Hello, Hello, you fine young cannibals.
Yes, there we go.
We're Yes, We're gonna definitely all show our age during this panel. It's happening, people, This panel is happening. It's been fifty something days since it's rained. Yeah, I know, where's Rick? Rick is not wearing a hat like I mean, come on, there's like a lot of very earth shattering things happening here. I'm Michelle Fino, or just Fino, as most of you know me. This is a conversation about branded entertainment, or what I also like to call don't
be a deck. How do you get your friends together on stage and talk about doing a deal together. This is a great segue from the last panel everybody was you know, Fred was talking about like that's great that Mark is investing a billion dollars into content, but no one's gonna watch a string of ad after ad ad.
Well, look, these.
Fine young cannibals are the solution here on the stage.
So I'm Michelle Fino. I run my.
Own consultancy after Crackle Chicken Soup for the Soul, which is where I worked when I last spoke to you all in San Francisco. Imploded my consultancy is based on the intersection of four bubbles, if you will, If anybody's a drawer in their notebooks, the convergence of advertising, distribution, entertainment and content and purpose and social good. So that's me, But I'm going to let the panel introduce themselves. We
have a replacement. So it might say in your program that Kate Durina was going to be here from Charter. She woke up this morning Sensor apologies with one hundred and two fever. So luckily I coerced Brian to join us on stage. But I'll actually let you go first there.
Oh boy, pressure. So my name is Brian Kekch.
I'm currently working for an FMCG company in the media space, but previously worked at Mark Burnett Productions in international distribution and production, and then at Fremantle Media and Singapore. Are looking after things like The Apprentice, Asia's Got Talent, etc.
This wonderful gentleman next to me.
I'm Chris Bizzarro, Media Group Principal. There we have three bubbles that line up. That's the reason why Fino and I've always got along in terms of content, branded content, distribution, advertising, not so much on the social good part, but that's your thing. We're just all about revenue, so I'll skip that part.
I didn't originally put that in my stuff, but after the election, I think every action has to have an opposite equal reaction.
So there we go. This guy the tallest guy in the stage.
But you can't tell because I'm sitting Paul Furia.
I lead content and creative packaging at Media by Mother, which is the media agency within Mother. I also stretch across some Mother and lead entertainment, content and partnerships for Mother.
We're an independent creative agency.
Everything I do, I'm kind of a popular guy at my career agency. I like to tell everyone that ads alone aren't working anymore and we should create more entertainment centric, less interruptive content.
And that's hopefully what we'll chat about today.
You should start saying, don't be a deck. Just start saying, don't be a deck.
Yeah.
So in San Francisco, Chris and I were on stage before and we had spoken high level about the seven or eight things you need, the seven or eight ingredients you need to make a successful branded entertainment show, and what branded entertainment is high level, So obviously you need an idea you need a producer, you need funding, you need distribution, you need corresponding media, you need marketing and publicity.
The eighth ingredient, which is always parenthetical for me, is talent because we used to work on a talentless television show called American Idol and got talent, and you don't. If you have a great format, you don't actually need talent. But that's beside the point.
So the first question, I could I just say that before that, we need a brand partner.
That's you don't need a deck, not say deck exactly.
A brand partner that's brave enough and committed enough to be able to say, I want to do branded I want.
To do branded content.
I don't want to be where's Mark Lee on Mark Lee's TV? And string after string after string of ad.
So we'll go to life theory. We'll start with you.
What parts of those ingredients do you touch in your day to day job?
Now, first of all, I was not supplied those prior to this conversation. Now I I, uh, we touch all of them. I think I think the you know what I said before that the first, uh, the first ingredient in the recipe is making sure that we that we are evangelizing to our to our brands that we want to be able to create content that actually engages and
attracts an audience versus interrupts them. And I think that that begins with a client who's bold enough to understand that, sure, we need to make sure that our entertainment, our our advertising messaging is there and as part of the ecosystem, but that within that, at the center of our content, that center of our messaging, that we can create something that actually finds an audience where in the way they're consuming content because they have complete control.
Over what they're consuming.
So from across the board, from our creative side, and actually you mentioned Fred earlier on the panel. Earlier, Dallas actually made a great point. I work at a creative agency. There's absolutely creative directors at our company who are saying we don't want to only create ads. We want to be able to create more long form and engaging content.
So within our even our own employee base, we start to make sure that we are engaging our brands on ideas that will stretch beyond what they're asking us for.
Bizerro, what pieces of the puzzle do you touch?
So as a company like you where to get that brand to commit.
It's always a finding the right brand, right.
