Branded Entertainment: Here to Stay?

Everyone agrees that times are tougher for traditional ads. Even Madison Avenue, while testifying to the continuing power of a great 30 second spot (with the right brand, strategy, and creative) is searching for new ways to offer a “360 degree” approach to branding – where broadcast ads are just one piece of the puzzle.

One of the newer pieces that ad folks spend a lot of time thinking about is branded entertainment (or “brand integration” or “product placement”). The frenzy really started with BMW’s glamorous online films – big budget affairs with top-tier directors and a variety of stars, each featuring a cool storyline that involved a lot of driving around in a Beamer.

Since then, there’s been a wave of copycats trying to create content that is basically an advertisement that people will choose to watch. Some companies are making online movies like BMW’s, others are paying buckets of cash to feature their products on reality TV shows, or in big budget movies—whether it’s the cell phone used in The Matrix Reloaded, or the cars driven in The Italian Job.

Some folks like Scott Donaton of Ad Age herald this as the way of the future (see his book “Madison & Vine: Why the Entertainment and Advertising Industries Must Converge to Survive”).

But people are already getting sick of product placements. There’s a really funny parody video online lampooning Tyra Banks’s hocking of products on “America’s Top Model” – and a spoof of the subservientchicken website making fun of The Apprentice’s brand huckstering (www.subservientdonald.com)

Businessweek’s David Kiley writes this week about Ford’s new online movies to promote its Lincoln and Mercury brands. But he complains that the cars hardly even appear in the movies—just some eccentric cereal-obsessed characters in their 20s who are supposed to inspire affection in Gen Y web surfers that will mystically rub off on the brand.

Has all this brand integration gone too far? Or is it just being executed in a crappy manner? (no news there – bad marketing stinks, no matter what trendy medium you use) BMW eventually got out of the movie-making business while they were still the top model to be beat.

When Donaton spoke at Columbia University last year, the discussion stayed mostly on the business models (yes – if we all start TiVo’ing out the ads, the networks will try to put products into all the shows to keep afloat). But it didn’t really zero in on the key question: when does this work and when does it not?

Is branded entertainment viable as a marketing tool that can be used for a variety of brands, and in a way that appeals to, and influences consumers? Or is this just another rotten idea like advertisements in the back of taxicabs?

Will marketers figure out how to make it work well like BMW did, or will they be hanging their head in shame at dinner parties of the future when people say “So, what do you do?” and they answer “Product placement.”