It is clear that 2012 is truly the tipping point for branded content. With consumers, technology and media as the trifecta of powerful driving forces, content creation, distribution and consumption barriers have collapsed. Now that we stand in the rubble of these former barriers, the content free-for-all has begun. More and more projects are taking shape around the globe with fantastic properties showcasing compelling brand messages, but how do we measure success? And on the flip side, how do we advance the implementation of branded entertainment programs beyond one-off experimental marketing programs trying to take advantage of this newly found land of media access?

When it comes to branded entertainment, we need to measure programs that have one foot firmly planted in the entertainment world and another in the advertising world. On the entertainment side, media players are relying on legacy entertainment measurements that were never meant to capture the multi-screen experience; on the advertising side, brands are focusing less on the almighty impression and winning creative awards and more on campaign effectiveness.

It’s clear we’ve got quite a challenge on our hands to effectively implement and measure branded entertainment programs. With a challenge this big, we need a big solution.

In the words of our namesake, David Ogilvy, “Big ideas are usually simple ideas”. In order to begin building a standard measurement solution for brands with varying objectives and entertainment properties with various platforms, we must build a basic framework, key concepts and standardized discipline in developing and measuring branded entertainment programs.

Branded entertainment programs come to life in a multitude of formats, primarily broadcast, digital, events and properties. While programs activate across multiple platforms, they are often led or sparked by a lead platform – ideally strategically selected based on brand ambitions and program objectives. Depending on what the program is meant to accomplish for the brand, the entertainment property should be developed in a way that addresses those goals. Because of the varying program goals, target audiences and brand ambitions, there is not an objective, one-size-fits-all standard of measure.

Instead, we must incorporate measurement into the development and planning of properties in a way that builds the right custom dashboard for the property.

This is exactly the goal of the rigorous branded entertainment assessment model we have just launched at OgilvyEntertainment. It aims to provide a better understanding of how the Branded Entertainment mix – the combination of exposure, brand and entertainment – work in unison to achieve pre-determined program objectives. This strategic planning process, coupled with a common index-based evaluation method, will move us beyond the current one-off nature of branded entertainment programs. And a common language for the industry means the five critical partners – brands, agencies, producers, broadcasters and distributors – have a means to collaborate, learn and execute more effectively.

Abby Marks is an Associate Director with OgilvyEntertainment, where she is responsible for the creation, development and delivery of 360 entertainment marketing programs. Abby’s Twitter handle is @NYCAbby. Abby can be reached at abigail.marks@ogilvy.com.

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Stories of Inclusive Innovation, the twelve-episode short documentary series that complements Horizons on BBC, highlights DuPont’s multi-tiered relationships that have resulted in solutions to address our world’s greatest challenges.  Each two-minute documentary highlights the inventive thinking, materials, and science that enabled these solutions.  Season one of the films reached audiences directly through broadcast, premiering as the sole commercial break alongside each episode of Horizons.  They can also be found on DuPont’s YouTube channel as their own online videos. Furthermore, DuPont has continued to leverage the films past the initial campaign period  through top industry PR channels, thought leadership events, trade shows, and internal channels to get clients, customers, and employees excited about the impact their work is having on real people.  To date, the films have garnered over 2.6 million views online and have contributed to a 10% increase in DuPont brand awareness across the globe.

Congratulations to everyone involved in the project and to those at DuPont for giving us the opportunity to create such amazing, inspiring content.  Please check back at http://www.youtube.com/dupont for the complete season one series as well as our season 2 films rolling out over the next several months.

An author, filmmaker, and entrepreneur, Rosenbaum crafted a lens I never thought I’d see the creative world through—one of sheer information. To buy into the ideas presented in the book, you have to accept that we’re drowning in data. You recognize that despite the web’s intangible quality, its capacity is finite. Rosenbaum’s philosophy hinges on the assertion that our social networking extensions, email accounts, and search histories are rendering online content management a disaster sans an aggregating platform. As a young advertising professional who grew up using a computer since grammar school, I found it challenging to break into the crux of Rosenbaum’s argument. When I realized the reason for this, his assertions became all the more insightful. Curation is a word little understood, mainly because we assume that it falls under the responsibility of the ‘experts’ or even inanimate search engines. Why should humans curate when we have computers? The text works against this hesitation toward curation, asserting that one living, breathing human is the most valuable curator there is.