So if we got five brands, there's four of them who just want thirty. Some of them won just get out there programmatically or do a direct io by on thirties. That's wonderful, that's great. The machine turns, you make money. It's still part of the ecosystem. But there's some that actually do see the investment, do want to do it
for us. We're fortunate enough to have a little travel company called Expedia that likes to do that, so we co produce content with them, some of which has shown up on Kruckle.
Thank you for all of that. We're launching use a Deck.
I don't think we did have to use a deck. No, don't be a deck.
Nope, there you go.
We're launching a show for a Jordan called Super Supper Club that's going to go up on Visio, a big homescreen banner that pushes to that show starting December first. So we're fortunate that Expedia internally has realized the value that they have a group internally dedicated to doing this, and it's Leap's job to get that out to various distribution platforms, broadcast cables, dreaming around the world.
And more importantly, what do we do.
We promote it a key ingredient where if a brand's gonna make such a huge investment, guess what, folks, because Expedia did fine. They came to us because they're like, we're making these beautiful shows and we're putting them up on expedia dot com and people aren't watching them. Like, well, right, guess what. People aren't going to Expedia to watch a twenty eight minute show.
So our job is to get it.
Onto previous platforms like like Crackle and Yta and RTV Travel Channel and the Zeo and all those wonderful places. But more importantly, to let people know via a fifteen or a thirty that pushes them, to let them know that that content is there. So promotion very key aspect.
And if if you do it correctly, you can create that hygiene content, those fifties, those thirties from the same production that you're producing the entertainment centric content. So you arithortize that investment across what I hope to create that will actually engage in attractive consumer and the content that will hopefully earn that attribution.
In fact, little tidbit you probably do this.
The key is when I go back to the client of if the CPM for a show, because of all the investment is maybe a three hundred dollars CPM, but the CPM for the promo is actually three dollars. The ECPM back to them is ten dollars, and they go ten dollars, What a great deal, Let's do this all day long.
So the key to go.
Back to the client is actually to include the promos in with the show and therefore, like you said, amortizes and it makes it much more palable to them. That's been kind of a key for us with clients.
Yeah.
Absolutely, the three hundred is scary, ten is not. So how you can kind of recipe it all together and spit it out the right way. So, Brian, you and I have very similar backgrounds. You currently work at a brand. I used to work at a brand schlocking Brike pads, and we've also both worked at Fremantle. On the production side, are really on set trying to convince crazy, insane British or famous people to do stuff on behalf of a brand.
So in the spectrum of the seven or eight things you need to make a successful b E show What pieces do you touch?
So honestly, all of them to a point, and I would say the most important thing with all of them
is equilibrium and balance. I've worked at the on the more creative side, on the production side, I've worked on the brand side, so I've experienced this from both sides, and on each of them, you get someone who wants something that is completely unreasonable because you have creative people who have these great ideas and they will create incredibly captivating content, but if no one's going to pay for it,
it does not matter. And then you have people on the brand side who think that they are creative professionals who are like put my car in every scene or you know, whatever it might be, or like have oh my god. When I was at Mark Burnett, we did this show never saw the light of day, called Jingles, where people would write.
Jingles for like brands.
It was a brilliant idea, it never saw the light of day because the execution, which I think was one of your points, Oh my goodness, but there was a jingle for Ace Hardware And anyway, I'm not going to
go down that rabbit hole. Balance because you get brand people who want something that is unreasonable, and so it's having someone or someones be able to see the creative side of what the brand wants and be able to work that into what the creative people want, so that you end up with something that is legitimately entertaining that people want to tune into over and over again, but also conveys whatever the brand message needed.
Is Yeah, absolutely, And I think it's important to set the stage early on in the deal making process because I asked the same question of a producer as I do of a brand manager or director, which is is, after people see this show, what do you want them to do? The answer might be buy more Skittles, or buy more Panera soup bread Bulls, or buy more sugar free Red bull But it's also do you want them to care about the character development? Do you want them
to tune into the next episode? Do you want them to potentially rally the water cooler for a second season.
Do you want them to make sure that they.
In fact are composting the correct way, or their kids have ample outside time to play. Whatever the message is making sure everybody is on the same page and knowing that everybody has a different POV and a different skill set to get us there to that point.
So you know the other piece of this is, you know, branded.
Content is fifty one percent really good content, fifty one percent really good distribution, and fifty one percent really good marketing. Right if you can't do if a tree falls in a forest. I remember having to produce a video and I had hire a guy that want to emmy, you know, and then the video lives on like you know Advance autoparts dot com, slash product slash videos. I think eleven people have seen it, including my mom, right, so there was.
No distribution strategy, but she watched it twice.
