At long last, there are indications that clients are shifting significant marketing dollars to the Internet, particularly to broadband advertising. This spring has been particularly busy, with
advertisers buying up premium broadband inventory in products like ESPN Motion. Essentially, re-purposed SportsCenter segments along with original content in on-demand formats, Motion is one of the
better examples of broadband publishing. As a result, it is typically well sold.
Third-party rich media companies are rapidly rolling out new video products. Earlier this year Unicast launched its TV-quality Video Commercial, which The Digital
Edge utilized for an AT&T campaign with promising results. Behind the scenes, all of the rich media companies are launching new video products or making existing ones better and more interactive.
But just because some offline media dollars have shifted to broadband advertising doesn't mean that creative budgets have done the same. Once a digital agency sells the concept past the three primary
hurdles-the offline account staff, the TV/broadcast group, and the client-at that moment the digital people take their first good look at the 30-second TV spot and typically realize it's not going to
work that well online. This is difficult, because we have told everyone that one of the great things about broadband is that we can wring some additional value out of the high production costs of
making the TV spots by running them online.
At this point, there are two choices. We can turn a blind eye, run the TV creative as is, and hope for the best. Or, we make the creative staff work
overtime and encourage them to make something happen with the existing assets, such as they are. If you run your own agency, the late nights are an investment in the client and your business. If you
are part of a large public agency, clearly, you are a masochist. Whatever the case, the end result is that we all work overtime to prove the worth of the Internet as an advertising medium.
The
Digital Edge has dealt with the broadband creative issue in a couple of ways. First, for clients like AT&T and Pizza Hut, we were blessed with TV creative that worked nicely on the Web. In the case of
Pizza Hut, the client had a 15-second spot that was heavy on product details and worked well as part of expandable banner units with video.
In other cases, rather than use the TV spot directly,
we have re-created it in Flash. For example, The Digital Edge recently produced units for Gallo's Black Swan brand. While the units capture the essence of the TV ads, they download far more quickly
and render more sharply than compressed video.
To view an example of the Gallo ad, go here: http://clients.thedigitaledge.com/blackswan/index.html
Agencies like VML, a Kansas City-based
shop, have responded to the challenge of creating broadband on a limited budget by making the most of what they have and can get. Offline agencies shoot a lot of video that never makes it into the
final commercial. Typically this stuff is just filed or thrown away, but for the Burger King client, VML was able to acquire all of the footage shot by the offline agency and use it to assemble unique
broadband ads of varying lengths.
Stuart Wallace, group creative director at VML, relates, "The length of broadband media depends on how the user interacts with the piece. There are no time
constraints, so we try to extend the message with action points. For example we will take the 30-second spot and cut some of the elements and stitch it back together with our additions."
To view
some of VML's broadband work for Burger King go here: http://www.vml.com/video/
Although all of these techniques are effective, longer term we need to increase digital creative budgets. More
importantly, we need to be integrated with the offline creative planning and production process. Ultimately, broadband and TV ad development will be seen as a single production process with multiple
file format outputs.