For readers who find it difficult to immerse themselves in this book, try considering that very fact. If that isn’t enough, consider Rosenbaum’s background. Founder of Magnify.net (a sophisticated video aggregation site), documentary filmmaker, and creator of MTVUnfiltered, Rosenbaum has resided on both the creation and the curation fronts, which are more intertwined than we once thought. Throughout his text, Rosenbaum moves from a description of curation, its history, and the key players, to its implications for magazines, web platforms, brands, networks, and even micronets. The text’s intrigue nearly doubles upon reaching Chapter 10, once Rosenbaum has made sure that we understand the process of curation and he (finally!) plunges into provocative case studies. As the entertainment marketing leg of a large agency, OgilvyEntertainment is inexorably and insatiably concerned with, well, entertainment. What is entertainment? “Self expression is the new entertainment” (50), President of Huffington Post Arianna Huffington explains to Rosenbaum. Recognizing this “impulse” is to understand the workings of content on the web. It’s the human truth behind data overload.  Information that lives digitally doesn’t emerge out of thin air; somebody, somewhere creates it. Networks, brands, and companies that embrace this are succeeding in a world where consumers are creators.

And here’s where Rosenbaum’s most interesting discussion erupts: curation and television. Flashing back to the 1990s, Rosenbaum remembers, “What did still exist back in those dark ages was storytelling” (171). As an increasing amount of consumers are empowered to create and showcase content, content ecosystems become not only powerful but also necessary. If you’re interested in consumer-powered storytelling like I am, be sure to read Rosenbaum’s recount of MTVUnfiltered, a consumer-created content initiative relying on viewers’ suggestions for news stories. After crafting the initial idea, Rosenbaum and the team at MTV ran a :30 promotion for the show three times, resulting in 5,000 call-ins from viewers and MTV’s decision to greenlight the series for production. Each episode relied on viewer call-ins. The suggested stories reached associate producers who adopted the most compelling ones. If a viewer’s story was chosen, she would borrow a camera from MTV and gather footage. All communications occurred via phone or fax, proving that fascination with user-generated stories existed prior to and independent of the technological capabilities of the web. MTVUnfiltered was the first show on MTV to be edited on nonlinear equipment, mirroring early on what the Internet would manifest more strongly. What’s more striking than the show’s technological innovations, according to Rosenbaum, are its philosophical ones. Consumers became creators, contributing to the current era of person-to-person storytelling.

“The future of search is verbs” (220). Bill Gates uttered this to former Forbes journalist and leading digital entrepreneur Esther Dyson at a private dinner.  It’s a meaningful anecdote for Rosenbaum to include and it succinctly captures the psychological impulses behind consumers’ online search habits. When we search, we have reasons more ambitious than merely finding information. Whether we’re searching to help us with social planning, to find information for an assignment for work or school, etc. there is always an action item at the end of our search.

Rosenbaum’s own views on search engines align with this very principle. In the section What Is Broken, we learn that “Search is broken. It’s over. Done. Gone” (252). Perhaps this is a drastic note to end on, though the hyperbole effectively forces me to continue reading and ask, But why? Because search engines were an “elegant solution” to the content flood, but have evolved into platforms that are at the will of their own content, unable to aggregate the breadth of their contents. It’s ironic. I remember reading an article on Fast Company last year that asserted that Google was responsible for our shifting approach to searching information, as it encourages us to be purposeful and strategic. Now, it seems as if content is drowning in its own living space.

To simplify the text, Rosenbaum’s answer to all this is curation. Recognizing his steadfast support of curation early on can make this unchanging answer to the text’s questions rather predictable—but, as Rosenbaum urges us in his conclusion, “the conclusions, as interesting as they are, are only half the point” (245). To me, these conclusions were a quarter of the point. The rest lies in the various conversations Rosenbaum had to complete this work, and the strategic curation he himself undertook to produce it.

True, MTV’s The Real World premiered nine years earlier, and even before that, the PBS documentary series An American Family brought TV audiences into a real family’s living room as early as 1973. But it wasn’t until Survivor’s premiere that the reality TV craze really started to kick into gear. Soon after, viewers found themselves immersed in Big Brother, The Bachelor, The Amazing Race, and a host of chef and cake shows. Networks were beginning to see the value in reality programming; it was cheap to produce and garnered big ratings—a win-win for everyone (well, except for actors and screenwriters).

