Branded Web Series & The Content Marketing Sweet Spot
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What are branded web series? How are brands using them? Why should you care? This presentation covers everything you need to know about branded web series.
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Branded Web Series & The Content Marketing Sweet Spot
- 1. Branded Web Series & The Content Marketing Sweet Spot Dan Levy, Sparksheet
- 2. What are branded web series? How are brands using them? Why should you care? Overview
- 3. What is a branded web series? Video entertainment produced by a brand’s marketing department and distributed online Not sponsorship or brand integration May or may not feature brand/products on screen
- 4. Brands as Studios: The Hire, 2001
- 5. Brands as Studios: The YouTube Era
- 6. Distribution: Online Video Networks
- 7. Ikea: “Easy to Assemble” Heavy branding Distribution: Fan sites 11 million views across channels
- 8. Ikea: Easy to Assemble
- 9. Goal: Brand awareness and affinity among U.S. small businesses, entrepreneurs 8.5 million views, 80,000 social media followers Brand awareness rose from 0% to 11% Distribution: Hulu Hiscox: “Leap Year”
- 11. Schick Hydro: “Clean Break” Goal: Brand affinity and market share among 18-34 year-old men From “free your skin” tagline to “clean break” reality series Distribution: Fuel TV
- 12. Schick Hydro: “Clean Break”
- 13. Produced by “L Studio” and Lisa Kudrow’s production company Emmy-nominated Distribution: Showtime Lexus: “Web Therapy”
- 15. Target: Falling For You Heavy branding e-commerce integration Distribution: Limited by microsite
- 16. Target: Falling For You
- 17. Takeaways Brand awareness and affinity most common goals, though opportunities for e-commerce integration Distribution limited by “brandedness” Paid vs. earned media Bang for your buck
- 18. The Content Marketing Sweet Spot
- 19. What does this mean for IFE? Branded web series for airlines? Quality inflight content Brand partnerships Revenue generation
- 20. Airlines as Media Brands
Notes de l'éditeur
- I’m Dan Levy, editor of Sparksheet, which is a multiplatform media and marketing magazine published by Spafax.For the last couple of years Sparksheet has been been covering the APEX Expo in an effort to make connections between the inflight entertainment world and the broader content, media and marketing universe. So in that spirit, I’m here to talk about a new media trend that I think offers plenty of insights and opportunities for IFE professionals. Opportunities for both content and revenue generation, which is what I call the content marketing sweet spot. More specifically, I’m here to talk about branded web series.
- So here’s what I’m hoping to cover in the half hour we have together.First, I want to look at what branded web series are and give you a little history and context. Then I want to take you through a few case studies and share some takeaways that I gleaned from interviews with several brands and agencies who have worked on these series. And finally, I’m hoping we can have a short discussion about what all this means for IFE professionals. But before I begin, I’d love to do a quick census of who’s in the room:How many of you are on the airline side? How many of you work for CSPs?How many of you represent studios? Did I miss anyone?
- How many of you know what a web series is? Basically what we’re talking about Is original video content produced for the web.Web series have become increasingly popular, particularly among millennials. Big name actors like Tom Hanks and Jennifer Aniston have starred in them. They even have their own awards program, the Streamys. So a branded web series is a web series that is produced by and for a brand. Of course, sponsorship and brand integration have been part of television for decades. Soap operas are called soap operas because they were underwritten by consumer goods companies like Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Premium cable shows like Mad Men are brilliant and incorporating brands into their storylines.The difference here is that brands aren’t just sponsoring these shows, their marketing departments are actually creating them. They may partner with agencies or production companies that specialize in producing this sort of content, but the key is that the studio is the brand itself. And as we’ll see, while some of these series do weave the brands and their products into their stories, many of them don’t even mention the brand at all. So we’re not talking about product placement ala the Truman Show.
- There’s a lot of buzz these days about brands as publishers. Something that airlines, which have been producing inflight magazines for decades, understand better than most. Well, with branded web series we have an example of brands as studios. This is the poster for a series of videos produced by BMW called The Hire, which is often cited as the first example of branded entertainment on the web, although at the time they were positioned as “short films” rather than as a web series.The videos got a lot of attention because they were directed by big name directors like Ang Lee and Guy Ritchie and starred Clive Owen as an action hero who drives people around in various high-performance BMW cars. The product integration was pretty obvious in this case, but the fact that BMW was able to get A-list directors and actors involved gave the series a lot of credibility.
