Brent Friedman
Co-Founder, Electric Farm Entertainment

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

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

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.