Dana Kelly, strategy manager at Fullscreen Brandworks, the agency behind the series, on how YouTube’s @SummerBreak is changing branded storytellingIf you haven’
As brands like AT&T take on entertainment franchises of their own, it’s imperative to consider how audiences’ social communication trends create opportunities for content engagement. The mindset that the audience comes first and the brand comes second is not easy for marketers to wrap their head around, but this is the whitespace in which @SummerBreak’s approach to “friendertainment” was born. The show behaves like a friend online in real-time, and fuels further dialogue between its digital fans and friendships. @SummerBreak handles reward fans with merch and exclusive content; while the casts’ handles supply more coveted one-to-one fan engagements. To further drive fan conversation around the show, and subsequently, AT&T, there’s a need to understand real-time needs as they relate to entertainment. It’s important to create content and stories at the speed of youth and adapt quickly to change. That’s where the show really takes the marketer’s toolkit and flips it on its head for great storytelling. But it’s not about reinventing the wheel; it’s leveraging trends and a native teen-owned dialect to communicate to them by proxy.