- Of course,YouTube hadn’t even been invented yet in 2001 and video streaming technology wasn’t very advanced. – BMW had to create a special website to host the videos, and also distributed them on DVD thorough their car dealerships. With the launch of YouTube in 2005, web series now had a free distribution network and began to receive audiences in the millions.In 2006 a temporary employment agency called Spherion created what’s known as the first branded web series, The Temp Life, which was essentially a knock-off of The Office, featuring a series of young temps in quirky office jobs. Since then dozens of international brands have launched their own web series, including Toyota, Subway and Ikea.
- YouTube isn’t your only option these days. There’s a pretty developed online infrastructure that brands can tap into with several online TV networks offering distribution and promotion, as well as sharing of ad revenue. That said, most brands are hesitant to share the platform with other advertisers so they either foresake ads – and therefore revenue sharing – altogether or they just run their own brand messages between clips. For series that don’t integrate the brand into the content itself, this is often their primary opportunity to market themselves directly. Someof these networks are geographically specific – Hulu is only available in the States, while Youku is big in China and Rutubeis Russia’s leading online video network.
- Let me take you through a few examples. Thefirst is an example of a web series with pretty heavy brand integration. Ikea’s Easy to Assemble stars actress Illeana Douglas, who also wrote and created the series. In the show Douglas plays a fictional version of herself who decides to leave Hollywood and pursue a normal life as an Ikea employee. Here’s a short clip. I’ll play you a short clip and then tell you a little more about it. _____As you can see, the Ikea brand is all over the series. I spoke to a guy named Wilson Cleveland who runs as production company called Unboxd Media, which has produced several branded web series including The Temp Life, the first one ever. He was involved with distribution and promotion for Easy to Assemble and he told me that when they approached Hulu for distribution in the States they essentially said, “Love the show, but that’s going to be a 500 thousand dollar ad buy”The branding was just too overt to pass off as a regular web series. Ikea, on the other hand, was like, “They should be paying us!”So instead, they approached several Ikea fan sites – apparently there of those – and created custom players for each site. They then ran a contest where the the first site to get 1 million views would get a shout-out in the first season finale. Cleveland said the show ended up getting 11 million views across channels.
- As you can see, the Ikea brand is all over the series. I spoke to a guy named Wilson Cleveland who runs as production company called Unboxd Media, which has produced several branded web series including The Temp Life, the first one ever. He was involved with distribution and promotion for Easy to Assemble and he told me that when they approached Hulu for distribution in the States they essentially said, “Love the show, but that’s going to be a 500 thousand dollar ad buy”The branding was just too overt to pass off as a regular web series. Ikea, on the other hand, was like, “They should be paying us!”So instead, they approached several Ikea fan sites – apparently there of those – and created custom players for each site. They then ran a contest where the the first site to get 1 million views would get a shout-out in the first season finale. Cleveland said the show ended up getting 11 million views across channels.
- This next example is a lot more subtle in the branding department.Hiscoxis a Bermuda-based insurance company that’s been established in the UK for over a century. In 2011, they started offering small business insurance in the U.S. market where they measured their brand awareness at 0%. To change that, they produced a web series called Leap Year, which follows a fictional tech startup competing for money from a mystery investor and features cameos from various Silicon Valley celebrities. In this case, the brand itself is never mentioned. Here’s a short clip:_____I spoke to Hunter Hoffman, the U.S. communication manager at Hiscox, who told me the series was all about building brand awareness and affinity among American small business owners, entrepreneurs and startups. He told me the series got just under 8.5 millions views over its two seasons and garnered 80,000 followers across its various social media channels, 70 percent of whom self-identified as entrepreneurs. Meanwhile, their brand awareness among US entrepreneurs rose from 0% to 11% after the first season. And unlike Ikea, because the series didn’t include any overt branding, for the second season they were able to get distribution and promotion from Huluwhich gave the show more credibility as well as an established audience. So overall, the brand considered it a huge success.
