Internet video, digital entertainment, social networks, online content, convergence and industry insight.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
The Redemption Room
Business travel often rewards the weary with unbridled surprises. My flight from Richmond (pictured at left) landed late so I missed my connection in Atlanta. They booked me on a flight scheduled to leave the next day and told me to go to the room where I could redeem my hotel and breakfast voucher. The Redemption Room. This is the room where you go if you are crying or angry or tired or cranky. A room full of the bleary-eyed, seeking a new itinerary. Good times.
Looking on the bright side, I did get a complimentary care package with a toothbrush and some toiletries. Plus I got to visit the McDonalds off Airport Road by my Red Roof Inn. Plus, Richmond was lovely.
Back in the late 1990s, me and fellow Internet junkies in Seattle would occasionally take time away from the computers to eat. A little Thai place in Pioneer Square was always packed with dozens of high-tech knowledge workers. Mae Phim was the place to go if you wanted to pick up secrets, spot entrepreneur rock stars or spread rumors. It is still there today. Order the garlic chicken. Three star.
One of the terms I hear all the time in this industry (especially at Microsoft) is "dogfooding". It means to use your own product (eat your own dog food). You can't expect others to use your software if you don't use it yourself. The concept is said to have originated with actor Lorne Green who, in the Alpo dog food commercials of the 1970s, exclaimed that he fed it to his own dog. Yum!
Found Photos is still one of my favorite websites ever. The best ideas on the Internet are sometimes the simplest. This site celebrates the twisted spectacle of humanity, displayed with amateur snapshots for your voyeuristic pleasures.
As the creator describes it, "The Found Photos started in 2004 while searching for mp3's using a filesharing program. I was searching through someones shared file list and saw a folder named 'pictures'. I downloaded the folder and found 20 or more pictures from this persons life, photos of himself and his friends etc. It made me wonder what else was out there, and after searching for more photos I found hundreds, thousands of them publicly shared. The FoundPhotos Archives consist of my filtered view from hundreds of thousands of images downloaded via peer to peer filesharing networks, updated regularly."
Bloggers with video. Subjective audiovisual journals telling intimate stories. They have been posting to YouTube since the beginning, but now many outlets broadcast personal video logs.
United Vloggers is attempting to attract outspoken, talented and interesting storytellers to post regular videos. Some great stuff...some junk.
Ze Frank broadcast a short vlog every day for a year straight. This is a master storyteller and an articulate spoken word master. Few vlogs are this eloquent.
Justin.tv started a huge live video trend recently. This is vlogging to the extreme. Justin Kan began broadcasting his life continuously around the clock in early 2007 and now many others have joined this "lifecaster" by broadcasting their own lives 24/7 using wearable cameras.
A gazillion hours of talking heads and their personal narratives await!
I see a possible future where almost all commercially-produced entertainment will be what we call today, “branded entertainment”. Whereas today we are awash with “interruption marketing” (commercials that punctuate your TV show with pauses), tomorrow we will have stories that are financially supported more directly by brands. Positive side effects may include more visibility into who is footing the bill for our content. We will also benefit, as media consumers, from the increase in variety and the decrease in interruption. However, the pitfalls are many. Dangers include the possible triumph of propaganda over free press or the diluting of all that is culturally pure. But whatever, bring on the entertainment!
It has been called advertainment, branded content, advertorial and content marketing. Some call it story marketing, capturing the imagination first and the wallet thereafter. Merchandise joins narrative. Experiential campaigns with brand integration. A new age where brands speak to their audiences thru the use of stories, ideas and characters. The much-blathered-about death of the 30 second spot.
Some modern entertainment more closely resembles a traditional TV commercial. For example, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition is essentially a 60-minute Sears commercial. Sponsor and creator become one. Other branded content, while still being a commercial, feels more like entertainment. One example is the BMW Films campaign which started a massive trend back in 2001, paving the way for numerous experiments and innovations.
Back in 1995 I worked on a website project for MCI. Gramercy Press was a fictional office from their television commercials, filmed in a “reality TV” style. The website displayed clickable photos of office locations, allowing the visitor to dig into the desk or listen to the voicemail messages. The audience began to identify with the characters in the episodic TV commercials and had a ravenous appetite for online “back-story”. I remember talking to one MCI partner who was under the impression that Gramercy Press was a real company, staffed by real people and was worried that the website would be left unattended if “Sheila” from the commercial was hit by a bus or was out sick. I distinctly remember a conference call where my colleagues and I at Free Range Media in Pioneer Square, patiently explained that Sheila was a fictional character from a marketing campaign…and this was an MCI vendor close to the project. Story Power! (Evidence of this campaign is hard to come by. All I could find was this and this.)
Today giant corporations like Microsoft understand the power of story and encourage marketing campaigns such as SiteOfChampions.com, an interactive, narrative Flash/video campaign to promote their SideWinder mouse. And huge brands such as Got Milk? develop richly imagined and painstakingly executed interactive marketing art like GetTheGlass.com.
A frenzy has begun to infect all modern media. Today this phenomenon of the merging of brand and story is explored in many mainstream media. PBS Frontline broadcast a great documentary called The Persuaders which explores this world. Characters seem to be jumping seamlessly from sitcoms to advertisements and even the reverse. Caveman began as a Geico commercial and has now become a TV show. Even mainstream magazines like AdWeek have created sub-brands like Madison & Vine to explore the merging of Madison Avenue and Hollywood.
This swirling vortex of modern messaging in mutating before our eyes. Watch it unfold and you may find yourself simultaneously fascinated, repulsed, intrigued and disgusted. Behold!
The ON: Digital + Marketing blog has a page of posts regarding branded entertainment including stories about Hanes underwear, Mercedes-Benz.TV, P&G’s Crescent Heights online soap opera, Scion’s “Little Deviants”, Oprah’s product placement and more.
Gamekillers: Axe Dry and MTV team up to bring you a show about guys sweating over chicks.
Wikipedia talks about how branded content blurs conventional distinctions between what constitutes advertising and what constitutes entertainment.
A search for branded entertainment on Del.icio.us brings up almost 600 links.
Hottest Mom in America, a reality TV series that auditions American women vying for the title of "Hottest Mom", is one of the first entries by a pharmaceutical company into Branded Entertainment. The show from Buzznation studios is backed by a single sponsor, Medicis Pharmaceutical, the makers of the Restylane cosmetic injection treatment.
Aquent is a marketing company with “the world’s largest creative talent pool”, more than 400,000 working creatives. They understand the growing need for creators to build story-driven campaigns.
Branded integrations are many things, but "measurable" is not often a word that can easily be used to describe them. But NextMedium, a branded entertainment company based in Los Angeles, is bringing accountability and detailed metrics to the art of product placement.
What can actually be called “Branded Entertainment” anymore? The production of most modern entertainment was paid for by someone, somewhere along the line. Is branded entertainment simply the stuff where the brand is exposed? I don’t mind watching sponsored content, as long as it is of high narrative quality…plus I also like to be told who is paying for it.
Much of the new branded entertainment will not resemble a traditional product promotion model; in fact some entertainment may not mention a product at all. A simple brand identification at the beginning may allow the viewer to make the association. A viewer might think, "Brand A created this content. I like this content. Therefore I like Brand A."
We’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors…
Business travel often rewards the weary with unbridled surprises. My flight from Richmond (pictured at left) landed late so I missed my connection in Atlanta. They booked me on a flight scheduled to leave the next day and told me to go to the room where I could redeem my hotel and breakfast voucher. The Redemption Room. This is the room where you go 
if you are crying or angry or tired or cranky. A room full of the bleary-eyed, seeking a new itinerary. Good times. 
