The trend by brand marketers to appeal to their core audience through branded entertainment continues to explode in growth. By delivering brand message through compelling content rather than traditional advertising, brands can truly engage an audience and hold their attention rather than hammering them with repetitve and annoying ads. A recent example is Honda Motor, with their Power of Dreams Series. Honda successfully delivers its message in a very powerful and entertaining way.
In a recent Media Post article written by Dave Jackson, senior vice president of ad sales for Grab Networks, he give some greate advice for developing a brand content strategy:
To begin to develop a branded content strategy, I suggest the following process -- the "4 Es of content creation":
Engagement -- The content must first meet a consumer need or desire to get them interested in watching (research can help with understanding consumer content affinities for your audience). Then, and only then, the brand should be integrated in a compelling way that helps pay off the content promise while delivering on the brand promise.
Extension -- Scaling the content to get it in front of the right people. While having the content on the brand's Web site helps reach loyal users, to really make the content work, it needs to be syndicated broadly across the Web based on the audience's content affinities.
Execution -- Embed additional functionality to the video to build engagement with features like recipe prints for food marketers, or buy-it-now links for manufacturers or retailers. Then set up tools to measure the activation from those elements.
Efficiency -- Often the production and syndication costs can be significantly more efficient than a full-blown :30 commercial production. In some cases, a brand can even make a small cpm revenue share on that content.
The skill set of creating compelling branded content should be considered as an evolution both in how we look at advertising messages and how they are distributed versus a radical shift in strategy and capabilities. It will benefit all in the value chain: marketers, agencies, publishers -- and, most important, the consumer -- if we can work together to create branded content that is compelling for the consumer and delivers for the brand.
Posted on Wednesday March 11, 2009
Seedstage Studios will launch its Seedstage Accelerator at SXSW Interactive 2009 in Austin, TX. A unique venture accelerator, Seedstage will focus on helping startups achieve revenue acceleration by creating partnerships through connection driven, relationship based business development efforts. As an innovation catalyst, Seedstage is dedicated to fostering startup growth. The Seedstage Media Channel is also producing a short film documentary series focused on world changing startup innovation. Seedstage operates from a base of operations in Austin, TX as well as central Europe located in Hamburg, Germany. A Seedstage representative will be meeting with prospective startups during the SXSW festival. For more information, check out the Seedstage web site.
Posted on Wednesday March 11, 2009
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Posted on Thursday September 03, 2009
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BCD Travel, the world’s third-largest corporate travel agency, will be offering its clients the opportunity to receive TripIt itineraries when they book their business travel. BCD will use the TripIt API to seamlessly transmit client bookings directly into TripIt, and, best of all, to keep those itineraries up to date as travel plans change. Thousands of travelers from companies that use BCD Travel – companies like Deloitte, SAP, Siemens, Procter & Gamble, Time Warner, Pepsico, and countless others – are already using TripIt by forwarding their booking confirmations to plans@tripit.com. Now, BCD will make it easier and better than ever for its travelers to enjoy the benefits of TripIt, by integrating directly with us.
via blog.tripit.com
Great showcase example of the API as a leveraged distribution channel. Opening an API for the developer community is smart, but don't forget about appealing to the business community as well. BCD is a massive company and represents a whole new channel for TripIt.
Posted on Tuesday September 01, 2009
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Of course, Orbitz is using the enterprise version of Google’s tools, according to its press release. While that paid service offers advanced geocoding and support capabilities, it’s just as much about the licensing requirements that make this type of service work financially for both parties. Also, Orbitz is bound to have considerable traffic for the bandwidth-intensive feature, especially once the site makes it easy to find.
A company paying for using an API is a positive sign for developers and potential API providers. Powerful APIs may be popular when they’re free, but that may not be sustainable. And when something’s free, it’s tough for others to charge. In the end this is a positive sign as the API ecosystem benefits from realistic long-term business models that work for everyone.
KDYKES: As usual, great insight on the API ecosystem from Programmableweb.com - check out the full article at the link above.
Posted on Monday August 24, 2009
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Yes, Twitter will start earning some income this year.
Co-founder Biz Stone said the company is in the first phase of rolling out commercial accounts that will entice business users to pay for premium services like detailed analytics. After that, the company might move into building business-oriented application programming interfaces (APIs), creating a “commercial layer” over the social network. The commercial APIs would be out “later this year,” he said.
KDYKES: No surprise to many of us who've been speculating on their revenue plans - commercial API's with added functionality for people/co's willing to pay. Surprise, surprise - they'll use their massive network of distributors (API clients) to support massive revenue. See, get how the API business development model can work.
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