The Canadian production landscape is “ripe” for content creators to forge alliances with marketing partners and take better advantage of “evolving financing models,” says a new research paper on branded content prepared for the Canadian Media Production Association (CMPA).
The new paper, The Branded Entertainment Landscape, says that brands are becoming “important players” in the funding, promotion and distribution of original video content. It is the first in a series of three papers with the overarching theme, Branded Entertainment: A New Production Financing Paradigm.
The global branded content market is valued at approximately $44 billion, with the 2012 introduction of a Branded Content and Entertainment Category at the annual Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity underscoring just how widespread and popular the model is becoming, says the report.
“Brands are evolving from pure marketers, ‘pushing’ messages about themselves to audiences, to bona fide storytellers, engaging the audience – often in a two-way conversation – hoping to cultivate a much deeper connection with consumers,” writes report author Catherine Tait, president of the New York-based film, television and multi-platform content company Duopoly.
The sweet spot for brands, she writes, is in creating content that fits with their overall brand message, appeals to a demonstrable audience interest, and is culturally relevant.
Digital has become the primary driver of branded content, its impact felt in several areas: driving down production and distribution costs; enabling greater consumer control of content consumption; improved analytics and ROI metrics, and the emergence of cross-platform opportunities.
The paper also spotlights the emergence of a powerful new form of branded content called “affinity content,” in which the brand does not necessarily appear but acts as a publisher of content that builds “a strong affinity message or alignment” with a brand’s characteristics and values.
Such content can reflect both a brand’s image and the audience’s sense of the brand without focusing on the brand itself, said the paper. The “gold standard” of affinity content is Red Bull’s involvement with Felix Baumgartner’s skydive from deep-space – which generated 8 million live viewers on YouTube, was broadcast on more than 40 networks in 50 countries and generated more than 3 million tweets.
Red Bull has become a “global media company” through its six-year-old Red Bull Media House, which produces, distributes and publishes entertainment programming in multiple formats – ranging from short non-fiction and news clips, magazines, reality formats, feature films, games and apps – in the action sports and lifestyle genres. Its efforts reinforce Red Bull’s brand message that “Your life can be more exhilarating,” says the report.
While branded content encompasses multiple formats such as print, web, e-mail, virtual events, podcasts end e-zines, the study notes that funds previously earmarked for print ventures are increasingly shifting to video and social content.
The study says the branded entertainment arena is not as cut and dried in Canada, where independent producers have access to a variety of financing incentives. In order for programming to be deemed Canadian content for the purposes of content quotas and/or tax credits, it cannot be deemed as advertising, while producers must demonstrate that they control and own the production in order to be eligible for tax credits.
“While these regulations may pose hurdles for those brands seeking to own and control all branded entertainment properties, the Canadian incentives may also present opportunity for cost savings in budgets and/or for co-financing arrangements,” writes Tait.
While the broadcast sector accounts for the majority of branded content activity in Canada, the Kokanee-developed feature film The Movie Out Here is a prime example of a fully-financed branded content play, said the paper.
