Branded entertainment isn’t anything new, but it certainly is attracting a lot more attention these days with 67 per cent of internet users now viewing online video ads at least once a month.
Many brands are now using mini movies online in hope of attracting new consumers and create buzz, and often, these campaigns have big names actors and directors to lure in the film buffs.
The latest brand to cash in on the trend is Lexus. The luxury car brand has enlisted the help of former Friends actress Lisa Kudrow and is creating an internet-only branded channel, LStudio.com.
Kudrow will star on the Lexus channel in a short form comedy series called Web Therapy, in which she plays a quirky shrink.
The channel bears resemblance to Budweiser’s failed $30 million channel But.tv. However, lad’s magazine Nuts launched its own branded channel last year via YouTube and is now enjoying success as a Freeview and Sky TV channel.
Branded entertainment does work, as we’ve seen in many cases, and the next big thing is perhaps branded TV channels. But one has to ask, what can a brand name bring to a television channel?
The content of such channels must be relevant to brand and consistent with that brand’s values. This is why the Nuts.tv channel enjoyed massive success. It is a brand that has massive appeal and scope as it targets not just a very lucrative market (young men) but also a very broad market.
Nuts.tv, produced by Turner Broadcasting, has programmes ranging from Cops and Crashes, Football, Fights and Darts and Girls and attracts over 2.3 million viewers each month.
For marketers, internet TV represents an opportunity to talk directly to consumers in whatever form they choose rather than fit into the 30-second pods or product-integration opportunities that TV networks make available to them.
In an effort to keep the buzz going for the Lexus channel, the car maker plans to recruit more celebrity contributors in the coming months. Lexus claims that the connective thread between the programming mix and the Lexus is the theme of innovation.
LStudio.com will not shill for Lexus too emphatically, according to the brand. Most of the channel’s programs barely show or mention the brand or specific vehicles, but a few shows will contain some references to Lexus. 
One programme, Parts Art, focuses on three artists who take parts of Lexus vehicles headed for the scrap heap and repurpose them as sculptures. Another program focuses on the formation of the Fairmont Hotels & Resorts’ “hybrid living” suite, which Lexus co-sponsors.
In addition, L Studio will have links that lead to other sites that offer more direct pitches to Lexus.
While many top brands maintain elaborate web sites, few have gone to the length of defining themselves as entertainment channels, yet. If Lexus does it right however, we could see more brands (the ones that can the afford the $30m minimum) cash in as television audience continue to shrivel. But will audiences trust these channels as entertainment disconnecting an association with the sponsoring brand, or will the subtle brand references put viewers off?
February 23, 2009 at 2:30 am |
As an independent consultant in Branded Channels, I advise brands and media companies in this field.
Branded Channels require brand owners to think outside-the-site. Setting up your own WebTV channel could be a very wise decision, but it still requires driving traffic to the site. So, in a networked-world it’s wiser to syndicate your content on highly-trafficed sites by setting up and managing branded channels within those contexts.
An example of this is Rabo Sport (http://www.rabosport.nl), which I successfully syndicated on YouTube (http://www.youtube.nl/rabosporttv) and the leading dutch social network, Hyves (http://rabosport.hyves.nl).