Commentary

Be On Scores With Its First Brand Clip, "The Derby"

Brand-video proponents sure like to toot their own cyber-horns, don't they? It's one thing to make a client look good, but it's far more rewarding to flaunt their brandiness and viralitude chops. Why, it's almost as if they have a product worth touting, or an approach in which they have such confidence that they want to alert other sentient entities to its existence.

Case in point: the glad-to-meet-us clip that reintroduces AOL's branded-video play Be On. Known until this week as Goviral, Be On's business model calls for the creation and worldwide distribution of lots and lots and lots of brand video. If all goes as planned, they'll be the, like, Disney of brand video. Prepare to hear many an exec rhapsodize about the wonders of brand "storytelling."

Oh - the clip. To the strains of a song so retro-nouvelle hip that it was previously only heard on certain Pitchfork-approved streets in Brooklyn, Be On pairs images of children and rivers and horses with the sexiest of sexy buzzwords (engagement, influence, syndicate, etc). Throw in a sneering, tattooed Marilyn Monroe look-alike, a tasteful moment involving a row of flat-screen-accessorized urinals and what appears to be a random Judi Dench cameo, and you've got a veritable fireworks display of genre flair. It's all here, in all its yay-for-video! glory.

Still, the Be On clip evinces an enormous amount of enthusiasm for and affection towards the brand-video space, for the gruntwork of merging inflated-self-regard promotional content with bits, bluster and other morsels of whimsy. That's rare. The default tonal mode for brand video, after all, is smirky, distant self-awareness - "yeah, we're totally aware that branding isn't cool, man." Somehow, amid all the thought bubbles and screen grabs from measurement dashboard metric doohickeys, the clip achieves a degree of coherence that would seem unattainable, given everything that's crammed into its 86 seconds.

That's why I extended this exercise with what I imagined would be a cursory glimpse at Be On's first official brand clip: "The Derby," a promo for Italian football institution AS Roma. And I'm thrilled I did, because "The Derby" is one of the warmest, most rollicking clips I've ever seen. It does more to affirm the genre's potential and sense of possibility than just about anything that came before it.

I'm not a fan of crazyperson unamerican football, because it doesn't feature nearly enough brain-injury denial or pre- and post-kickoff commercial messaging. But after watching "The Derby" - in particular, the scenes that depict the alternately solemn and ceremonial gameday rituals of Roma's fans - I want to book plane tickets for an Italian vacation. I want to watch highlight reels of Francesco Totti, the Roma lifer around whom the clip is centered. I want in.

"The Derby" parallels a day in the life of Totti with a day in the life of an older Roma fan. As Totti makes his way to the stadium, the older fan cloaks himself in a team scarf and adjusts his rosaries. As Totti thanks fans for supporting him during a two-decade career (in voiceover, he says, "You have given me the purest gift one can ever give: energy. The energy to keep on going"), the fan's weariness bleeds into anticipation and, ultimately, exhilaration. Each feeds the other. It's a beautiful symmetry, rendered with uncommon heart.

According to one report, the old fan's name is Pepe. I love that random detail. Good on ya, casting folk.

There's a good reason why Be On decided to give itself the full-on promo-video rub: any brand- video factory needs to display its skills in the production of brand video, and where better to start than from inside your own marketing cattle pen? It's like a job application, in a way.

But the best argument in favor of what Be On can do for a brand is the Roma clip. Not that anybody who produces something of such sublime craft needs advice from an individual of my own pronounced dingbattery, but I'd blast this thing out far and wide. I'd re-tweet it until I'm served with a restraining order demanding that I cease doing so. "The Derby" deserves to be seen and, by any firm with brand-video ambitions of its own, studied.

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