I’m telling you. Companies by ~2020 will have their own shows. Possibly hosted on their websites. Since the new millennium, there’s been a trend in advertising toward content and i think they’re about to figure it out. I don’t have any stats or readings on this. Just general observation. But these videos from Zacuto (1, 2)helped me actually structure my thoughts on what is happening. The crazy thing is that these videos are content for Zacuto’s company. He’s doing what he’s talking about.
I first saw something like content-advertising in High School with Terry Tate Office Linebacker. It had already been out for a couple years but I remember this being the funniest videos. Essentially it’s like a webisode. It has production value, its funny, it has a story. It’s engaging. The second exposure I had to this was Scorsese’s Key to Reserva. It’s a wine company but Scorsese did a story about a lost Hitchcock film. Again: Production value, engaging material. While these two content-advertisements used the products, they are not highlighting the product, it’s effect, or the company’s brand (think No Logo).
Miu Miu has a women director series called, Women’s Tales from directors from Ava DuVernay and Agnès Varda. Recently found out Barry Jenkins did a short for Bloomingdales a while back.
Pokemon is an outlier just given its multimedia franchise-ness. But even still. Nintendo is putting out these short webisodes in the lead up to the release of the new Pokemon Sun and Moon games. They did something like that for the release of the previous games as well.
The trend seems to be engaging, diverse content. Roundtable, comedy, docufiction, anime etc. A company won’t be limited to one type of thing. Nike will have a live sportscast stream, 30 for 30-like series, and a Friday Night Lights-esque drama. Diversity of content will not be an issue. Maybe at first but that’ll be quickly solved.
As an analogy, I’ll use MTV. Everyone makes fun of MTV now for not showing music videos, despite being called music television. Below is a screen shot from some MTV show that I pulled.
The scene is playing and the music in the scene pops up underneath the image. MTV has moved from Music Videos to highlighting the music in the content of their shows. It’s more subtle. Advertisers are not going to show you an ad that is all about the product/brand, they are going to sublimate the product/brand into content-advertisement. Apple (Think Different) will produce a show like Black Mirror or Mr. Robot. The theme of the content is an embodiment of the brand and the story is relevant to its base. We’ve seen this in social media accounts (think denny’s tumblr account). It’s just some intern trying to make memes that are relevant to the social media platform. But this will be narrative.
Companies already support youtube channels and podcasts either by sponsoring them or by being a part of giveaways, giving the content creators early access to products to review, etc. So, your favorite youtuber will soon be hosted on Sony or Audi. A couple of years down the line, the “Netflix” effect will happen. Where major actors, writers, directors, franchises were adamantly opposed to working on original Netflix content, now these same people are happily working on Netflix series. It’ll happen more quickly because well-respected actors and directors do ads constantly.
What won’t happen is something like the Christian Mingle film. I fully believe we will see a Speedo Michael Phelps movie or something similar. But, the failure of Christian Mingle is that it is called what the service is called and is about the service. Advertising, now, is about abstracting the product to sell a lifestyle. The above examples use their products but the content is about the products and the products are not gratuitously shown. This is key because people don’t want to be advertised to. Making the American Man is a feature film more inline with the future mostly because of the nostalgia of the old-school patriotic masculinity that was American manufacturing. Ostensibly it is about the loss of American manufacturing and its ties to masculinity but in reality it is a commercial for the companies that it documents. Movies are 100% gonna be a part of this too. Just further down the line.
People don’t want to be advertised to anymore. With DVR and Adblock, people can skip the ads and go directly to the content. The move for advertisers is, as they have been doing, to turn the ads into content.
As Zacuto mentions, this will be used in conjunction with targeted ads like on facebook. But it will be for the content not the product. And his point about hosting on the comapny website is so true. And it isn’t like people aren’t willing to go to 5 different website for content. Youtube, vine, netflix, & crunchyroll are probably bookmarked on many teen and young adult’s browsers. The content creator promo codes will still be a thing. But, if something is produced in house, I feel like it’ll be something along the lines of watch the entire season and get 15% off or free shipping on your next purchase. Companies will even adopt a patreon-like option. Spend over $50 to get deleted scenes or BTS of one of our shows. Spend over $100 and get earlier access to next season. A company is going to try to do a “hidden finale” where you must spend $x to see the season finale of whichever show.
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