Where are the branded entertainment success stories?

The surprise is it took this long. It didn’t take a genius to see that Bud.TV was doomed to fail. The entire premise of the venture was flawed, from its ambitions to its execution. Bud.TV was crippled by some structural flaws. Its age-verification system was Byzantine. The site launched as a standalone destination just when the power of YouTube’s take-content-anywhere model was becoming very clear.

And then, like any good tragedy, there’s hubris. Just like David Droga and Maurice Levy oversold Honeyshed as “the future,” Anheuser-Busch was grandiose in its expectations for Bud.TV, which it poured some $30 million into. How grandiose? Check out the Feb. 2007 The New York Times Magazine cover story on the effort. It’s embarrassing. You have beer company executives, not to mention their agency counterparts, play-acting as Hollywood moguls. Unintentional hilarity ensues.

Here’s the thing: A-B isn’t in the entertainment business. It’s harder than it looks. There are good arguments that the lines between publisher and marketer are blurring. After all, TV began with marketers calling the shots. Easier said than done. Bud.TV’s content wasn’t very good, certainly not good enough to jump through the hoops needed to see it. Most people didn’t visit Bud.TV. I did. It was pretty bad. Sure, the “Swear Jar” commercial was OK, but the rest of the stuff I saw sucked. Joe Buck riding around in a New York cab and bantering about life? No thanks.

There are many examples that come to mind of brands thinking the world revolves around them. That’s why they do things like Bud.TV or “The Coke Show,” where Coke tried to (re)create its own YouTube. Didn’t work so hot. It’s the thinking that leads brands to do things like create their own cookie social network.

I’m hard pressed to see many successes in branded entertainment. People still point to “Gamekillers” as a prime example. It’s nearly three years old. AOL and MSN have made a big push into creating programming on behalf of marketers. Perhaps I’m not the target audience but it’s not exactly scintillating programming. (Remember “Gold Rush,” the Mark Burnett production?) More often than not, I see marketers trying too hard to be hip. In the words of MRM Worldwide’s Alistair Duncan, “It’s like watching your dad dance at a disco.” It’s an enticing idea: brands can take over content creation instead of just buying ads. More often than not, however, it’s going to fail badly. The advertising message will be lost entirely or it will be basically a long-form commercial. Either way, it fails. People aren’t as dumb or bored as many marketers seem to think. Maybe the “new model” isn’t that different from the current model. Maybe the role of advertisers is to underwrite professional content creators. Right now, it seems like there are a lot of cases of overreach, where marketers get in over their heads.

Comments

[Ben Kunz]

Brian, nice take.

The issue goes beyond brands trying to create entertainment content. The flaw is really the old mindset that enterprises can "build a portal and they will come." For 100 years marketers have communicated to fill lead funnels designed to pull prospects into a mousetrap, a single landing point, either a 1950s sales rep or a 1980s call center or in the 1990s the "sticky" web site. Large organizations want to pull people in, so this dynamic is reflected in the marketing strategies. It's all a bit of arrogance, "tell consumers to come to us."

But the shift to consumer control over content has upended this model for the first time. Consumers find their own pathways, and lead funnels fall apart. Some, like Obama, get it, setting up microsite after microsite fed by Google SEM campaigns, creating a vast presence on the web. Others, like A-B above or, in a classic old-school industry example, almost every hospital in the United States, set up expensive single web sites and wonder why no one comes.

Marketers would be advised to move beyond web landing pages to a media presence. Your potential customers are running through the new content wilderness. If you want to find them, get off your little road.

[Michael P.]

Nice article. I saw the swear jar clip, before I heard about bud.tv and I think this is the case for the community on a whole. The swear jar clip has approx. 3 million views on Youtube, so looks like Bud paid around 10 bucks per impression. Ouch!

Couldn't they have done a better job linking their one quasi-success (swear jar) with bud.tv?

[Brian Morrissey]

@benkunz: I totally agree that Bud.TV went with a portal model just as the Internet was moving to a distributed model. My guess is this wasn't the case a year or so before when A-B and DDB were dreaming this thing up. The long lead times it takes to get stuff done in big bureaucracies is definitely to blame. Still, there's a fundamental content problem. Even if brands nail the distribution angle, can they really create entertaining content that actually does something to help their brand?

[Rick Webb]

Oh man I totally started another long-winded comment and spared you and turned it into its own blog post over on tbg.com:

http://www.barbariangroup.com/posts/1746-oops_i_did_it_again_brianmorrissey_redux

[Alan Wolk]

Two thoughts:

1. Aren't many TV commercials just short-form branded entertainment? Something like Cadbury "Gorilla" could have had any number of logos at the end of it. The fact that it was Cadbury allegedly made Brits feel better about the brand (have not seen an actual stat on that one) but for those of us without easy access to Cadbury, it was an entertaining 90 seconds. Ditto clever spots for products I already know I don't like: Doritos Super Bowl spots were very entertaining and I enjoyed watching them, but they will not change my distaste for actual Doritos.