It wasn’t long ago when TV network schedules were supersaturated with reality shows. The beast grew so big that subgenres were emerging. There’s “reality” (Keeping up with the Kardashians, Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List), “reality competition” (Project Runway, Top Chef), “celeb reality” (The Surreal Life, Celebrity Fit Club), and others. Even sub-genres gave birth to sub-sub-genres (e.g., “reality competition/talent show,” such as American Idol and America’s Got Talent). And in case anyone doubts their staying power, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences has even dedicated at least six Emmy categories to reality TV.

For years, since the reality TV bubble began to inflate, scripted series were having a hard time finding longevity on the small screen. It seemed that no sitcom or drama series could last beyond one or two seasons—a far cry from the original Golden Age of television in the 1950s and its re-emergence in the ’80s and in the ’90s as “Must See TV.” And now that’s all beginning to change. Reality shows aren’t fading away, but rather than dedicate nearly ever hour of television to the genre, programmers have begun to figure out how to leverage it in a way that isn’t overkill, and that means weaving these shows into more integrated schedules that include scripted series, as well. (I’m sure some if that was likely a response to viewers who either weren’t jumping onto the reality bandwagon or were getting sore from the long, bumpy ride.) Enter the re-emergence of scripted TV. And it’s not bad TV, either. Shows these days are actually good.

It’s been awhile since people have spoken with such fervor about scripted programming. Now, those same people are more than eager to try to convince others to start watching Game of Thrones (HBO), Breaking Bad (AMC), Parks and Recreation (NBC), or The Big Bang Theory (CBS)—all shows that premiered within the past five years. These are just a small sampling of current programs that have come back season after season to an eager audience. Sure, not all recent shows have found similar success (who actually thought The Playboy Club or Charlie’s Angels would last?), but that’s to be expected. The exciting thing is not that some shows flopped (a reality of television [pun intended]), but that others are now providing new, exciting content that challenges the way we look at television—and it’s those few shows that are successfully building loyal audiences and coming back season after season. (ABC got back on track with a fresh take on the contemporary family unit with multi-Emmy-winning Modern Family. Fox hit a high note with a genre of television that viewers didn’t know they wanted until it was offered to them, with Glee. And who would have thought that unsuspecting cable networks like AMC and FX would step up to the plate with such quality and critically lauded programming as Mad Men and Sons of Anarchy? Even PBS—yes, PBS—has delivered the goods with the much-hyped Downton Abbey.)

A new Golden Age in television has emerged and seems to be sticking around for awhile. It seems that networks have finally begun to gain some insight as to what attracts audiences, and by integrating both reality and scripted programming into their schedules, the variety has never been greater. As has always been the case, the challenge for networks remains the same: how do they attract eyeballs and keep them? But the challenge for viewers has shifted considerably—who’s going to pick up the kids while my shows are on?

PR stunt or not, Nike and Casey Niestat had our collective attention approximately three weeks ago when the story broke that a film-maker had gone rogue. According to the tale, Niestat took an entire budget from Nike and instead of producing a spot, spent it on a 10-day trip around the world with his buddy Max. The trip garnered enough footage for ten feature films, which the duo cut into a short film based on the brand positioning for the Nike Fuel Band gadget, named “Make It Count”.

Abby Marks at MIPTV 2012

5 million YouTube views later, with countless coverage by news and advertising industry outlets, Nike and Niestat are quiet on the story behind the story. Clearly the stunt drove the viral nature of the film, which is interesting in its own right, but slowed once the buzz subsided.

I don’t have additional insight on the relationship between Nike and Niestat, but clearly they’ve been working on a handful of projects over the past few years – the earliest evidence I can find is from November 2010, a video called “Mind Games”.  This short film is a noble effort from Niestat on telling the daily struggles of a runner (or any athlete for that matter), fighting the mental battle of self-negotiation through every consideration of a run, dream of hitting the snooze button and exertion of energy in a workout. “Mind Games” also puts the message ahead of the brand, and it resonated with me. It inspired me to recommit to my running routine and eventually, I’m not ashamed to admit it, buy more of the Nike workout gear I love for running. The film garnered under 20,000 views on YouTube.

Whether or not Niestat took the swoosh-embossed suitcase full of cash and headed straight to the airport, there is an interesting debate as to whether the film was even about the brand, just a self-indulgent trip around the world or true entertainment. The fact is that Niestat has been working with Nike over the past two years. My instincts tell me the brand was informed that he might go off reservation and they were willing to experiment, or he felt like he had enough equity in the relationship to take a big risk. Niestat knows the Nike brand well enough to produce compelling content for their target audience. He also learned about the product in focus for this video at a recent Nike influencer event, which he also filmed.

