In today’s Brandweek.com, T. L. Stanley, confirms our suspicions, and notes that brands are dipping a bit more than a toe into these waters and reaping the rewards.  Stanley outlines the key elements that make brand integration a genuine tool as opposed to the hail Mary of yesteryear.

This time around, content and brands are on more equal footing.  It’s no longer the juvenile business built around the “wow, I can put stuff into stuff on line and….”  These days, brands are (1) looking to get involved during the nascent stages of content development; (2) willing to accept less overt, less “salesy” integration; and (3) partnering with content producers who are willing to find ways to use integration organically with story and format.

Those three key elements make me hopeful for a true creative partnership between companies like mine and brands across virtually every vertical.  We would add a few more arguments to the mix as well as some wishes and warnings to keep this momentum going toward an effective brand / entertainment marriage.

When you look at the cost basis for digital branded entertainment, you can’t beat the potential ROI in terms awareness and even conversion.  But that is just the tip of the “why integrate” pyramid.  The opportunities and results also depend upon how well we can collectively  exploit the public’s increasing willingness to accept branding in content.  They have a specific set of demands that we need to deliver upon in everything we produce and distribute:

(1) make it engaging, entertaining, informative and great or shut up;

(2) make it authentic and honest (as opposed to a sore thumb interrupting my content);

(3) make it an invitation to connect with versus “buy” your brand; and

(4) earn my attention by delivering something of personal value (entertaining and something I care about).

If we develop and produce content that fits this bill, there will be no need to have another branded content nuclear winter.  Instead, our business with the brands will grow, develop, evolve and prosper.  The seedlings are all here, right now.  Creatives have a better understanding of how to pick and choose content that is customized for a given brand.  Brands are rightfully demanding to be involved early on.  Creatives’ fear that brands will “ruin” the content is not proving to be rational.  It behooves the brands to have their say while letting the producers produce (ahh, if only televison were like that).  All of this means that our ability to work with brands on more than just the on-the-nose, fact-based product content is here and, hopefully, here to stay.

Consumers are more willing to embrace longer form web series covering every genre.  New narrative series, including our —here comes the shamless plug—–”Operation Midnight Climax”, a dramatic series about a true-life black ops, mind control CIA experiment, are getting a lot of attention.  “In the Motherhood” and “Haute and Bothered”, for example, have been seen millions of times.  Perhaps we aren’t far away from brands thinking of shows like this, as a go-to branding device as opposed to an experiment?

What happens next depends upon both sides of the equation.  Brands need to step up, spend on digital content, stop retreating to the more traditional media, and deliver quality content to the consumer “on their terms”.  We producers need to do our part to make sure brands and consumers have a positive experience so that we don’t have to wait another 6 or 7 years to have at it again. If we all stick to the rules of engagement outlined above, I think we might just turn this into a business.

As Stoney points out, the compulsion for and the often all-consuming nature of blogging is directly analogous to  the primal urge for sex.  We want it when we want.  We shove it in the direction of anyone we wish.  And once released, we have a sense of calm—regardless of how the recipients feel on the other end.  That latter part does not apply to me.  Ask anyone—-I am a giver.

The beginning blogger, without thinking about his audience, their needs, and the manner in which they want their info delivered, is quickly reduced to a closeted life of locked blogroom doors, interruption and having to explain to friends and family that he will be “right out” as soon as he reaches all five of his readers.  Keep going on that route and you really will go blind.

Stoney rightly points out that along with the personal passion necessary to get attention, in the singles-bar world of blogging, the great blogger puts that passion to work FOR his audience.   Once again blog mirrors life.

You want to be read? You want them to come back to the trough for more?  Deliver more than the self-satisfying blog booty call.  Engage your audience, show them that you genuinely want their comments, and allow their desires, tastes and passions to inform your next session. Don’t be shy.  Ask them how they like it.  It’s natural baby.

If you make them feel loved, wanted, and part of the action and not just a receptacle for your blog, you will get them coming back again and again and again.  They will engage with you and share your blog with everyone within digital ear shot.  Next thing you know, the lady at the table next to one of your loyal readers says that she’ll  “have what she is having.”

Hmmmm.  Funny how that same formula just might work for brands when it comes to engagement and loyalty.  Go figure.

Anime Photo Courtesy of Walyou.com

As a guy who still likes to touch paper, I fear she is correct.  The more I think about it, however, the more I am starting to realize that my fears are unwarranted.  The key fear that I share, apparently, with many others is that we will be reduced to taking our news from the uninitiated, ill-informed, biased sources that are the Mongol hordes besieging the traditional news media.  This is, in reality, unlikely to happen as it ignores all human experience, human taste and behavior and the lessons we have already learned from other periodic assaults on the media status quo.

Yes, there is a LOT of drivel out there.  That said, has the print and broadcast news world been devoid of its respective share of the same?  I have two thoughts.  First, people vote with their eyeballs and ears.  Second, we forget that there is market segmentation when it comes to content demand.  As the digital world evolves, why would those fundamentals of human behavior change?  The platform is really going to alter who we are, what we want, and when we want it in such a drastic way?  Really?

My first point goes to the quality fear.  Why do we assume that quality won’t rise to the top?  Why do we assume that the experienced professionals we hold dear won’t adapt, move on to other platforms and figure out a way to evolve their business?  The entire content space, right now, is a bit of a wheat field and, of course, we are still trying to figure out a new system of sifting the wheat from the chaff.  But that does not mean that we are eons away from new models that allow intelligent choice and the development of a pecking order when it comes to digital media sources.  There is a Murrow out there–and I am betting more than just one.

Secondly, it is not like the public has en masse, always turned their attention to the in depth, detailed reporting that most say they will miss. The market has always been segmented into the New York Times Crowd, the USA Today Crowd, The Star crowd and all of the nuanced mini markets in between.  There is no doubt that the dust will settle and the audience will self-select similar segments to which they will throw their support.  For those who want “journalism”, there will be journalists and quality content.  For those who like the brightly colored pictures and care little about fact checking and objectivity,  there will be plenty to go around.

When a guy like me (a paper toucher) finds himself checking news online, on my phone, etc. then you know times are a changin’.  As in all things, I think the news delivery / quality issue will find a new equilibrium.  Everyone will get what they want—only now there will be no more waiting for the paper to be tossed under the lawn sprinkler on Sunday morning.  I think we will all be ok with that.

Pfizer is pulling off a branding master stroke.  They are giving away certain prescription drugs to those who have lost their jobs and health insurance due to the recession.  Put yourself in the consumers’ shoes.  “I’m broke.  I can’t afford the meds that I have relied upon.  I really need them.  Wait, the drug company is going to let me have them for free until I get back on my feet?  Wow.”   These consumers are never going to forget this.  Pfizer delivers a message of caring about their audience, they deliver a tangible, high stakes benefit, and they do so at a time of need.  Nice.

Hyundai pulled off the same move even earlier with their “we’ll buy it back” offer.  In each of these instances, the brands showed up and stepped up for the consumer on the consumers’ terms.  That is the part that makes it memorable and that makes for brand loyalty. From the time the mouse removed the thorn from the lion’s paw to today, a friend, in those times of need, is a friend indeed.  Like the lion, the public won’t forget.  Now all we have to do is get brands to apply these same principles in all of their efforts, at all times.