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People are sick of advertising on TV. What they want is to be entertained.
That was the message from a panel of marketing executives to a crowd of business school students and industry professionals at the E2: Evolution of Entertainment Conference on Friday at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
The panel, produced in partnership with PromaxBDA, featured Brian Briskman, president and creative director of B2+; Victoria Chew, VP of marketing partnerships, franchise and synergy at ABC Entertainment; Lorenzo de Guttadauro, SVP brand creative at Esquire Network, and Rick Haskins, executive VP of marketing and digital programs at The CW discussing the emerging brand paradigm.
“One of the things we like to do is not just insert talent talent into a spot and create a commercial,” ABC’s Chew said. “We like to tell a story. We like to infuse the content of the show and the brand of the show into the things we create.”
She pointed to a holiday season campaign with Target called “My Kind of Holiday” that featured talent from three different ABC sitcoms sharing gifts with each other. There was very little Target branding in the three spots, and each finished with a brief tune-in card. But the spots told a tight, coherent story that crossed over between sitcoms, with talent from one show featuring a gift that fit with their characters with the talent from another show.
Chew said that approach was more effective, and more appealing to viewers, than simply putting talent in a spot and sticking an advertiser’s branding all over it.
Haskins, from The CW, pointed out that it pays to be risky and act without fear of being fired if you really want to tell a story today.
He talked about a recent spot for “The Originals” that poked fun at its main timeslot rival, “Pretty Little Liars” on ABC Family.
The spot took aim at a central character in the ABC Family drama—the mysterious ‘A"—and some rising fan frustration that “A” never seems to be revealed.
While he caught some flak from the network, Haskins said the risky move paid off, because even though the ad was only placed in New York and Los Angeles, the video went viral, and his team got a lot more marketing bang for their buck.
Esquire’s de Guttadauro talked about the challenges of bringing a new network to life in today’s competitive TV landscape, and how promotion fits into that puzzle.
The Esquire team saw men picking and choosing their programming across many different platforms and networks. Some food content here, some fashion content there. Esquire’s philsophy: bring them all together under one roof.
“Why not give them one place where we can give them programming that speaks to them,” he said. “We do a big mix of programming and look at the Esquire brand lens and use that as a way to tell stories.”
Brief Take: Branded campaigns are becoming more important to the bottom line, especially as competition for viewers and ad dollars heats up. Marketing teams are going to have to get creative and think beyond the throw-some-talent-in-with-a-logo formula if they want to drive viewer engagement.
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