red Bull TV).
Digitally born (ad) killers
The further we investigate, the more likely it becomes that young digital natives' viewing habits and disruptive commercials aren't the only culprits to be blamed for the void and demise of traditional broadcast and cable TV. In the spirit of our detective story, let us look for other suspects.
The search starts with Gabor's first career in broadcast TV. Having worked as a television producer for more than ten years, he barely watches TV any more, with the exception of live sports. But it's not the commercials that annoy him – they can actually be quite fun. And as a Gen Xer, he's not digitally born – although, as kids, he and his friends had to create their own computer games because none was available or affordable. The main reason traditional TV has become disruptive and looks and sounds so dated to him is the fact that almost the entire content of today's TV is formatted so that it fits exactly into the spaces between commercial breaks – be it TV dramas, comedies, entertainment and reality shows, even made-for-television documentaries and news magazine shows. Everything is packaged like a kids' meal in a fast-food restaurant. Every act structure is basically the same and revolves around standardized commercial breaks. And if this isn't enough, there are endless recaps about what happened last time (or just before the commercial break) as well as countless, obnoxiously repetitive teasers to promote what else we must watch on this TV network. As a final assault, this already indigestible mix is frequently interrupted by local news breaks and severe weather warnings. It's the combination of these that is disruptive and makes the so-called linear TV experience more and more unbearable, especially in comparison to the smooth delivery of on-demand streaming platforms.
Nobody wants to be a suspect. Many stakeholders in the TV and production community, including some of Gabor's former colleagues and friends in broadcasting, may now cry out loudly in protest. They may point out their creative achievements in contemporary format development and successes in modernizing the TV experience for the twenty-first century. But the audience increasingly doesn't think so. And digital natives are disconnecting from linear TV altogether.
In our notebook the evidence and numbers keep adding up. Between 2012 and 2017 TV viewing by Americans aged between eighteen and twenty-four dropped by almost ten hours a week, or by roughly one hour and twenty-five minutes per day. Instead, during the first quarter of 2017 the same demographic spent an average of 2,226 minutes consuming online videos via PC and 414 minutes watching mobile videos per month.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Art of Branded Entertainment"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Monica Chun, Jules Daly, Ricardo Dias, Samantha Glynne, Carol Goll, Gabor Harrach, Marissa Nance, Toan Nguyen, Luciana Olivares, Marcelo Pascoa, PJ Pereira, Misha Sher, Pelle Sjoenell, Tomoya Suzuki, Jason Xenopoulos.
Excerpted by permission of Peter Owen Publishers.
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