Altoids 'Brainstorm' Is Minty Fresh Web Series Magic

Altoids ‘Brainstorm’ Is Minty Fresh Web Series Magic

by Gennefer Snowfield on September 30th, 2009

Brainstorm Other than funding, the biggest challenge for content creators is striking that delicate balance between narrative and brand. It’s a fine line between integral and intrusive when it comes to developing a branded entertainment piece that simultaneously delivers the compelling stories audiences crave, and the measurable ROI brands demand. And everyone seems to be walking the tightrope in the sometimes futile balancing act between product messaging and story integrity.

But, in the case of Altoids’ new mobile and web series, Brainstorm, in partnership with Fox Mobile Studios and Omelet, the brand integration is anything but delicate. In fact, it’s so heavy handed that it may actually border on genius.

Set in the fictitious ad agency, Yogurt, who, in the premiere episode, we find battling a round of layoffs after a huge creative misstep with one of their recent commercials that, you’ll see is more than a little suggestive, when played in fast forward — a subtle, tongue-in-cheek commentary on DVRs and the state of broadcast TV spots that prompts Don Yolk, Yogurt President, to implore, “Doesn’t anyone watch commercials at regular speed anymore?”

With the agency in a frenzy, their entire future is hinged on getting the Altoids account, weaving a storyline that is solely focused on the brand. But it doesn’t feel like a commercial for Altoids, even though there are obvious product shots and brand messages peppered throughout the series as the creative team attempts to brainstorm a winning pitch under the direction of advertising hot shot, Rick Shanz.

Marty Waxer - Brainstorm Frothed with exaggerated sterotypes of agency characters from the ambitious, bordering on neurotic, Account Director to the bumbling, totally out of touch agency head to quirky Art Directors, Fox seems to have stumbled upon the secret formula for spotlighting a brand in a way that ensures viewers are intently focused on it without detracting from the entertainment value. I’d dare say the heavy branding — and expert use of hyperbole around Altoid’s strong taste — even adds to it, packing a doubly effective punch with an engaging storyline and brand attention.

This is the first branded entertainment endeavor from Fox Mobile Studios, and launched on Monday as a web exclusive with Dailymotion for one week. The full release is on October 7th, and the show will be available on MySpace, Break, Vimeo, YouTube and the other usual suspects in an attempt to reach a broad audience. October 7th also marks the mobile kick off, where the series will be distributed through AT&T, Sprint and Nokia, for all Nokia handsets worldwide, and in their Ovi store.

Brainstorm is already off to a promising start, surpassing 100,000 views of the trailer alone, with more than double that for all eight episodes so far, which in an unorthodox approach, Fox decided to unveil in its entirety. “After a long debate, we decided to release all eight episodes at once.” said Michael Wallen, Vice President/Creative Director for Fox Mobile Studios. “The reason behind that is our metric for success is impressions. because we’re not building towards the release of a TV show or other event and it’s hard to keep an audience online.”

In addition, Fox has produced six viral promo clips focusing on the rules of brainstorming as branded vignettes that keep Altoids top of mind, and promote the series and the brand in one perfectly blended snippet. These videos also give the campaign longevity outside the series itself, and are assets that Altoid can use in their own marketing efforts to keep the momentum going.

Brainstorm 250 Throughout each episode, you see the creative team hard at work on concepts that range from irreverant to absurd, and when the art directors pitch the fart-breathed buttmouth character where people throw mints at his head, Rock Shanz quickly swoops in with a key Altoids brand message that is seamlessly part of the dialogue. “Altoids is a premium mint. Do you really want the fate of this agency riding on a fart? It’s sad.” And that’s not the first time you’ll hear that phrase turned as Fox gets Altoids’ premium positioning across beautifully, even out of the mouth of a hobo. Yes, a hobo.

Other ideas tossed around are, “fiery explosion of freshness… minty fireworks… the most confident man you know uses Altoids… and ride the lightning” where you are keenly fixated on various messages that don’t feel one bit like ads, but do manage to effectively communicate underlying brand attributes. Wallen said he wanted to spotlight a truly organic concept to support the brand integration movement. “While we’ve seen a lot of shows about advertising such as Mad Men and Trust Me, none of them portrayed real modern brands that were still relevant.” he continued. “So we felt it was a business and marketing opportunity for a brand.”

