One of the jury for
Cannes Lions Entertainment Awards, Josh Black, recently gave a subtly riveting view
on what he regarded good brand content, and why at present Asia are going down
the path of advertising-prone content creation.
He highlighted that
as a judge, he was exposed to around 1,700 works entered in dozens of the Lions
Entertainment categories. The exposure gave him quite an insight to how
agencies in Asia approach content building in creative work. Although he
acknowledges a couple of great pieces of work from Asia that stood out, he believes
that most of the works produced gravitated towards putting advertising as the
goal.
Josh saw this
complication as two big barriers – intent and expectations.
Intention
Anything you do is
the result of your intention. If you intend to produce great work, the result would
most likely be great work. Josh asked us to question, are the work we create
intends to entertain, to add value, or to drive a cause?
To him, many of the
advertisers in Asia are more interested to use brand funded content and entertainment
as another way to push product message to drive sales. They perceive this as a
softer or lighter version of advertising. This approach, or intention, would
somehow lead the advertiser to start focusing more on the placement of the brand
within the entertainment rather than what value they are actually adding to the
consumer or viewer. This is what produces skippable, or worse, interruptive and
unwatchable content.
Josh pointed out a
few great pieces of work which didn’t ‘felt like advertising’. Just like how
you can tell if someone is sincere, so too he was able to tell how honest the
works were. He felt that the marketers who wrote the briefs for the works were
really into producing great films that aim to inform, educate and entertain,
rather than something that masquerades as advertising.
We need to rethink
the way we approach our work in order for consumers to value what we do,
otherwise they will continue to see the work for what it is, skippable
long-form advertising.
Expectations
Advertisers in Asia
expect content to do far too much for the resources they put against it, said
Josh. Too many advertisers are asking their partners to produce brand funded
entertainment at 20 percent of the cost of advertising and expecting it to
achieve better results. It doesn’t work like that. Also, you can’t expect
people to find and view your work if you only post it on your Facebook Page and
Youtube Channel. Two
is not a crowd and this decision accounts for lazy media planning.
With thousands of
hours of content uploaded each hour on Youtube, using a couple of channels just
wouldn’t suffice for your content to be out there. Media planners need to think
more creatively about not only the content distribution channels but also
partnering with the content producers to create different forms of the content
for different channels and audiences. This accounts for intelligent media
planning.
In
a Nutshell
“The future of
brand content will be creating quality work with the right intent built off
smart thinking, great story telling and intelligent media planning. It’s a
simple formula.”
Implementing this
formula correctly offers great chances for consumers to hit the replay button
rather than skip one, and it gives way for content to become entertainment
rather than just, content.
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