And my mom has watched it twice, so yes, exactly, both her hotmail and her Gmail have logged in. So there's the saying that thirty percent of content out there is corrosive, thirty percent of content out there is unfindable. How do we expand the forty I'm going to pick on you first other than all go ask Mark for where did he go for a deal to put more shows forty? In terms of do we expand the content that everybody is expan.
The I do think back to there's not all clients who have a budget that expedy is going to do and hire the EPs and travel around the world and go to Jordan and be it like wonderful, beautiful, and.
We're like so blessed to have these people.
But on the other end of the spectrum, what do we do when someone brought up you know, there's an AI show, and you know what for all those other people, I have an AI show. It's based on an app called autocast, and it is you go to local, very local kind of thing, and it shows you to local coffee shop and it's just still frames And what do we do. We just aied the crap out of that and we can make it for five thousand.
Bucks a show AI voice, you use the pictures.
It just kind of ken Burns, you know, comes in and out. Is it gonna win an Emmy? Well, god no, Will consumers watch it?
Yes? Will I put programmatic thirties into that show? Yes? So I think that's.
One way to do it is you got to find those budget points for those certain clients. And there's some that a five thousand dollars AI produced travel show will work just mine.
I'd say, to leverage, leverage the brand and their reach. So if you're working with Let's just say Panera wanted to do a cooking show that involved red I don't know making this stuff off the.
Top of my head.
Panera has a literal crap ton of locations technical term. And if they promote we said crap.
At least six times, does anybody, Kathy, You're probably keeping track, right, somebody's keeping track.
Okay, if they promote that show at their checkout in each of their stores and it's on Hulu or it's on LG or it's on whatever, people interact with that every day.
They see it when they're checking out. Are they registering it? Maybe?
If you have a name, talent is something where you don't have to rely on the format. And like, I haven't watched Martha, but someone is telling the Martha Stewart Show on Netflix. But someone's telling me about yesterday. Let's say she was doing something with Panera, Panera was promoting it. They're like, watch it on Netflix. You're leveraging the reach of the physical location where people's.
Eyes are captive.
I'm like, that can't be undersoul or understated, undervalued.
Yeah, Brian, Brian's making lots of smart points. That's why he's on the panel. But it's called Brendan entertainment. I think you mentioned it before, Michelle. It's not just called entertainment. So the point behind it is to at least communicate messaging on behalf of the brand. If it's just a long commercial, no one's going to pay attention if it's
entertainment first. But within your marketing mix, you let the creative and the entertainment content do what it's supposed to do, but you leverage your media investment to be able to drive eyeballs to it. I think then and all of the touch points of the brand, you're actually able to then hopefully use all of the different arms of the brand to be able to get them to view that forty percent.
It really isn't mean when you said it is so surprising sometimes when you walk in a brand and just go.
What's your ROI for this? Right? Always our first question, And it's amazing many times they don't know. Right.
They're working on the brand so long, they don't necessarily know what the ROI is.
And you want to do it to do it?
Yeah, they just want to do it to do it, and or probably even worse, you get four different answers from four different people at the brand or at the agency, which you know, then that becomes a whole other thing itself.
But yeah, it's such an interesting starting point.
Yeah, Paul, what was the question that your insurance client wanted answered with your big partnership with the Celtics.
Wow.
So we represent Amika Insurance, which is quietly one of the best insurance companies in the industry. They're based in
Rhode Island. I grew up in Rhode Island, ten minutes away from there, and they a couple of years ago we introduced a new positioning for them, which was and this is our creative side of our house that in the world of insurance, it's very much about you know, characters and gimmicks and saving fifteen percent on you know, fifteen minutes will save you fifty percent of car insurance and a get go and mayhem and all of that is lovely, but it also is it can be it
can feel gimmicky to people in the moment when they need insurance. And the positioning for Amica, who has more JD Power awards than any other insurance company, sixty of them, actually is that their customer service is unmatched and that are there for their consumer and they over deliver and when you call them, they don't say hey, you know.
Where are you? They always ask how are you? First?
And so our positioning for them was empathy is our best policy and that that white space of being able to own caring about someone during an insurance moment has been really effective for them over the past two years since we launched it.
So they're headquartered nerhe Island.
One of the one of the key messages for us was to grow where we needed to grow in our in the New England, and the CMO at one point shared with us that he wanted to make sure we had some version of a transformational brand change and really live sports is one of the only best games in
town in terms of attention. So we looked across the entire sports landscape and we found not only were there lots of inventory available in terms of sponsorships, but the Celtics happened to have a really great opportunity in their
in their logo on their jersey. But so we started having conversations with with the with the team and it became much more than just a logo on a jersey and media and events and experiential and hospitality it became a way to communicate our brand message of really caring about a consumer in the way they care about their favorite team.
