• Fast Company, Wednesday, October 28, 2009 10:46 AM

Sam Ford, who is a research affiliate with MIT's Convergence Culture Consortium as well as director of customer insights for PR agency Peppercom, writes that there's nothing new about "branded entertainment" and suggests that marketers take a good look at radio and early television shows such as "The Philco Playhouse," "Texaco Star Theater" and a whole raft of soap operas to see what made the ancients of content marketing so successful.

Procter & Gamble is alone in the soap opera game today ("As the Word Turns"), but as more and more companies launched targeted branded content on the Web, Ford suggests that marketer's experience with soap operas is highly relevant.

"The major issue for soaps -- and the lesson that I think is of particular importance across the media industries and corporate communication -- is our corporate culture's fixation on youth demographics," he writes. Sheer numbers, sure. When Boomers were budding, it made sense to focus on youth, and now that they've bloomed, it still makes sense to pitch them. But Ford also points out that "soap operas were once like sports franchises, passed down from generation to generation." Can't happen if you kill the franchise.

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