Fox Altoids There was no specific brand in mind when Fox first concepted the idea. They produced a teaser with some folks from comedy troops like the Upright Citizens Brigade and The Groundlings, and just started shopping it around. They approached Wrigley’s (Altoids parent company) first because they have a portfolio of brands and Fox originally thought they’d sell each episode to a different brand. “But what we found out was we could bring a brand in for the whole story arc and tell a more compelling story.” states Wallen.

And compelling it is. I watched all eight episodes back-to-back and didn’t feel as though I was being sold once. And with the combination of two cups of coffee, a cast of wacky characters, and even wackier mint concepts flying around, I did find myself craving an Altoid. I’d also wager that viewers will be more likely to reach for a tin of Altoids next time they make a mint purchase. And I have to commend Altoids for letting the creative shine, allowing somewhat offensive (yet absolutely hilarious) content to be associated with their brand… like the bleeped-out F-bombs being dropped all around the agency and Rock fornicating in the parking lot. There’s clearly nothing diluted as is typically the case with advertiser-directed network TV content, highlighting yet another benefit of web entertainment, and proving that when a brand can laugh at itself, the whole world laughs with you. And that’s one curiously strong brand position.

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Comments

Tim Street - September 30th, 2009 8:43 am

Really nice review Gennefer.

I think this series has promise. My big questions are:

Who owns the content? Fox?

If Altoids no longer wants to sponsor the series is it dead or can they sell it to someone else?

Do they have other sponsors already lined up?

Are there plans to monetize this content on other platforms?

Gennefer Snowfield - September 30th, 2009 9:06 am

Thanks, Tim. All good questions.

And agree that this series — and the brand integration model Fox is exemplifying through it — has definite promise for building successful sponsor-funded web series that benefit the content creator, brand and viewers.

In terms of the specifics of the deal, I don’t have that information, but can try to get it for you. I can tell you from experience in working with our brands and content creators, that the terms largely vary. Most brands want to own the full rights to the content, but I’ve seen partnerships forged where both parties share rights with specific usage parameters defined. For my initiatives, I usually try to coordinate a scenario whereby the content creator retains rights to any characters that were developed should he or she want to extend or use them elsewhere. And recently, I’m starting to see a shift where brands want the option to use the web content in other media such as TV, which gets tricky in terms of ensuring that the content creator is compensated for that extension. It’s best to hash out these terms early on so that if we know a brand is planning to use the content on television, we can bake in the costs accordingly.

I believe that Fox has ideas and sponsors in mind for future productions, but nothing has been publicized yet.

As far as monetization, while I believe that this series has significant potential in driving sales, their sole metric is impressions, and blanketing as wide an audience as possible for brand/series awareness. If it were my project, however, I would have created companion pieces with a stronger call-to-action to measure tangible response post-viewing, such as a downloadable coupon or a code from a purchased tin of mints to unlock bonus content and features. But since this was their first foray into branded entertainment, and they’re off to such a roaring start, I suspect they will build out more programs that bring the revenue piece into the equation. And I hope to follow up with Altoids to assess if there was an uptick in sales as a result of this campaign. My sense is that there will be, so I’ll report back as soon as I have the details. We need more successful case studies like this to prove the concept so that other brands will be willing to take the leap.

Anthony DeLosa - September 30th, 2009 2:54 pm

Maybe I’m over simplifying it but doesn’t branding imply ownership? The concept of branding cattle was to identify the owner. Isn’t branded entertainment where you build a show around a brand? Whereas brand integration is where you work a brand into show?

Mona - October 1st, 2009 8:19 am

Hilarious I love it, can’t wait for more episodes GO FOX MOBILE STUDIOS!!!!!

Tim Street - October 1st, 2009 2:26 pm

Anthony, I think you are right about Branding and we need to make a distinction now between Branded Entertainment and Integrated Advertising.

As a content producer I want to spend my time building brands I own and can monetize through Integrated Advertising, sponsorship, Pay per view and pay to download for years to come.

I’m happy to provide consulting services to studios, networks and brands but I don’t want to conceive and birth a baby only to have to give it away and watch it die when the advertising campaign is over.