Because if anyone.
Here's a Celtics fan, I hope so the Celtics nation shows up for their team in a way that most other fan bases don't, in the exact same way that Amika shows up for their consumers every single day, every single year. So we we're doing a lot of really we just debuted our newest campaign.
We are doing a lot of content around it.
But the partnership really began with how do we connect our brand promise to a a storied legacy franchise that's the winningest franchise in sports.
Yeah, that's awesome.
Last question, how do we all work together? Because there coming to you first, how do we all work together, not just the four of us on stage, but everybody in this room to make a really great not uh make really great branded entertainment projects together in twenty twenty.
Five, uh wine beer to start, It's.
Called that's what happy are.
Yeah, that's the usually usually the best way to get these things besides being on stage and getting a question like that. I do think it's it's uh, you know we literally do sit down over beer and uh just talk through where you've been, where we've been. I think these days coming out of COVID all that sort of stuff, Uh, coming back to the art of conversation with someone literally just going out and having a cup of coffee.
Or meeting for some wine in person. For real.
I think there's something really really u to that. The last point I just want to make real quickly. I know we're running out of time. Is the whole brand and entertainment things really good, But just to go back to the original thing of the ro o I where we could have conversations around is I always have this thing with with the brand of folks, even the folks at Experience at Expedia.
You know, they've give me a rough cut and whatever, and I'm like.
Okay, where's the U R L? Where are we pushing? Where are we gonna when? When are we driving?
People?
Want people?
When do we drive?
Remember we said we wanted them in the book a trip on Expedia. When it's so I'm the one going back to them, I'm like, Okay, at five minutes whatever on the bottom one third, we're gonna super impose go to Jordan dot Expedia, like, you.
Know, pressing back to them, remember.
What you told me about the ROI So, uh, you know that's that's our whole perspective is you know, you do get lost in the process sometimes and then it's you know, bringing the client back to remember what you told me. That's why I'm telling you we need at five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes.
A push, you know, pushing them to the website or wherever, pushing it.
It's such a great point because during the process, the brand of the beginning will always say I don't want it to feel like a commercial, and then eventually along the way there's some challenge of man.
We're really not seeing exactly what we want.
So it's it's making sure that that balance that Brian talked about the beginning is something that's that's ever present. So I'll answer your question in thirty seconds because I know we don't have a lot of time.
I think it's it's it's very simple.
We were were all marketers in this room, but we were all viewers first, and I think we need to recognize that as viewers. We're even skipping our own marketing messages because that's because we none of us.
Want to see the limu emu ad three times while watching only murders in the building.
None of us in this room have ever turned on a device hoping to watch an ad.
Never, It's never happened.
Weeks up in the morning, I can't wait to see that.
Even you on your device right now, I've never turned it on hoping to watch an ad. It's the entertainment that we seek out. So let's just recognize that we should be making entertainment that we actually ourselves want to view on behalf of a brand and then from there again or in all of that attribution, with all of the other mechanisms that we have at our disposal.
Even if it's the Apprentice, I mean, I mean, it's a good show.
Stuff, it's a good show.
Please forgive us for the I will also say when the Jaradiance commercials come on, I genuinely smile.
Those are those are so fun.
Not the ralio to ones of days gone by, May he rest in peace, but the song and dance ones.
No.
I think the way we all work together is get the right people in the room, ideally over some sort of a beverage, and be transparent about well, get a beer get a beer, wine, grony, but and be transparent about what everyone's goals are and what's good enough.
No one's going to get perfection.
We're going to get something that is the best of all worlds in an ideal situation. And if the goal is to get someone to a dot com or to book something, what is the least obtrusive way that we can make them want to do that? Not necessarily I mean, obviously you need a call to action, you need all these things, but like you want them to want this.
And so in the case of Expedia, is it making them want to go to a place and then reminding them Expedia is a good a good way to book this trip or whatever it might be.
It's how do you get that over?
And I'm also kind of rally people around like a central data point or statement, you know, Like I'll use a real one. Sixty five million Americans drive an average of two hours for Thanksgiving dinner. That's a real one that we can all close our eyes and visualize what is going to happen in our lives in the next five to seven days. Right, So how does Expedia rally around that? How does an insurance company rally around that. How does a traffic app rally around that? How does
you know packing? God forbid, you have an electric car? How do I charge? All those different talking points, make it real and make it relevant to that central point.
Like if you get.
Everybody kind of rallied around one statement and one fix problem solution, and we can all point back to that during all the drama that we know does happen during the production of a show or the production of a campaign, and remind everybody that we're.
Actually all in this together. That's it. Thanks everybody, wonderful, Thank you,