- I spoke to Hunter Hoffman, the U.S. communication manager at Hiscox, who told me the series was all about building brand awareness and affinity among American small business owners, entrepreneurs and startups. He told me the series got just under 8.5 millions views over its two seasons and garnered 80,000 followers across its various social media channels, 70 percent of whom self-identified as entrepreneurs. Meanwhile, their brand awareness among US entrepreneurs rose from 0% to 11% after the first season. And unlike Ikea, because the series didn’t include any overt branding, for the second season they were able to get distribution and promotion from Huluwhich gave the show more credibility as well as an established audience. So overall, the brand considered it a huge success.
- This next series is another example of a brand taking its unique value proposition and spinning it into a web series in a pretty subtle way. Schick Hydro is the #2 5-blade razor in North America and pretty much everyone else in the world behind Gillette. In the UK and some other places the razors are sold under the parent brand, Wilkinson Sword. So Schick is essentially in a protracted battle to claim market share from Gillette, particularly in the 18-34 year-old male demographic.Last year Schick created a six-episode reality series called Clean Break to reach that demographic.Instead of finding ways to show young men shaving, they started brainstorming around the slogan “Free Your Skin” and the idea of making a “clean break” from your current razor.So they created a reality series around three men in their 20s and 30s who go to Hawaii to make a “clean break” from their lives and pursue their dreams. ___ I spoke to Brad Harrison, Schick’s North American marketing director, who admitted that there are only so many ways to market what is essentially, “A piece of sharp metal on a stick,” so it made sense to make a more emotional, lifestyle-oriented appeal. Harrison wouldn’t tell me how many views the series got but, in a sense, it’s a moot point since the show also ran on FuelTV, an extreme sports network that features sports like wakeboarding and ultimate fighting and that has roughly 26 million subscribers in the U.S. – many of whom, as you can imagine, belong to Schick’s target demographic.
- I spoke to Brad Harrison, Schick’s North American marketing director, who admitted that there are only so many ways to market what is essentially, “A piece of sharp metal on a stick,” so it made sense to make a more emotional, lifestyle-oriented appeal. Harrison wouldn’t tell me how many views the series got but, in a sense, it’s a moot point since the show also ran on FuelTV, an extreme sports network that features sports like wakeboarding and ultimate fighting and that has roughly 26 million subscribers in the U.S. – many of whom, as you can imagine, belong to Schick’s target demographic.
- You may have noticed that as we make our way through these examples, the connection between what the web series is about and what the brand actually does is getting more and more subtle. Well, in my next example, that connection is practically invisible. Web Therapy stars Lisa Kudrow – Pheobe from Friends - as a self-absorbed therapist who offers sessions via video chat. It’s probably one of the most successful web series out there.How many of you are familiar with Web Therapy? How many of you know that is was originally produced by L Studio – the L standing for Lexus?_____Now, I wasn’t able to talk to anybody at Lexus. In fact, I didn’t see a quote from a Lexus representative in any article I read about the show.That was surprising given that everyone else I spoke to pointed to the “earned media” they got as a result of their web series as one of the key metrics of their success.The only signal that Lexus has anything to do with the show is a small “L” at the corner of the show’s website, and a “special thanks” to Lexus in the credits. So this may be one case where the series is just too covertly branded to serve any concrete marketing goals. On the other hand, the series has had serious legs in its own right. Kudrow sold the distribution rights to Fremantle Media, which licensed it to the premium cable channel Showtime. I don’t know the details of Lexus’ arrangement with Lisa Kudrow and Fremantle but perhaps revenue from those distribution rights make up for any lack of brand exposure.
- Now, I wasn’t able to talk to anybody at Lexus. In fact, I didn’t see a quote from a Lexus representative in any article I read about the show.That was surprising given that everyone else I spoke to pointed to the “earned media” they got as a result of their web series as one of the key metrics of their success.The only signal that Lexus has anything to do with the show is a small “L” at the corner of the show’s website, and a “special thanks” to Lexus in the credits. So this may be one case where the series is just too covertly branded to serve any concrete marketing goals. On the other hand, the series has had serious legs in its own right. Kudrow sold the distribution rights to Fremantle Media, which licensed it to the premium cable channel Showtime. I don’t know the details of Lexus’ arrangement with Lisa Kudrow and Fremantle but perhaps revenue from those distribution rights make up for any lack of brand exposure.
