The era when a brand could create four spots a year is over. In today’s media landscape, in which consumers crave on-demand content they can interact with on ever-evolving formats, a company is more likely to create 5,000 assets in year.

So in an industry facing fragmentation, different behavior among different generations, and an explosion of content, what is keeping brands up at night?

Vice Media’s Tom Punch, the global executive creative director at Vice Media, answered the question without hesitation at PromaxBDA: The Conference 2016 Thursday. “The number-one thing people are concerned about,” the global executive creative director said, “is relevance and quickly losing relevance.”

Consumers get bored easily. So to capture their attention, brands need to take risks and think outside-of-the-box to contribute to the cultural conversation.

“Everyone is a media brand now,” pointed out Christina Norman, current Media Storm and former OWN CEO. “So how do you shift from being a packaged goods brand to thinking like a media brand? They have to think differently. The rules are still being written.”

One of the first steps to a successful partnership is actually working as partners, rather than client and vendor.

“Co-creation is an interesting way to look at this,” said Norman. “The brand has amazing assets to bring to the table and the other partners do as well. We are trying to enter at it from a people place. Everyone has insights that are valued and need to be attacked fully to provide the best entertainment and marketing experience.”

If a brand is coming to work with Vice Media, Punch said that they are usually going to them for a reason. They are targeting a more millennial audience and are willing to take edgy risks — which he said is a good thing because, “If you are pushing clients towards something it’s an uphill battle.”

Co-creation has led to many successful campaigns from on-demand fireworks displays to Hennessy’s sponsored “Rap Monument,” in which Vice and the brand produced the longest rap ever. (Watch it all below if you have 42 minutes to spare.)

Vice also put a spin on the classic phone-a-thon with the charity (Red)’s star-studded “Shop-a-Thon” to raise money on World AIDS Day.

Media Storm, however, has to do more brand education — particularly since it is working with many clients that aren’t traditional entertainment companies.

“We work with a cruise line and they really wanted a food integration,” Norman recalled. “They really wanted a chef. One chef, one chef. But we moved them towards a relationship with a television show which gives them sixteen weeks rather than a one-off and putting everything on one name. It’s about co-creation with the show.”

Creating something relevant involves letting go, taking risks, and also managing expectations.

“Not every brand needs to do something that has never been done before,” said Punch. Sure, sometimes pushing boundaries makes sense — like when Vice and Samsung created an interactive fireworks show.

“But sometimes it’s about format,” Punch said. “A lot of what brands need to do is definitively own a space… How do you create something that isn’t just a one off?”

These new endeavors should be reflective of and integrate into a company’s DNA.

“Just because you’re doing something that hasn’t been done before doesn’t mean that you’re abandoning everything you’ve done in the past,” said Norman. “Make sure they know they are evolving their brand message.”

Like when Media Storm worked with Fox’s Brooklyn Nine-Nine on a campaign inserted star Terry Crew’s voice into the traffic-spotting app Wave before the season two premiere. More than 240,000 people changed to their app’s voice to the larger-than-life actor’s in a month.

Although, Norman pointed out, that project was with “a client who was willing to take a risk. A client that had a large enough media budget where they can say, ‘this won’t kill me if it doesn’t work.’”

Of course there are risks involved in any out-of-box campaign. The chance of failure rivals the chance of successes, and brands need to be aware of that from the get-go. But one thing is certain. As Norman put it, “Not doing anything is the biggest risk of all.”

Tags:


  Save as PDF