BRANDED CONTENT – WHERE IS IT ALL HEADING?
The direction from which brands approach content online is at a cross-road. The brand-to-content model has evolved from one of brands filling in the spaces between shows, to brands integrating into shows, to where we are now: brands producing their own shows. This shift is not one that has been missed by the digital marketing community. Publishers have been espousing the praises of online video for more than a few years now, but the fact remains that the content creators (ad agencies and production companies) have not really paid, or ignored the noise until recently.
Branded content has emerged as a result of two conspiring trends: One, the audiences unquenchable desire for ever-more entertaining content; and two the relative ease of creation and distribution for that content via web based technologies. It is at this juncture where things begin to get interesting. The formerly passive audience, who watched, listened and occasionally wrote in to TV and radio stations are now active participators found to be actively engaged in the programming: shaping shows, plots and even interacting with fictitious characters via social networking tools like Twitter and MySpace.
Several examples of this new model of drama-meets- entertainment-life are alive and well online. MySpace is in fact a good example of one stop shop media partner who can neatly deliver on all the key the components of a branded content experience delivering; a youthful audience, a means to facilitate distribution, production facilities and of course the mandatory integrated community features. Other similar examples but where the brand has chosen to produce the content themselves still seek to leverage the strength of popular social networks like MySpace and others to reach out to their unique audiences and drive engagement http://www.myspace.com/6beersofseparation. And a recent debut out of the UK is http://www.youtube.com/greeneyedworld by Sprite – where they have even cleverly pioneered Facebook connect technology into a Youtube channel.
Of course convincing a brand to invest their marketing budget in the production or co-production of branded content often proves a challenge in itself. Engagement is the new ROI and investments will be measured in contents’ ability to demonstrate results pertaining to this objective such as time spent, user comments, brand sentiment, and ‘new fans’ acquired.
Branded online content is still in its infancy and whilst a greater number of concepts are being conjured up, these for the most part lack the big budget, high production values people have come to expect of screen based experiences. Mobile devices are likely to change this perception though, and this is surely the future. Another trend of note in will be the increased volume of branded content built around and for niche communities of interest. Action sports and food are both very good examples of categories where amateur and branded content are emerging in larger markets like the US.
These are indeed exciting times for content makers, and more than ever the phrase ‘content is king’ rings true.