- I’d like to end with one quick example of a brand that’s taking a very direct approach to branding in its web series. It’s even built a revenue stream right into the show. The retail brand Target’s Falling For You calls itself a “short film” but it’s divided into 12 episodes. Kristin Bell plays a Target employee who falls in love with a co-worker while planning for Target’s big fall event. Not only does the Target brand feature prominently in the show’s plot but many of the products in the series are for sale and you can shop for them in real time.___The products and their price tags pop up in a window next to the video player as they appear on screen – and you can even add them to your shopping cart. Only problem is that because the show was tied to this special microsite that had the e-commerce component built-in, it’s distribution was limited. As with Lexus, nobody from Target was willing to talk about the show on record so I have no idea if the series was considered a success, but it does suggest some interesting revenue opportunities for future branded web series.
- The products and their price tags pop up in a window next to the video player as they appear on screen – and you can even add them to your shopping cart. Only problem is that because the show was tied to this special microsite that had the e-commerce component built-in, it’s distribution was limited. As with Lexus, nobody from Target was willing to talk about the show on record so I have no idea if the series was considered a success, but it does suggest some interesting revenue opportunities for future branded web series.
- Here are some of my key takeaways from the various examples I’ve shown you.First, for most brands, web series are about building brand affinity and awareness. They’re not typically about revenue generation, though as we’ve seen with the Target example, there may be opportunities to integrate revenue streams in innovative ways. Second, while some of these series feature the brand front and centre, others are much more subtle about their branded origin. And how prominently the brand is featured does have an impact on whether the big online TV networks will distribute and promote it. Third, it seems that some brands tend to see these things as advertising – as paid media buys – and let the content speak for itself, while other brands really see their value as earned media – and point to engagement on social media and mentions in the news media as evidence of their success. Finally, brands seem to be getting what they paid for. Only Hiscox would get specific about numbers and they said the second season only cost about $450,000 for ten 20-minute episodes. Given that the series achieved their goal of making inroads in the U.S. market, it seems they got pretty good bang for their buck .
- This brings me back to the title of my talk – the content marketing sweet spot. This is something we’re always thinking about at Sparksheet and Spafax. We want to create content that’s good, that lots of people want to watch or read and share. But it ultimately has to serve the brand’s goals. So f you’re creating great content, but nobody knows you’re the one behind it, well that’s great for the audience, but not so fruitful for the brand – I’m looking at you Lexus.On the other end of the spectrum, if the series is all about you and your brand and basically seems like a big infomercial, nobody but your biggest fans will want to watch it. Sorry, Ikea. And the holy grail, of course, is if you can create content that actually generates revenue.
- Which brings me to the slide you’ve all been waiting for: What does this all mean for airlines and inflight entertainment?I’m not an IFE expert, but you guys are, so I’m hoping you’ll help me answer this question. But here are a few thoughts:First, there are lots of web series that take place on airplanes but I didn’t find any examples of web series produced by airline brands.If you’re an airline that’s looking to shift the perception of your brand among a specific demographic, this may be something to discuss with your agencies. Second, branded web series are a great source of inflight content that you may not have considered before. If content can find an audience on the web, there’s a good chance it will also work in flight. In the case of a series like Web Therapy, it may not make a difference if Lexus is behind it. You’ll have to go through the distributor. But for more overtly branded series there be an opportunity here for a brand partnership – and even some free content.Finally, the airline industry was one of the first to figure out with inflight magazines that content isn’t just a cost centre, it can be a revenue stream. As we’ve seen, there are many ways to monetize this sort of content – including ways no one has even thought of yet.
- Airlines are already media brands. You’re on Twitter and Facebook, you’re creating apps and your airplanes themselves are giant content delivery systems. Airlines were pioneers of content marketing in the print era. There’s no reason you can’t lead the way in the age of online video as well.