A Case for Branded Content: Explicating the Effectiveness of Branded Content

Content: 1. What is Branded Content 2. Development of Branded Content 3. Why Branded Content Works 1. Its valuable to Customers 2. It Informs 3. Its Great for Business-to-Business 4. Its Easy to Share 5. More Positive Reception than Ads 6. Creates More Interest 4. Figures and Numbers 5. Cases of Branded Content 6. Conclusion

Branded Content: http://www.adweek.com/news/press/branded-content-moves-needle-forbes-153299 Those looking at pages with branded content were 41 percent more likely to express an intent to buy the brand versus those who saw a regular Web page with no branded content. Similarly, those who saw branded content were 28 percent more likely to have a favorable view of the brand, the research, which IPG is publishing later today, showed. Why Branded Content Works: http://sproutsocial.com/insights/branded-content-marketing/ There are many benefits to branded content, both for consumers and brands. For marketers, quality content is extremely sharable through social media and can spread quickly. If youre a consumer, content marketing can be informative, entertaining, and more interactive than traditional marketing. Its Valuable to Customers News providers like the Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, and Mashable offer advertisers the chance to produce content centered around relevant themes and then publish that content alongside their own. For example, last August, General Mills partnered with Huffington Post to create a microsite called Live Better America1. The site focuses on healthy living with articles from doctors and experts, while subtly advertising General Mills brands with banner ads.

Live Better America

It Informs Providing potential customers with something other than a blatant marketing message can give you a leg up on other brands. While traditional marketing is about pushing a unique selling proposition, branded content is the opposite people first, product second, or even third, according to Big Fuel COO Avi Savar2. He led the first ever Branded Content and Entertainment jury at Cannes this past summer. Chipotles Cultivate campaign3 was awarded a Grand Prix, the second most prestigious award at Cannes. Its Great for B2B Brands Business-to-business (B2B) companies dont normally have the chance to leverage the same spectrum of creativity that business-to-consumer (B2C) brands enjoy. B2Bs are usually selling a huge investment to other companies, and establishing themselves as trustworthy thought leaders. This requires a lot of quality content and research to back up their respective products and services. Social media, blogging, infographics and white papers are driving the majority of B2B businesses marketing efforts, as well as lead generation activities. In fact, 51 percent of B2B marketers recently identified content marketing as their number one source for leads, with sales activities only accounting for 29 percent, according to a recent study by B2B Magazine4. Its Easy to Share If you create interesting and worthwhile content, people are much more likely to spread it. Fast Company recently covered Holstee5, a company that creates products made from recycled materials. The Holstee co-founders wrote a manifesto with typography artwork and posted it on its website to share the companys values and mission with its customers. The two co-founders werent aiming to create something viral, but the manifesto spread rapidly on social media and blogs, especially on visual platforms like Tumblr6 and Pinterest7. Holstee sold out of the first batch of products, as well as posters printed with the manifesto which resulted in 50 percent of its revenue for 2011! Not only did the manifesto increase sales, it encouraged people to start living the message. Holstee has taken branded content even further, and now has a whole platform called MyLife8 where people can share stories that were inspired by the manifesto.

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according to Big Fuel COO Avi Savar Chipotles Cultivate campaign 4 recent study by B2B Magazine 5 Fast Company recently covered Holstee 6 Tumblr 7 Pinterest 8 MyLife

THE GAP BETWEEN ADS AND BRANDED CONTENT : Why agencies should focus on what they do best (for now) and leave movie making to movie makers There may be no term that gets advertisers more excited right now than branded content. To some, it's the saviour of the industry : a way to embed marketing messages into content consumers will want to see, hear or experience, all at a time when it's easier than ever before for them to avoid advertising altogether. We've responded to this opportunity, as agencies, by trying to create this content ourselves. If people are skipping commercials to get to the programming they want, we're naturally going to try to embed ourselves in that programming. The problem is that people who have a story they want to tell think about characters, plot, and pacing -- not brands. We tack our marketing messages on like they're some sort of strange aftermarket package, and they stick out in exactly the same way. Branded content is the advertising equivalent of those horrible neon lights people put on the underside of their cars. It's making an impression, but a horrendously awkward one. The very name branded content is reflective of how the industry first approached this new marketing territory: Make content, then brand it. Agencies making content feels like a natural extension of that: "Hey, we've got writers and art directors and people aren't watching our ads. So let's make a show!" It sounds great except that the TV shows and movies that advertisers make aren't exactly good content. Adeptness at making a 30-second brand-building spot doesn't translate into skill at sustaining a narrative for 20 minutes or longer. So most of the content we're creating is bloated or uninteresting, and we end up diluting the brand-building part of our messages anyway. Nothing drives agency folks as crazy as when a client tries to write an ad, but here we are thinking that we can make movies, as if that's not a skill. Of course, Labatt/Kokanee and its agency, Grip, did make a movie and by many measures it was a success. The Movie Out Here, a full-length feature film created by the agency, won awards, including two Gold Lions at Cannes and promotional and campaign materials had an impact on market share. But that indicates that what really worked was everything around the movie; the movie itself wasn't a success. Almost no one went to see it and it's rated 3.3/10 on IMDb, which is better than Gigli but not much else. I'm not taking shots at a competing agency. I applaud their success and the guts it took to do this, both on their part and on Labatt's. But I'm sure both would agree they market beer around movies a lot better than they make movies about beer. This will change, of course. The younger people entering the industry today are bringing more experience in long-form content creation than previous generations. As the cost of producing video decreases and agencies create their own production and editing facilities, we'll get more experience at this. And our clients will give us more freedom and more support. Things are changing. Look no further than Cannes where one of the categories Grip won in was "Best Fictional Program Series or Film Where a Client has Successfully Created a Drama, Comedy or Miniseries Around a Product or Brand." For all its unwieldiness, that category description is a pretty strong indication that branded content is here to stay.

For the time being, however, I think we need to find a way to play more to our strengths. The most interesting piece of branded content I saw last year was Red Bull Stratos. As a concept, it was pretty simple: Felix Baumgartner flew into the stratosphere and then jumped back down to earth. Discovery Channel aired seven hours of programming around it and the ratings were terrific. That's branded content at its best. Red Bull's team produced an event and we all watched. It was on brand, and the brand was clearly visible. But no one had to write a script about a down-on-his-luck daredevil (they would have called him Red Bullings, and given him red hair and a fiery temper) who wins back the respect of his estranged son by jumping from the highest altitude ever. There were no moments of clunky integration where Felix pops a Total Zero right before jumping and no dumb comment about having wings. Instead, we got the best kind of content the brand team could produce, and in turn the brand got the best results it could have hoped for. If that's the future of branded content, then we'll all be watching. "Most of the content we're creating is bloated or uninteresting, and we end up diluting the brandbuilding part of our messages" ~~~~~~~~ By MAX VALIQUETTE - Max Valiquette is managing director, strategy, at Toronto aqency Bensimon Byrne.