I had to think about the title of this post.  I wanted to talk about new formats, but formats for what?   At first I called it “Advertising”, but that felt dated, then thought about “Marketing”.  But if your marketing content is only “advertising” and doesn’t engage the audience in some way, then it’s of no use.  And as I pointed out in an earlier post, if it’s really lame (and run often enough), you may be creating a negative image of the brand for the audience.  So I settled on “Consumer Engagement”, because that’s what brands should strive to do:  connect and engage the audience.  If your content doesn’t do that, don’t bother running it.  No one’s going to watch it anyway

The broadcast advertising world has been dominated for many decades by two formats, the :30 and :15 second spot.  Although the format for live commercials when the business began in the 1950’s was flexible (and longer), soon the :30 became the norm, and was the standard for media buyers for years.   Occasionally a brand would splurge on a :60, which I considered a huge opportunity the first time I got to produce one.  It felt like an eternity.  But the costs to run :60’s have kept them to a tiny percentage of the media buying spectrum.

I remember :15 spots becoming more popular in the 80’s due to the cost of media, and the media department’s opinion that it created more value because it could achieve greater “reach” for the same investment.  This is a false economy, I believe, because reach without engagement is a waste of money.  And 15 seconds isn’t enough time to tell a story, establish a character, or say much of anything.  :15’s generally don’t impart much of anything to an audience, but they do create an annoying interruption to the program that the audience wants to see.  Sure, someone will point out a :15 spot that works brilliantly (and I have seen a few).  But they are a tiny portion of the form, and rare.  A few years back I did a whole campaign of :15’s for a bread company (that’s all they bought for the whole year), and they weren’t bad, but they always felt like a truncated version of something better.  Often, the :15 is a lift from a :30 and makes little sense unless you’ve already seen the :30.  And the media planners put the bulk of the buy into the :15, so it ends up running forever, while the :30 disappears after the first week.  That’s bad marketing strategy, and produces little in the way of ROI.  In fact, the ROI of traditional TV advertising has been on the decline for some time, and will continue to decline in the future.  What’s to be done?

One of the great things about the web is that it’s practically free as a distribution platform.  Just put up a web site, and load the video, or post it to a portal for free (YouTube).  And it costs no more to show a 2 minute video than is does to show 15 seconds.  So it opens up the possibility of longer formats, which is an enormous opportunity to do something cooler than a traditional :30.  Many people have pointed out that it takes more than just creating good content and loading it up to a web portal to get people to watch it.  This is true.  Marketers will always need to spend some money (paid media) to promote the content and to get people to check it out.  But if it’s really cool and worth watching in some way, then the audience may decide to spread it around on their own (earned media).  When this happens, you get enormous ROI for the investment, and the brand manager will rejoice.

What are these new formats that can accomplish this amazing feat?  A number of notable examples have been done over the last few years, some more successful than others, but they all point to what’s possible.  The car companies have been on the forefront of this trend, and also brands in the fashion/cosmetics business have done notable work of this sort.   Lately it seems that everyone is jumping in.

I’ve seen a series of web segments that follow a few characters over a period of time, and chronicle some type of challenge.  Ford did this reality TV type of program for the last Superbowl (http://www.focusrally.com/). 

I’ve seen entertaining short films that feature the brand’s product (Chanel ad with Audrey Tautou). 

I recently saw a series of documentaries that were commissioned by Honda and shown on a custom site, called “Dreams”.  These featured some of their scientists and engineers, as well as others doing interesting things (http://dreams.honda.com/ – /home).

And of course Kraft had a big success with their UGC effort for Philly Cream Cheese (http://www.realwomenofphiladelphia.com/).

One of the ways to promote these efforts is to create a cool short film (say 4 to 8 minutes) and then run a :30 “teaser” spot and print ads that direct the audience to the site where the full-length film can be seen.  This combo of traditional and new media seems to work well.  The traditional media can be purchased for less than a traditional advertising budget (short duration runs), and the distribution of the new media is relatively in-expensive to accomplish (although it does need to be done well).  The marketer is pretty much guaranteed that the folks who choose to watch the film are an interested and engaged audience.  It’s smiles all around, providing of course that the film doesn’t suck.  But that’s another matter, for another day.

I expect smart marketers to do more of this type of work in the future, as evidence for the efficacy of longer-format content comes in.  Which, IMHO, is a good thing for everyone (except possibly for the sellers of traditional media).