• by June 7, 2005

SAN FRANCISCO--Branded entertainment is hot, but in order to be successful, programs need to have an emotional resonance with their target audiences and offer non-gratuitous experiences and interactions. That was the takeaway from a group of industry experts discussing the subject Monday during a panel at the OMMA West Conference and Expo here.

"Brands are looking for emotional resonance," said Mika Salmi, CEO of AtomShockwave, which runs Shockwave.com, a gaming destination with 25 million unique visitors per month, and AtomFilms.com, which attracts 7.5 million and serves as an on-demand video site. He cited the company's work with Hewlett-Packard and toymaker Mattel for its "Battle X" Hot Wheels product as an example of a program that has created such a connection with its target audience.

AtomShockwave created a series of animated films for Mattel, and an original game with characters to promote the new toy. Mattel used the short films as the basis for 30-second TV spots. For five years, Atom has placed 15-second and sometimes 30-second ads in front of its games and films. "You can't play the game without watching the ad," Salmi says. Cadillac even used five-second ads.

Salmi, along with Ian Schafer, president of interactive media firm Deep Focus, whose clients include Universal Music Group and HBO, doesn't think the 30-second TV spot is dead as a form of video communication. Shelly Palmer, managing partner, Advanced Media Ventures Group, and the panel's moderator, said: "The 30-second spot is not even close to being dead," citing the number of households that have yet to transition to digital set-top cable boxes.

"The 30-second spot isn't dead. It's the equivalent of RoboCop. He wasn't dead, he just isn't 100 percent human anymore," Shafer quipped. "It all amounts to where people's tolerance is." The panelists urged experimentation on the part of marketers and content providers on branded entertainment programs and formats, as well as the metrics associated with them.

Marketers require a certain amount of permission to do product placement, whether it's in "Survivor" or "American Idol." In the latest video game in the Tony Hawk series, the story line of the game is driven by the participants' desire for sponsorship. Game play becomes synonymous with skateboarders' desire to make it big. How do you make it big? Kids learn through the game--if not by the culture--that you make through sponsorship, reasoned Michael Bellavia, executive producer, Animax, a Flash-based animation studio that creates original branded content and character animation for clients including Warner Bros. and MGM properties.

Bob Kimball, CEO of Meca Communications, which creates private label instant messaging experiences for marketers, said IM as a branded entertainment experience is a good way to get a brand into a conversational environment. His says his IM platform can measure every interaction that takes place within it.

Notably, the panel, billed as a "primer," did not address an issue lurking on the periphery of branded entertainment. Recently, the Federal Trade Commission raised the red flag on the legitimacy of the discipline, requesting that Federal Trade Commission regulators and the Federal Communications Commission monitor product placement practices in TV. The Commercial Alert proposal would require real-time notifications of all product placement deals in TV programming. It's not known whether the online environment would be similarly regulated.

Separately, TNS Media Intelligence announced plans on Monday to launch a reporting service that will measure branded entertainment advertising on network and cable TV. The service will enable marketers and media planners to obtain data on branded entertainment spending in conjunction with TV ad campaigns.