Branding David

Starting with a great slide on the evolution of branded entertainment, Alexandra Levy from Google, focused in on radio programs from the 1930’s, soap operas from the 1940’s, product placement from the 1960’s, television contests from the 2000’s, and digital integration from today.

Using The Apprentice as a great example of branded entertainment, she really drove the point home that branded entertainment is everywhere and growing.

She also brought up Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy, which was sponsored by Burger King and an interesting way to brand content in a compelling way for audiences today.

Three principles of Google Branded Entertainment:
1. Destination: Develop the Concept
2. Distribution: Make it Discoverable
3. Accountability: Measure the Results

Alexandra went through each point with more details, talking about how to develop the content, distribute it, and measure the results. She, of course, promoted Google products like YouTube, saying that it would be the best place to put video content, as it is the biggest.

“You need people to be caring about your content.” – Alexandra Levy

The whole speech continued to progress as a pro-Google session, with very little actual content other than “use Google for everything” sales pitch talk. It was frustrating, but also fairly understandable. Google is the largest, but did we need around one half of the session being used to re-enforce that? Probably not.

The content outside of “Google is god”, was really decent though, and was a great reminder of what can be done with branded video entertainment. Reminding people that it isn’t just about display advertisements, logo overlays or other such basic ways to brand content to make money.

My hope from this session is that media businesses here at nextMEDIA realize that sponsoring branded content could be both profitable and fun as I would love to work on, develop and promote sponsored content that worked well both for me and the advertiser’s business.

I am currently in Toronto, Ontario Canada at nextMedia: Monetizing Digital Media. A conference and event for media companies to look at the future of online media, and better understand the avenues available to monetize their content.

I will be placing links to content I create on a variety of sites in this post over the next two days, as I publish things on Splashpress Media’s group of sites. You’ll see overviews of most of the sessions at the two day conference, and hopefully learn a few tips and tricks that the big companies are learning through their trials in monetizing the digital space.

Day One

First Thoughts at nextMEDIA
Lunch and Networking

The Introduction and First Session Overview
Second Session – Re-Engineering the Broadcast Business Panel
Third Session – Bryan Segal from ComScore
Fourth Session – How to Make Money in Online Video!
Fifth Session – Making Money from Pay-Per-Use Content Services
Seventh Session – How to Make Money and Do It Right
Eighth Session – Bringing Branded Entertainment Online

Day Two

Introduction and Session 1 – Immersive Branded Entertainment
Session 2 – Rock ‘n Roll in the Social Media Revolution
Session 3 – Where to Look Next: Trends for 2009

Jordan Hoffner – Director of Content Partnerships – YouTube

The introduction by an executive from CBC wasn’t interesting, and it was rather long winded, but it was nice to hear that CBC wants to find a way to do better in online video beyond just their YouTube channels.

They are concerned about copyrighted content and control over it.

Jordan Hoffner took the stage with a fairly strong presence and comes from the Google side of the YouTube/Google merger.

“You have to partner with the media companies.” – Jordan Hoffner

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