The Proactive Interactive Agency: Deep Focus Fans the Future of Entertainment Marketing
The end result of Schafer’s 2002 catharsis was Deep Focus, an agency which in just three years’ time has become synonymous with interactive entertainment promotion. From music to film, Schafer and his fully in-house staff have produced online campaigns for everyone from Snoop Dogg and U2 to Lions’ Gate, Miramax and of course, HBO. But beyond the Klipmart-fueled video and eye-catching banners, Deep Focus takes a deeper look at and opens relations with various channels- from blogs to PR departments publications.
“We have high level editorial relationships with hundreds of web properties out there where we facilitate coverage for our clients’ content,” he says. “That’s not paid advertising; that is pure publicity. And that’s something that is very unique for an agency. A lot of companies go out there and they look at buzz marketing firms or guerrilla marketing firms—those are firms that are set up and strategies that are based on infiltration. Because we’re dealing with content that is already fairly sexy, we decide to be a little more overt about it. We talk directly to the editors because we know our message is gonna be better received by audiences if its spoken to them in a voice that they already trust.”
Schafer explains that building carefully-crafted word-of-mouth, and being able to correctly gauge consumer behavior gives his company leverage in the agency rat race. “No one wants to be force-fed—I hate tapioca pudding, I don’t want to be force-fed tapioca pudding, I like chocolate pudding,” he says. “And that’s kind of what we’re talking about, why we’re doing this. It’s got to be in a flavor that someone is used to eating or consuming. You hear about reviews and you hear about recommendations… And apart from television commercials and exposure to mass media, the number one reason why people go see a particular film is because its either recommended to them by a friend or you discuss going to see it with a friend. So we need to make sure that we’re influencing peoples’ opinions as well as exposing them to the promotional content.”
The Sopranos’ campaign is an entertaining testament to Deep Focus as thought leaders, its map-driven tie-in an anomaly amongst the standard microsites, viral and banner advertising. “We constantly have ideas being generated internally—whether its new technology, new applications for existing technology,” Schafer boasts. “Then, when you put it in the context of our clients’ content, that’s when the magic happens. This Sopranos Google Maps program, that is the fruition of us thinking about, for example, the Ajax programming language and APIs. How can we make that work for clients within the entertainment industry? Whenever we’re analyzing an opportunity, it’s ‘How can that work for folks in the entertainment industry?’ Then you get more specific—”How can that work for television? Then you get even more specific—how something like that can work for a particular client” When you have the right opportunity, that’s when the magic happens. That is what happened with the maps.”
But from a technological standpoint, Schafer does eye some hurdles that keeps interactive marketing a step behind the traditional outlets. “Millions of dollars in the entertainment industry are spent on research,” he says, “whether its reports that you get from Nielsen, or from any other focus group. Lots of money is spent based on those results and most of the decisions affect television, like trailers and TV spots. TV spots are tested and tested over and over again. In the online side of things, there are every few research tools that you can use to gauge effectiveness. The advantage that you have with other mediums is that you can make decisions on the fly. With online advertising, basically the online device that you’re left with is the results you get on ad servers for example. You can’t get any audience awareness results on the fly. You can’t gauge appeal of something on the fly. And that’s something that we’re at a distinct disadvantage with, is that we don’t have the research tools. We can only use research that’s conducted for offline advertising and then we have to figure out ways to apply that online. And it becomes more reactionary than proactive.”
But Schafer’s ideology, being that it tends to veer towards futurism, contradicts the reactionary trends impeding interactive marketing. Rather than sit on the sidelines, the chief exec is setting out to change things…yet again. “We’re constantly working on ways to develop new research methodologies that can benefit our clients throughout different campaigns,” he says. “We’re putting a lot of pressure on some research companies to develop ways to do this, whether its outgoing analysis or even predictive analysis, we work on ways internally to benefit our clients.”
But internal pressure aside, the world of video and broadband have created an exciting playing field for Ian Schafer and Deep Focus, where on-demand coexists with podcasting and banner ads play nice with full-motion video. It’s a field they will no doubt use to their advantage — and ours- for years to come. “In a good way, technology is basically daring us to make advancements and innovations,” he says. “The definition of new media and what we as an agency are responsible for presenting our clients—that definition changes every day. But we play the role of innovators.”
“The idea here is that we need to be the futurists for our clients. Not just be able to talk the talk, but be able to walk it too.”
Reader Comments.
Ian,you’re doing a great job,congrats on your hard work paying off.U r as your name suggests deeply focused!! from a very distant cousin in Ausralia.
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