Advertising as Entertainment?

August 16th, 2007 · No Comments

There were a couple of announcements this week of new efforts to provide advertising as entertainment - produced by sponsors or aggregated “best of” ads. Will consumers embrace ads for ads sake? For those of us creating commercials, these sites are a boon of inspiration.

Nike announced that the new “Quick Is Deadly” campaign for its Zoom training-shoe line would include more than 20 minutes of interactive content accessible to Dish Network subscribers with DVRs, according to an article in Advertising Age. This is the most sophisticated interactive-TV campaign that the U.S. has ever seen.

Dish DVR users — about 30% of the network’s 13 million subscribers — will be able to click into 30- and 60-second TV spots starring San Diego Chargers running back LaDanian Tomlinson and other fleet-footed Nike athletes, including basketball’s Steve Nash, runner Lauren Fleshman, Olympic sprinters Asafa Powell and Sanya Richards and tennis player Rafael Nadal,

Research that showed the level of engagement with interactive TV is significantly higher than with 30-second spots, with the added bonus for the advertiser that it is very measurable. The campaign does not give users the option of buying the shoe from their set, although the technology does enable that function.

Sound like the benefits of flash video?

AdWeek ran a story on Honeyshed, which hopes to connect brands with consumers through a mix of branded entertainment, long-form commercials and social networking. A host of new sites from media companies are trying to accomplish the same goal through popular TV spots, destinations built on the notion that advertising is an integral part of popular culture. Honeyshed’s business model is to charge brands based on how long people engage with the content.

Honeyshed’s CEO said it would not just be a place for TV spots, but instead would harness several online trends—user-created content, branded entertainment and social networking—to create the digital version of the shopping mall, a place where brand fans can go celebrate the brands they love.

NBC Universal’s subsidiary USA Network announced it would launch Didja.com, a portal that will collect new and classic TV spots, in early 2008. “We do believe that when consumers want the advertising messages, they do seek them out and do watch the commercials,” said Chris McCumber, svp, marketing and brand strategy at USA Network.

Turner owns VeryFunnyAds.com, a digital spinoff of its popular TBS show World’s Funniest Commercials, starring comedian Kevin Nealon counting down the top ads of the year. The site expects to draw 75 million video views when its one-year anniversary arrives in October.

Yahoo! builds “brand universes,” bringing together user-generated content and editorial for what the company calls “passion brands.” Since it kicked off last fall with a profile site for the Nintendo Wii, Yahoo! has built a handful of what it hopes will be 100 brand universes for other hot-button brands in the entertainment and gaming space, including Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean and Grand Theft Auto.

This is a dream for the creators of advertising - “Advertising should be treated as entertainment,” said McCumber. “We know people love commercials.”

UPDATE: The NYT just featured a story today, with a good quote from Honeyshed’s CEO, “The only reason we have any chance of being successful is transparency,” Mr. Droga said — that is, “if people know they’re being sold to, you can celebrate the sell.” The article also references praise for musical Webisodes for Intel, directed by the humorist Christopher Guest, which are appearing on Web sites like youtube.com and itgetseasier.com.

The responses to a survey this week on the Adweek Web site suggest that advertising as entertainment is still a work in progress — 43 percent called them “too limited and doomed to fail” and 44 percent, agreed with a statement that they are “complete wild cards; let’s wait and see.”

But will consumers flock to sites to watch commercials in our brand-flooded world?