For Rebranded skyrockit, That’s Mobile Entertainment
ADOTAS – Though quite the buzzword in the digital age, branded content is in no way a new term. If you look up “branded entertainment” on Wikipedia, notes Jon Vlassopulos — CEO of Moderati, which today announced its rebranding as skyrockit — you’re given a history of the practice going back to when single brands would sponsor soap operas in the 1950s. Traditional media was born out of consumer brands funding the creation of content.
The process has come full circle, evidenced by Moderati’s virtual lighter iPhone app for Zippo, which has become the most popular branded app in the App Store. It’s a new media property, showing that consumer brands themselves can be monetized as media properties.
“Zippo didn’t exist at all in the ‘digital media space’ and now they’re a leader,” Vlassopulos said. “They have a whole new revenue stream.”
Zippo was the perfect transitional client for Moderati as it transformed into skyrockit, a pure mobile entertainment agency. The change in name marks the realization of the marketing potential of mobile devices beyond just delivering SMS campaigns and Moderati’s rise from simply a mobile content company. The technology has become the media, Vlassopulos explained.
“With the fastening of the pipes and the specification of the devices and the type of content experiences we’re creating… we wanted to stress that we understand the creative and monetization is different,” he said.
Moderati has been a player in the mobile space for 10 years, initiating as a mobile content provider during the ringtone craze, which almost made the company too successful, Vlassopulos said. As carriers brought such business in-house, Moderati switched its focus to B2B and was acquired by Bellrock Media with backing from Yoshimoto Kogyo, a large Japanese media conglomerate and the largest TV producers in Japan.
The company’s modus operandi is targeted on evolving client business models through creating engaging new mobile brand experiences. In particular, brands can use apps to create an engagement platform with audience. Going beyond the traditional media window, apps allow brands to give birth to their own media properties.
skyrockit aims to be an all-encompassing operation, from creative to execution.
“We’re part software company, we’re part entertainment specialists, we’re part platform specialists,” Vlassopulos said. “We’re really content creators, so more akin to a media company than an agency.”
Brands must embrace being content creators again, he added. Instead of running display and search campaigns for so many months, brands can offer consumers highly functional tools in the form of apps — the new branded content. As more companies buy into the new mobile paradigm, a space that’s already in constant flux will see even more ripples.
“I think you’ll see some very interesting partnerships between forward-thinking media agencies and forward-thinking brands — and who knows, one might buy the other,” Vlassopulos said. “Definitely there is going to be a lot more blending of services.”
At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last week, the prediction making the rounds was that smartphone sales will eclipse PC sales in the next three years. But smartphones such as the iPhone and the Android devices are not phones per se, but entertainment devices that can do everything that your netbook or PC can do — or more, he said.
“Five years ago it was the age of the digital agency; now it’s the era of the fully-functioning mobile agency,” Vlassopulos commented. “We wanted to put our stake in the ground.”
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