$1 million isn’t what it used to be, but in the web series culture of “favors and waivers,” it’s a small fortune. Even Joss Whedon’s widely popular Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, with its cast of Hollywood notables, came in with budget just under $300k. To scrappy indie web series creators, Madison Avenue’s ad agencies and their branded entertainment series don’t even seem to be playing in the same league.
But some of the lucky creators have embraced this new flood of ad dollars in online video, and found there’s a living to be made crafting these sponsor driven, heavily product integrated made-for-web originals. Yuri Baranovsky, creator of the 2007 hit indie comedy Break A Leg, he and his team at Happy Little Guillotine Films were one of those lucky crossovers. After pitching their concept to 7-Eleven’s ad agency with just a promo video, they were tapped to produce, write and direct 7-Eleven Road Trip Rally which launched May 10th in partnership with blip.tv.
The series tracks two pairs of contestants racing across the country to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the Indy 500—with their only pit stops allowed are at 7-Eleven stores. Drew Lanning, an original Break a Leg cast member, hosts the series, with Baranovsky directing.
“We posed the question, ‘Could you travel from coast to coast, stopping at only 7-Eleven stores for every need, from fuel to fresh food, snacks to Slurpee drinks?’,” said Sterling Hayman of FreshWorks, 7-Eleven’s consortium of advertising and marketing agencies. “This is 7-Eleven’s mash up of The Amazing Race meets Gum Ball Rally.”
“They chose our company because of our style, quirkiness and comedy,” said Baranovsky. “Also our experience in the space. We went this way because it was a challenge for us—we were given almost free reign to create this show and we wanted to see if we could make a reality show that still feels like us.”
While reality series themselves are nothing new to the web—see Married on MySpace, Hulu’s If I Can Dream, Scion’s Reinvent the Wheels amongst others—Baranovsky notes that the next-day turnaround of footage from the road makes the show unique. That, he says, and its $1 million budget. A bevy of munchies and beverage sponsors jumped in as well, including Combos, Nabisco, Dr. Pepper, Nestle, MillerCoors, Kelloggs, Oscar Mayer, some of whom are also promoting the series on their web sites.
So far the series has racked up over 500,000 views in its first week according to Baranovsky, and it’s picking up a fair amount of local media at the show’s shooting locations. Naturally, there’s a Twitter component, with the two teams even competing for the most Twitter followers amongst them.
While non-scripted fare tends to have little if any shelf life in the entertainment business, it can pay off—for both the sponsors and the creators—if audiences latch on.
UPDATE: We heard from blip.tv with a clarification that while the overall budget was $1 million for the project, “about half” was dedicated as a media buy on blip.tv and other sites.
Related News:
Comments
It really doesn’t matter how much the series costs if it does not reach an intended audience/demographic. We’ve seen many an expensive venture fail because they were little more than auditions for tv and not really intended to be for a fanbase of some kind.
Hey guys,
I’d like to clarify a couple of points. I think it’s very important that show producers understand how this show came into being, its budget, how it was produced and what the future of this type of content looks like.
First, whenever we produce a program like this we make sure that budget is set aside for promotion of the series. Branded series — or any web series with a finite runtime – require marketing and promotion in order to succeed (for a branded series this is often paid, but for independent shows it doesn’t have to be). This marketing budget is used to promote the branded series across blip shows. Thus we create a win-win: the branded series reaches its target audience and we’re able to help support independently produced shows in the process.
Second, the production budget for this show is a few hundred thousand dollars. It does not come close to a million dollars. This is important for a number of reasons, but especially because we like to set reasonable expectations. Very few — if any — Web shows have million dollar budgets. And this is certainly not one of them.
It’s also worth noting that, in exchange for that money, the show belongs to 7-11 (and not you). The advertiser and the agency are involved in making creative decisions. This is a trade-off that’s often worth making, but it’s one that show producers should be aware of.
Third, these programs are hard to sell. Blip has seven people in sales in the United States and two more in London. Our sales people spend virtually all of their time working with advertisers and their agencies, selling media, selling integrated programs, building trust over time and developing meaningful relationships. That’s how programs like this come into being.
Making shows is hard work, whether they’re produced with a brand or not. This particular show is working very well for 7-11 and I believe they’ll find that the investment is justified. A lot of work has gone into this show from 7-11, their agency, Happy Little Guillotine and blip.tv’s sales team. We expect that there will be more shows like this produced in the future. But please realize that these aren’t easy and they’re not a magic bullet.
