• by David Kaplan , June 24, 2005

Video producer Believe Media and agency Brand New World have entered into a joint partnership to create and produce long-form content for marketers that want to advertise their brands over broadband, VOD, wireless, and in-store retail networks.

Believe Media has produced branded films for Mercedes, GMC, Cadillac, Nike, and their agencies, and was a co-creator of the original BMW films series. Meanwhile, Brand New World has been working on cross-platform advertising projects Johnson & Johnson, Verizon, AOL Time Warner, and others. The company also recently signed a deal with Interpublic Group's Magna Global Entertainment.

And while long-form ads have generally been adopted by high-end marketers like those in the automotive category, Alan Schulman, chief creative officer of Brand New World, said that next month, the combined effort with Believe Media will unveil their first consumer goods client.

"If you're an advertiser and you're used to spending $300,000 to $1 million on a 30-second commercial, the fact that you could spend $300,000 to $500,000 on a 30-minute commercial or 60-minute commercial--why wouldn't you do that?" Schulman said. "As an 'advanced media' creative agency, our clients are leveraging new technologies like 'telescoping' that 'throw' the viewer from a tagged 30-second spot to a longer-form film if the viewer opts-in for more information."

The focus that creative agencies have recently had in the long-form area have made the need for partnering with production houses more essential, Schulman said.

"The long-form format is a recent discovery for ad agencies, so the timing is right for this kind of partnership," Schulman said.