A series of projects worked on with Nike, EA Games, Orange, Sky Sports & Channel 4, from the early days of 'branded entertainment'.
BACKSTORY
In 2006, I (Lou, founder of Adventure) was co-founder of a consultancy and production business specialising in what we called back then “branded entertainment”. Prior to founding that business I had been an employee of Nike Inc for a number of years. The experience of working inside that organisation and then later having Nike as a client, along with the rest of the work we did as an agency in those early days of branded entertainment, programming and content creation still influences many of the ideas I have today.
BRANDED ENTERTAINMENT
The core principal behind creating content or entertainment as a brand is understanding what you have to say and crucially, where you have earned the right to speak – what people will feel is credible coming from you, as a producer of that content.
So the task is not just to produce a programme, piece of content or film someone will want to watch, there has to be a reason why it makes sense to the audience for you as the brand to have been the ones to make it. That reason can’t be too literal, because no-one wants to watch a programme where the idea was inspired by a company trying to sell you something, or overtly tell you something about themselves. So it’s a subtle art, and finding the right balance is the key.
NIKE LIVE: THE CESC FABREGAS SHOW
NIKE LIVE: THE CESC FABREGAS SHOW
Nike Live: The Cesc Fabregas Show was a programme produced by Nike for Sky Sports, that shone the spotlight on one of their key athletes at the time, Arsenal midfielder Cesc Fabregas. Arsenal’s manager back then, Arsene Wenger, also participated in the programme, as did a number of other celebrities including Matt Lucas.
The programme aired on Sky Sports and Sky One in 2008, before then being sold to networks across the world. The content was broken down into short clips and distributed online via YouTube and other social channels with more than a million views – which for the time, was a major achievement.
EA GAMES: BE THE ONE
EA GAMES: BE THE ONE
EA’s “Be the One” event ran in 2007 and 2008 as a central part of London Games Week.
Extract from Games Industry.Biz
EA will be building one of the largest ever temporary structures to be erected in Trafalgar Square, as a spectacular centrepiece for the London Games Festival. The BE THE ONE Battle Dome is a vast transparent state-of-the-art weather-proof construction featuring an array of the latest next-generation games consoles, hi-tech screens and the very latest in PC gaming. At one end of the Battle Dome, facing the National Gallery is the main stage which will host a series of celebrity and public gaming challenges throughout the event in addition to live music performances. The stage is flanked by vast high definition screens to showcase the very latest games, and auditorium seating provides the comfort factor that completes an entertainment experience not to be missed.
I am pleased to see the Be The One event is returning to Trafalgar Square. It was an undoubted highlight of last year's festival, which reinforces London's position at the centre of one the most fastest-growing creative industries in the world.
TIGER WOODS IN LEICESTER SQUARE
TIGER WOODS IN LEICESTER SQUARE
In 2007, for the launch of PGA Tour 2008, Channel 4’s youth strand T4 broadcast their programming live for the day from Leicester Square where a mini golf course had been created for Tiger, Ian Wright and various other celebrities to play, along with competition winners from partnerships with The Sun and the channel.
ROLAND GARROS: LIVE IN 3D
ROLAND GARROS: LIVE IN 3D
In 2009 we worked with Orange in their broadcasting of the finals of Roland Garros live in 3D to cinemas across Europe, showcasing the potential of their new 3D technology and bringing an entertainment experience to Orange customers who were invited to the cinema events.
Extract from Rapid TV News
Orange and France Télévision will on Sunday offer the Roland-Garros men’s tennis final live in 3D broadcast on cinema screens in France (Paris) and Spain (Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia).
Five stereoscopic cameras will be set up around the Philippe Chatrier court. The 3D images from the final will be broadcast by satellite from Roland-Garros to the various cinemas concerned, with support from Orange and GlobeCast.
REFLECTIONS
Branded content and entertainment requires ideas that will suit the interests of the broadcasters, be engaging for consumers whilst providing a return on investment for the brands. In 2006 when we started, not a lot of this type of work had been done and much of our work centred on relationship building: encouraging both the brands and the broadcasters to think a bit differently about how they could work together to deliver a proposition audiences would appreciate.
The brands needed to be open to the value of developing other ways to leverage assets and communicate what they stood for beyond the parameters of traditional media and advertising, and the broadcasters needed to understand the talent and relationships they could access through the brands, and trust in the quality of the programming that could be developed through working more collaboratively.
Companies like Nike, EA and Orange were natural leaders in this space – they had plenty of existing assets and relationships with talent ready to deploy, they were already understood by their audiences as being brands that naturally had a lot to say and had ‘earned’ their right to say it, and they were culturally the types of organisations that could embrace and invest in new thinking. They were also willing to take a chance on working with a little business like ours.