Branding The Web: How Advertisers Are Coming To Terms With Their New Platform and How This Is Liberating Creative Agencies

The internet has quickly entrenched itself in the debates of future of media delivery and audience segmentation. Advertising is no different. I have seen a rash of companies specializing in viral production popping up in London and as I am an old fogey often dismissed them as under achieving ad agencies. Scott Kirsner, whose Cinema Tech blog I often read, has given Variety an exclusive except from his recently release book: The Future of Web Video: New Opportunities for Producers, Entrepreneurs, Media Companies and Advertisers. In it, Scott discusses the implications and cultural shift in media agencies resulting from the rise and rise of vial advertising with Jamie Tedford of Arnold Worldwide.

Arnold argues that advertisers are begrudgingly awakening to the reality that they can't just slap their existing TV ads on the net and expect them to spread. Because there is no audience guarantee or even inclination based around 'real' programming, the ad needs to stand alone as 'surprising, funny, new, comical, sexy or provocative'. More often, for security of investment, advertisers are producing a viral version of a TV campaign. This reversioning aims to hook the discerning web viewers and inspire them to forward it on.

Moving on from the demands of this emerging market, are the benefits of working with virals, for example, working on the web provides 'much greater leeway' to be more 'outlandish and controversial'. He provides the example of Smirnoff's hit "Tea Partay" Agency: Bartle Bogle Hegarty URL: http://www.teapartay.com

The internet also provides opportunity to create and control buzz. Expamples that spring to my mind are Apple and The Blair Witch Project. Apple use rumor sites to create 'groundswell' around nearly all of their products. They can leak information when they want to create a buzz or in the lead-up to an event like Macworld or NAB. When the mills get too powerful or don't play the way Apple likes they can curtail the use of acquired NDA info through lawsuits like that with Think Secret. Blair Witch was the phenomenon that spurred movie buzz on the web that inevitably has lead us here. The realism of the film, the amateurism the scariness all conspired as web rumors to catapult the film into the charts and put millions into New Line's pockets. Kirshner and Tedford use the examples of King Kong and VW, but I like mine better.

The final topic of discussion surrounds whether there is an effective way to advertise around short web films including pre and post roll. They argue no. Media buyers are starved for content to place ads on the the 'rates are going through the roof'. Note to self: Make online films and sell advertising space around them. BUT people hate them. they compare the modest rise of iFilm compared to the shear dominance of th market by YouTube. What the don't address is banners , or more cleverly, product placement. If you can establish a relationship with advertisers as a producer of online content, you could generate revenue through product placement not just branded viral film making. Perhaps a good business would be to work within the web film community generating rev for content through facilitating the placement of products in the films themselves. who cares if it is a coke or pepsi or red bull the character drinks on redbull if you leave the film makers to it as much as poss. and the cost to place a product in a web film is way less than a proper film/commercial/tv show, or indeed producing your own viral. My mate Nick was after a business model for us to make millions the other day in the pub. Well, there you go.

They suggest a different approach by trying to figure out how a brand can give you content free of advertising. For example: Pepsi let you have a free song on iTunes when you bought a bottle. I have also seen Cobra beer sponsoring a lot of web based indie film.

As for the future, i concur that it is a bright one, with limitless possibility where one can blur the lines between content and revenue stream, where aggregators abound and the tail seems very long....

I leave you with the idea that branded films can come with the message to do some good as well.