Producing successful branded content boils down to two things, according to Steven Amato: producing something people want to watch, and selling products.
As president and co-founder of L.A.-based Omelet – a branding, marketing and entertainment company that Amato describes as “an ad agency that hates advertising”– Amato outlined his approach to creating branded content during a session at Tuesday’s inaugural Content Innovators Summit in Toronto.
His two points may sound oversimplified, but they come from years of experience with working for clients like AT&T and Walmart. Amato, who is also Omelet’s chief content officer, has an equally succinct take on how to stay competitive as a content creator: “Your job is to solve their problems using your awesome content.”
To illustrate how Omelet has done that, Amato shared what it was like working with Microsoft to help drive sales of its Surface tablet. The first step of the process was finding out what exactly Microsoft was trying to do and helping define their problem, said Amato.
The answer was straightforward. “It was all about sales,” said Amato. Microsoft spent more money on advertising for Surface and Windows 8 than it made on its Surface tablet, said Amato, and it wanted to sell more of them. After all, he said the company took a $900-million hit on the product a couple of months ago. (The root of the loss was Surface RT inventory adjustments.)
Omelet suggested focusing on stories of actual everyday folks that use the product. They ended up producing a content series that shows how people in different fields – from an adventure photographer to a medical student – use the tablet.
Amato showed a 90-second video featuring pro skateboarder and journalist Arian Chamasmany during his session to highlight how this authentic type of storytelling can help connect with consumers. The videos were originally posted on YouTube and have also screened in theatres.
This video alone, said Amato, raised product sales by 8.5% and has reached 20% engagement rates.
The Content Innovators Summit was presented by the Banff World Media Festival, MaRS and nextMEDIA.