2. Wasn't the original rap against Bud.tv more about the lack of quality? That Bud or no Bud, the programming just wasn't anything I'd watch period, regardless of where it lived or who sponsored it? I suspect that if they had some really great shows up there that people wanted to watch, one portal-like place would be enough (e.g. Hulu) no matter how onerous the registration process. But that takes a lot of money to pull of-- and the talents of people who work in Hollywood, not Madison Avenue-- so until someone ponies up, we're not going to see a whole lot of Must See Branded TV.

[Brian Morrissey]

@Alan: I think much of the early criticism of Bud.TV was for the age verification system. Maybe I'm remembering it wrong. But I agree, it had a serious content problem that there's no getting around. And that's what I see with most branded entertainment attempts. There are one-off bits of ad content that can be consider branded entertainment, but I see little evidence brands will be able to create sustained media, at least through entertainment. (Side note: I made that exact point about the Gorilla to Mark Tutssel in Cannes -- pretension alert -- and he got really upset I dared question the power of the overgrown monkey playing the drum to instill 'pure joy' in people. I just didn't get what the hell it had to do with chocolate.) Re Doritos, you clearly will not be up for the honor of being a "Doritos Guru": www.doritosguru.ca

@rick: I'll check it out. I'm happy you're no longer "Richard Webb" here. I thought that was your alter ego.

[Alan Wolk]

@brian Actually I was aiming for Doritos Ninja. Or King of All Snack Chips. Gurus are just too old school.

[Eugene]

Yup, mediocre content, having to whip out my drivers license, and all that. I remember thinking the same. I think there's another big point though:

I dunno why--hubris? drive?--but marketers always forget about brand fatigue...the we'll-be-the-exception sort of thing. Brands build sites aiming to bring in millions, day after day, but make things so brand obvious. I'm not sure people want this. It's not frequency building--you're gonna get a lot of eyeballs, but they're not gonna come back 5 times a day. Great for awareness building campaigns, not so great for stuff at the end of the brand funnel. Ok, I'll stop there.

Here's some stuff I wrote on the same topic from last week that kinda gives my take and framework on the whole branded content thing:
http://eug.posterous.com/interactive-marketings-definit
And on Honeyshed's demise:
http://eug.posterous.com/droga-pulls-face-saving-move-d

[Eugene]

Oh, and Brian, what's your take on Adidas.TV's launch this week? Anyone been able to test it out yet?
Saw this from you a couple days ago:
http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/digital/e3i39dad3309e171bf9db7c4293e476ec8b?imw=Y

[Matthew]

"Maybe the 'new model' isn’t that different from the current model. Maybe the role of advertisers is to underwrite professional content creators."

Yes! I suspect that Bud.tv and the like fall flat simply because marketers' main goal is not too entertain. It's simply too hard and confusing to serve two masters (marketing and entertainment). Far better to get next to, or underwrite, professional content producers. And it's the same with social nets and apps. With very few exceptions, it's better to join than to build.

[Adam Kmiec]

Well - I had the pleasure of working on arguably the most successful branded entertainment campaign to date: BMW Films. Even today the DVDs of the episodes sell for nearly $100.00 on eBay. The problem with branded entertainment is that brands try to make it too much of a sell job. When that happens it isn't entertainment it's advertising. And, no one wants to watch that.

[James Cooper]

I remember being told that 'Who Wants to be A Millionaire?' paid for at least some of Slumdog Millionaire. I can't back this up because the oscars now make it really hard to dig deep on google but I am pretty sure it's true.

That would have to be a pretty killer branded entertainment success story!

Also, Audi TV is doing pretty well in the UK. I guess it's one of those things where it's easy to pour scorn on stuff but some brave soul (read 'idiot' in these harsh times!) has to try. Inevitably there will be high profile disasters. I worked a little on Game Killers when Dare was doing in house digital stuff for BBH NY. They went in to sell the concept to MTV thinking they had all the answers and were nearly kicked out of the room. Then they got smart and collaborated more fully.

The good entertainment people know what they are doing, as do the good ad people. It's just that until now there has not really been any reason for anyone to try anything else - or indeed come together.

Interesting to see what happens over the next few years.

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[Eric L. Steckel]

InBev got a lot of traction with the Bud House at this year's World Cup. Branded Entertainment in its many forms has a real place in a marketing mix.

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