Brand funding has always dictated content creative, and in this case, Niestat was seen as breaking the rules to communicate his take on ‘make it count’. Entertaining content that seeds the brand intelligently, but often not as the main character, is effective. While the content could have been more fine tuned into a true ‘brand story’ that could only be Nike, it still managed to break out of the mould commercial film-directors are often forced to fit into.

For best-in-class branded content, the work needs to pull from the strengths of the brand and the content-maker alike: a collaborative approach to production. Niestat knew the brand, knew the product and understood the brand values. Nike gave him the freedom to manifest that understanding with content that really does remind us to make everyday count. Finding balance means then shifting back into the marketer mindset to determine how to use this custom video via content extensions, media distribution strategy, social media, etc. And if Niestat didn’t have to produce this under the guise of a rule-breaker, maybe we would have seen a series of what it means in each country he visited to ‘make it count’.

A longer series would have been feasible to cut from the amount of footage Niestat created and Nike could have crafted a distribution plan around where and when to seed content, knowing how to promote this content within their existing audience of Facebook fans, brick and mortar stores and other highly visible outlets.

So what did we learn?

- Build content that is authentic to the brand: Producers need to understand the brand’s objectives, build content to serve the story of the brand and the goals of undertaking a content initiative

- Remember to entertain your audience: Brands need to prioritise the interest of the audience, and let producers help guide them to serve those interests

- Team & collaborate: Both producers and brands need to lean on one another to serve the brand ambitions and the entertainment quality of the programme, finding a balance that can only be achieved through proper collaboration

Following these rules, nobody will need to take the money and run. Make branded content count.

To read the original article, click here.

Dropping the morbid (and threatening) half of the 67-year-old phrase, the new campaign is “Live Free and ____,” where the latter part is “customizable” to appeal to various visitor interests (think “Live Free and Discover” or “Live Free and Ski”). The line, which replaces “You’re going to love it here,” is the result of a year of research and $130,000. The campaign also introduces a new state logo—depicting a green mountain and blue water—that will be incorporated into the state’s visitor centers and Welcome to New Hampshire highway signs. The effort goes into place this summer.

Maine has its lobsters. Vermont has its cows.  But a 2010 survey showed that New Hampshire lacks an icon of its own. Perhaps its closest was the Old Man of the Mountain, the stone-faced patriarch of the White Mountains that crumbled to its unfortunate demise in 2003, leaving New Hampshire with little left to celebrate and a practically null and void state quarter design. It seems the hope is that the state’s new branding will provide visitors with something new to be excited about, reminding them that despite the state’s seeming lack of places of interest, it does offer a semblance of peace and quiet, adventure, and whatever else one might prefer to fill in the blank. Whether “Live free and ____” does for New Hampshire what “Virginia Is for Lovers,” “I Love New York,” and “Pure Michigan” have done for their respective states remains to be seen.

The event will serve as a networking opportunity for people from agency creatives to film and TV directors.

Other panelists include Amir Bar-Lev (Director, RSA Films), Matthew Heineman (Director/Producer, Our Time Projects), Rick Kurnit (Partner, Frankfurt Kurnit klein & Selz) and Jacob Rosenberg (Director, Bandito Brothers). 

Click here to learn more.

The article covers major highlights from the MIPTV event including insights from key sessions such as “Audience Engagement with Brands”, “Branded Content in the Marketing Mix”, and “Measuring the Value of Branded Entertainment”, in which Abby Marks unveils BEAM™ to the MIPTV audience.

Click here to read the article, watch the videos, and read a quote from our very own Abby Marks.

Click here to access the Ogilvy Branded Entertainment Assessment Model™.

Come one, come all to the Time Warner Cable event at Sports Saturday, where you can enjoy sports better while soaking up the bustling atmosphere and taking iconic sports-themed photos. Not only will you receive a photo sleeve with your epic picture, but you’ll also have the chance to win premium prizes ranging from bouncy balls to iPads at the ESPN lockers.

The Tribeca Family Festival will coincide with Sports Saturday, and promises to be a day of family fun and lively entertainment. Throughout the Street Fair will be talented performers, dancers, stilt walkers, Broadway performances, arts and crafts, face painters, puppet shows, music, games and much more.

TWC’s Tent at Sports Saturday

10:00 AM – 6:00 PM; North Moore & Greenwich Streets

12:00 PM – 2:00 PM; Appearance by Victor Cruz

Tribeca Family Festival

10:00 AM – 6:00 PM; Greenwich Street between Chambers and Hubert Streets