brand-e

By Steve Mullins. Brand break. UK agencies are involved in a turf war over branded entertainment as the market’s players try to grab land in a segment where working relationships have barely been established. That’s according to a new report, Beyond the ad break: do brands have the talent for showbiz? published by brand-e.biz/Thinktank.
Creative, media and digital agencies all view branded entertainment as their natural territory, with production companies also believing they have a strong claim, says the report.
“Über-planners are the future,” says one media agency. “We class ourselves as Über-planners. Content ideas should come from strategic insight. Planners will rule this!”
In a social media age, not everyone agrees, of course. “If the content distributes itself, why do you need a media agency?” asks one creative
But while everyone’s scrapping over market share, what about the clients?
Well, while brands recognise there’s more to life than filling the ad break, they’re not necessarily ready to leap into branded entertainment. “Far too many brands become obsessed about their brand,” says one production company. “Free media coverage and PR is the value of branded entertainment. But there hasn’t been enough branded entertainment yet for the brands to know what they’re going to get. A lot of value is around the unforeseeable, and that can be frightening.”
And clearly there is fear.
“Generally, branded entertainment is a hard sell and you really have to convince the agency and the brand,” a media owner says. “In part, this is because we will play around with the brand message and they are more complex, involved projects than buying impressions. There is a certain amount of ignorance, and there’s the question of how much time the agency and client will invest. They need to be brave and forward-thinking. There’s fear involved, often with marketing directors of brands.”
Sabine Stork, senior partner at UK research outfit Thinktank and co-author of the report, thinks people are often not obsessed enough with their brands when engaging in these types of activities. “There is still a tendency to badge, ie jump on someone else’s bandwagon, especially if the entertainment is somehow associated with youth, or to engage in stunts,” she says. “That’s all well and good if you’re a non-entity and just want any type of PR, but I don’t think it pays enough into the bank for established brands.  I strongly believe that true branded entertainment should be ‘born in the eye of the brand’ as one of our interviewees from an ad agency says, that it is right for the brand and properly integrated with its values and essence.”