Artful entertainment
Traditional advertising struggles to capture attention—the eye, accustomed to a constant barrage of everyday influences, increasingly looks past sales campaigns and image-building efforts. This makes it all the more important to explore new approaches.
Promotion of art or flattening of content?
Music is a big part of what is shared on social platforms today, what users talk about. This was confirmed by Danielle Lee at the IAB workshop "Liquid Creativity" in Cannes. She is Head of Digital and Development Media at Vevo, a music video and entertainment online service for various platforms. As Lee says, Vevo has already recorded two billion views in 2015. Product integration into existing music videos is an important aspect of this. She believes that more and more fans of musicians and their videos expect brand and content to match when it comes to product integration. In concrete terms, this means that every brand must reach the audience in such a way that the content exactly matches the interests of the brand and target group. Against this backdrop, the question arises as to whether musicians will have to align their work in the future so that their content matches the target groups of the brands that like to promote them. And it seems that a large audience already expects product placements or trend references from their preferred artists. However, a collaboration between musicians and corporate brands does not mean that the artist bends their ideas and musical realization to suit the brand. Or does it? In Cannes, various presentations and workshops focused on the question of whether and how content providers can position and brand themselves in collaboration with a preferred brand. This creates a mutual dependency between the company or product brand and the artist. There is a danger that an independent musician could quickly be turned into a means for advertising purposes. David Guetta, DJ and a brand in his own right, vehemently disagrees. In Cannes, he charmingly expressed this to Publicis CEO Maurice Lévy. He describes how to avoid being dependent on a brand and that a suitable collaboration can do more good than harm to the musician. David Guetta is a brand in his own right, both as a DJ and as a person. He built up the mainstream Guetta brand from the underground, as he says. Club owners and radio stations did not want to play his music and the police closed down his events. So he organized raves at secret locations and sent out detailed information at the last minute. This direct communication with his fans was also the basis of his future social media strategy. According to Guetta, creativity and authenticity serve as the basis for his image design. He only enters into collaborations with brands that support him in what he already does. For example, he was happy to work with the champagne brand Mumm. This brand supported him in making a music video for "Dangerous" - not a bad thing for Mumm either: the video has around 85 million YouTube views. Guetta would not enter into many other collaborations if he could not credibly represent that such a product is part of his character. According to Guetta, a collaboration should be a success for both parties and the content has to be right. That is what he does in the area of co-branding.
"Branded entertaining" - towards purpose-driven content?
More and more brands and content creators are working together. Musicians, entertainers and artists rely on brands to support or even pay for their work. This blurs the boundaries between quality content and brand promotion. Advertising Week spoke to Mirriad CEO Ted Mico about this in the wake of the Cannes Lions Festival.
WW: What was your impression of this year's Cannes Lions Festival?
Ted Mico: What pleased me the most was the speed of change. Advertising is completely dependent on people's attention; the most expensive and difficult thing in the world is getting the attention of potential customers. The whole advertising industry is based on it. So we try to stay agile on all sides. The changes are practically forced on them by the consumers. Because no consumer is not attentive if advertising does not hit the content they are interested in. We use the brands specifically where people are already paying attention.
Mirriad places advertising and brand image where they actually get attention - in content. That sounds like flat, purpose-driven content.
We still talk about "branded content", but this is actually the wrong perspective. It makes no difference whether content is branded or not. There is either good content or bad content. Content is either entertaining or boring. So as long as content provides entertainment, it works for both the brand and the consumer. One day, the term "branded content" will disappear because it will become less and less important.
Does this mean that in future, creatives will attract the attention of brands and adapt to them in order to be able to realize their own work at all?
We're living in an economically challenging time for content creation, so I think content owners are probably going to have to look more for brands to support their shows. To do that, they'll probably have to look more for in-video advertising. Brands need to be part of a culture - be it music or TV or video - to understand the meaning of the audience and to become part of what people are doing today. So I think content creators will try to attract brands, but I also think brands and agencies need to attract storytellers. The distinction between the two is blurring and Mirriad is accelerating this trend.
Do you think the Beatles would have taken part in in-content advertising?
With the right brand, probably. And as long as all four members had agreed. What I mean is: Paul McCartney allowed Lexus to sponsor one of their concert tours, but he had set certain conditions, including an alternative to leather seats - he was vegan - and he got what he asked for. Are there artists who don't want to work with brands? Definitely. You almost can't imagine Radiohead or the Beastie Boys as part of a mainstream brand campaign. If people want to make money by putting brands in their content, we run that process painlessly, but that's their choice.
When do the interests of a brand and a musician match?
Our technologies enable us to create works that fit together very well. But the content has to fit right from the start. Brand and content should pursue the same goal. We don't produce a video that is completely built around the brand. The whole thing should be a good collaboration. Otherwise, the result is a work that matches the brand but not the target group, or vice versa. Nobody gains anything from that.
How does this work without compromising the artist's credibility?
I think it's quite easy to do, there are many good examples of this already. Our research says that if it looks like it's always been there, if it looks integrated and authentic, the results for brand recall are much higher than if the whole thing clearly comes across as advertising. If you don't know whether it was already there or whether we put it there - persuasive advertising, so to speak, less direct and clumsy. Fitting into the content is the new way to stand out.
Less direct, but more subversive.
Your words, not mine.
What was Mirriad's first in-content campaign?
That was with Karcher on the Discovery channel and with Tresemme on the Sky channel.
Interview: Ursina Maurer