We’re all building a new industry here. We believe that in the future more people will make a living making shows (on television or on the Internet or both) than ever before. We’ve seen the blueprint for this in music — there are more musicians making a living now than ever before in history. Branded content will be part of what gets us there. But just a part. And it’ll be a while before any branded content series has a million dollar budget. None of us should expect such things. Let’s learn how to spend much smaller amounts well before we shoot for the moon.
Yours,
Mike Hudack
Co-founder & CEO, blip.tv
Just to clarify, there have been non-branded MULTI-million dollar web series. Just look to Stage 3 Media’s Sanctuary (For All) which purportedly cost $4 million dollars! Still, good to see money going to the web even of it’s only hudreds of thousands!
Part media buy, part production, part agency fees. All told it adds up to a million dollar project. It’s that all-in number that matters, since that’s what the sponsors are looking at for ROI.
Thanks for the clarification Mike – I think it’s definitely fair to note the different buckets. Many web series spend all of their raise on production and frankly little or none on media buy or marketing. The reality is that marketing/promotion shouldn’t be an afterthought. It’s all part of the project’s overall budget.
Obviously most of this money went to Blip.tv and to executive/creative salaries since there is not much being offered here. I’m willing to bet there were a groups of bosses and a lot of crew standing around doing nothing on this. My question is why this isn’t being written up as paid advertising– It’s not really a story about a $1mil web series. This is a commercial– not a web series. It seems 7-11 is tapping into race car fans to sell slurpies. Good for them. But why won’t you guys call this a commercial? From what I read, the news is in the blip deal and the fact they’re selling this 7-11 commercial as a web series. Now does every creator on blip.tv have to compete with this, and advertising this at the same time? If so, I bet this wins all the Streamy Awards next year. Hey good for 7-11, but what is the deal with this puff piece TF? Let’s see how much advertising money goes to fund another web series. Hey blip, can you clarify whether this will be advertised on all video or if these are ads your creator/partners can choose to opt out of? Ya know, like “Upload video here” and then a box that says, “Check this box if you don’t want our crappy commercial advertised over your content”. You want to know how to kill an “industry”? Keep making branded content and expect people to watch it.
And can I re-clarify? Yes, Sanctuary was made for $4mil. But it was not a commercial like this is. Sanctuary was created solely for the intention of entertaining– not selling a product. Also, Sanctuary’s budget came with an ITV distribution deal which marketed it as a TV movie all across the world before it was even shot. $4mil for a TV movie is not unheard of. And to add, Sanctuary charged money for membership to watch. It was commercial free. It was later sold to the Sci-Fi channel after ITV ran their release cycle. Syfy obviously made it into a series. At the time they made Sanctuary, the big news was they were using video game graphics and they hired an actress from the Stargate series. No web series hype at all. That says it all.
So basically they admit they are buying their views. At least they admit it.
Seems like a lot for this short of a series. Did they pay the contestants too??
Thanks for the article, Marc.
And thanks for the awesome response, Mike.
The million dollar budget is, in fact, the price of the entire show — advertising, distribution, etc. etc. When we did Break a Leg, we were competing against the Burg and dozens of sleepy kittens — now there’s a million shows with no clear way of distinguishing what’s worth watching. That’s a big part of why the 711 Road Trip Rally is successful, thus far.
Secondly, this is a great first step in branded entertainment but Mike is right in that, there’s a whole lot of steps left. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: if we have a hit web show that’s on par — in quality and popularity — with something like Sopranos or West Wing or Sex and the City or Ally McBeal and it’s made by independent filmmakers, that’s when we know we’ve climbed to the top of a very steep mountain.
Okay, now I’m going to sleep because I forget which city I’m in and I have to be in another one tomorrow.
Orange slurpees are EVIL. Just saying..
:):):)
On a creative side note: the answer is NO, you can not drive across the entire country stopping only at 7-11′s for all of your needs. 7-11′s don’t let you use their restrooms! So, unless these contestants are using empty bottles and buckets as they drive, then they aren’t even operating within the “rules” of the show. Suck it, 7-11.
On a creative side note: the answer is NO, you can not drive across the entire country stopping only at 7-11′s for all of your needs. 7-11′s don’t let you use their restrooms!
So, unless these contestants are using empty bottles and buckets as they drive, then they aren’t even operating within the “rules” of the show. Suck it, 7-11.
Trackbacks
Leave a Reply