We have a small window here to create content that we own and can monetize into the future. Once consolidation happens to web video the way it happened to TV in the last 15 years the door will be closed.

Gennefer Snowfield - October 1st, 2009 2:46 pm

Anthony –

Love the cattle reference! But, I do think you are oversimplifying it a bit. In this scenario, Fox Mobile Studios came up with the idea and partnered with a brand on the execution. So, it really falls under the rubric of BOTH brand integration AND branded entertainment, because the entertainment is, in fact, branded for Atoids (although the concept is such that Yogurt could easily be pitching another account in season 2 and bring on a new brand). So, attaching a brand to a series doesn’t necessarily mean that the content creator relinquishes all rights to it. By that logic, a ‘brought to you by’ sponsorship would mean that a sponsor owned the show.

This is new territory and brands and content creators are still figuring out how to partner effectively when there is a creative product and intellectual property involved. The only cut and dry scenario I can think of would be if a brand approached a content creator expressly to create an original series FOR them, in which case brand ownership would make sense. But if I pitch a series in pre-production to a brand for integration and companion branded entertainment vignettes, that doesn’t automatically mean that they will own the rights to the series. The series is a vehicle through which they can meaningfully connect with their consumers, so in many ways, I see it as a media buy the way they would buy time on TV/radio or even a print ad in a magazine. The extended branded entertainment videos that incorporate the characters and storyline of the series, however, would be assets that the brand would own and could use in their own marketing and promotion efforts.

Hope this sheds some clarity around it for you, but we’re all still figuring it out as we go along, and as a still largely undefined space, it allows for some wiggle room in the interpretation. And while I hope there are case studies of successful engagements to guide a more formalized process for bringing brands aboard, I hope it won’t become so commoditized as to lose the independent spirit and agility that allow innovative programming to be developed.

Gennefer
http://www.twitter.com/Gennefer

Gennefer Snowfield - October 1st, 2009 4:19 pm

Tim –

I think you are correct in that there needs to be greater clarity around the types of entertainment that incorporate brands — at least in as far as it pertains to branded content partenrships and rights.

In my mind, branded vignettes that are adjunct to a series are essentially longer form commercials that are owned by the brand and can be used in their promotional efforts, in addition to residing on the series destination site to extend the storyline and enhance the characters and show overall. But the series itself, as I mentioned to Anthony, unless directly commissioned as an original piece of content for the brand, in most cases, should be owned by the content creator (and be monetizable for that content creator over the long-term).

I think there are innovative revenue-sharing opportunities that can be forged between brand and content creator, however, such as bonus footage transactions (where the user would purchase a product, obtain a code and redeem it for bonus content) or ecommerce elements around music downloads or merchandise purchase, each of which would allow each party to receive a percentage of total sale. This is also a way to track measurable results and assess key data in terms of what drives response so that scalable models can be developed.

But as you pointed out, the window won’t be wide open forever, so we need to start defining and capitalizing on these opportunities now to carry us into an uncertain future.

Gennefer
http://www.twitter.com/Gennefer

Brent Friedman - October 1st, 2009 10:15 pm

I can offer a “case in point” example of branded entertainment (that also happens to have Integrated Advertising) wherein the content creator owns wholly the intellectual property: Valemont, the new webseries on MTV. Electric Farm Entertainment created and produced the show, which is sponsored by Verizon and distributed domestically by MTV; EFE has a separate foreign distribution deal with ContentFilm Int’l. After the show’s run ends on MTV it is completely up to EFE how/if we want to exploit the property in other ways. These deals can be made but it takes the right property and the right partners.

Brent Friedman
Co-Founder, Electric Farm Entertainment

RLehr - October 29th, 2009 2:42 pm

As someone who worked on the series I can tell you that FOX owns Brainstorm. And can get other sponsors involved in further episodes of the show. Thanks for watching.

Gennefer Snowfield - October 29th, 2009 3:17 pm

Thanks for the scoop, Ryan. I figured since Fox Mobile Studios had originated the idea and sought out brand sponsors directly that FOX owned it, which serves as an excellent example of how brands and content creators can work together toward their mutual benefit while retaining the creative rights and ability to extend the series. Great job, again, to you and the Omelet LA team on an entertaining and strategically-sound series! Would love to know the impact back to the brand when you have that information.