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The Integration Initiative: Special Ops Media Gives Entertainment Marketing a Full-Service Facelift

Written on
December 20th 2006
Author
by Kiran Aditham  |
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It all needs to be integrated in other words.

J: They have to. They really can’t live on their own. What we do with our media planning informs how we’re doing our press, what we’re doing with our creative executions, and it makes us more efficient in how budgets get used.

C: That’s become the entertainment evolution to CPG. I think that companies in those sectors take different approaches to their brand. One of the nice things is that because of our experience in entertainment, we have a track record of doing a lot of these things that we’re educating them about. They’re looking at us as an agency that has the key learnings. If you look at, as Jason said, the risk-tolerance of the two spaces, what the CPG clients are now addressing is getting used to letting consumers interact with their brand in a very different kind of way—whether it’s user-generated content or social networking.

The approach that these companies take to their brands is very different than the treatment that an entertainment client gives to a brand. It’s a different discussion of brand history. I think that the role we’re able to play, among other things, with our CPG clients is helping them get comfortable with how their brand is perceived and how consumers are engaging and interacting with their brands through these new channels—through mobile, through networking, through interactive.

Inevitably, you have different companies that are more or less risk-tolerant. But I think what we’re educating these clients with is if you want to be doing interactive marketing in a meaningful, effective way, you need to get comfortable with letting go a little bit of the control over your brand, and the messaging and the usage. If you think about it, you’re putting your brand up there for commentary. Sometimes, consumers come back with something that you may not want to hear. It’s getting brand managers, CMOs, and executives used to the fact that you can’t have total control over how consumers interact with your brand anymore. I think we play a key role in educating and getting our clients comfortable with that because we’ve been there since the beginning with a lot of our entertainment clients.

You’re talking about letting go, but do you think that hesitation and control issues are still prevalent amongst brands to give you that kind of creative control?

J: I think it’s kind of funny because the initial meetings are always “we want to push all the boundaries.” We’re used to hearing this from the beginning from our entertainment clients. I think we actually are sort of spoiled because when we push boundaries with entertainment, we had to really go far, far past anything that was close to a boundary for them to be skittish. With the CPG clients, they’re asking to push boundaries and everything’s OK in theory.

Then, we do come back with more irreverent ideas and they’re still a little bit nervous about what’s going to happen and how they’re going to be perceived externally, and it’s whether they’re comfortable with what we’re suggesting to them. I think there is still a bit of a discomfort, but it’s not a theoretical discomfort because they’re ready and say they’re ready. But it’s different when it’s staring you in the face, and it’s challenging for us. We’ve been trained to a different boundary, say with entertainment, and that boundary is much further than where CPG is right now.

C: I think, too, you can certainly draw a general conclusion and say yes, there is still a level of getting comfortable. But there are very large Fortune 100 brands out there that are doing exciting things and are pushing the envelope. Then, there are other brands that are not as far along. But I think the general trend is that these companies are all recognizing that they’re going to need to let go a little bit, that they’re going to need to develop a higher tolerance, and recognize that consumers are going to interact with their brand have much more control.

J: The idea of coming from the Madison Avenue experience in advertising and now dealing with this whole new world, I think a perfect example is looking at streaming video ads, how prevalent they are and how expensive they are. Frankly, I’ve never really totally understood why one would do that when there are so many other things out there.

When you look at why a video ad is so attractive, I mean, pricing is based on demand. When the big budgets are coming from CPG clients who are used to spending huge amounts of money and big CPMs on TV spots, it’s like, “ok, here’s this new medium, we don’t totally get it, but here’s this comfortable unit of promoting my product. It’s a commercial on the Internet, perfect!” The CPM is $25, $35, $45, and it’s like ok, that’s cool.

It’s something that’s so comfortable. Lots of agencies are buying them, all the publishers we worked with are always selling out and they’re always the most expensive ad. But I can’t even imagine that down the road, that’s going to be the most expensive type of ad and the most in-demand ad. We know just with all the rich media vendors and the opportunities that exist, the things that we’ve seen demoed, it’s incredible. It’s incredible from a creative perspective, but also from a tracking perspective, to look at interaction times, conversions and which parts of the unit are being interacted with…it absolutely blows away video ads. That’s such a good example that crystallizes where that industry is at, going from traditional to interactive. I think in a couple of years, buying video ads can almost be a value ad. Clearly, there’s huge user-generated content and tons of online video that’s out there. So there has to be a way that it’s going to be monetized. Pre-roll, post-roll and interstitials, they are always going to be there. But in terms of demand-wise, I think there are so many more interesting executions that are out there.



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