Branded Marketing is nothing new. When radio stories were popular they included brand names within the story. Branded Marketing is making a comeback, but on a different platform: the internet.
Web Series, also known as Webisodes, are growing in popularity as marketers are striving to find alternative ways to reach new audiences. According to Stuart Elliott of the NY Times, print and radio ads have lost their catch to some consumers and commercials don’t engage them. However, educational or entertaining webisodes can grab a consumer’s attention while promoting a product.
Ellen Liu is the media director at Clorox Company. “[Webisodes] extend our reach,” Liu said. Accoding to Liu, webisodes have the unique ability to provided a “Higher level of engagement.”
Mashable’s Todd Wasserman reports on the upcoming Clorox web series “Supermoms” which intends to “seamlessly integrate products” into the story line.
For a glimpse at an already existing Branded Marketing webisodes, check out this video for Maybelline’s “The Broadroom”. Another example of an informative web series would be Hidden Valley's "Garden Party".
This is an interesting idea. As a I read about the existing webisodes, I thought to myself, “Why doesn’t Anheuser Busch do a webisodes with Budweiser?” Budweiser obviously puts a large amount of creativity and entertainment value into their Super Bowl advertisements. So would webisodes work for the company? Would the company be able to extend the 30 to 60 second long ads to an entire web series?
There are other concerns with this as well. What does it take to get consumers to watch your webseries? Is it funny without saying buy, buy, BUY!? How do consumers learn about webisodes if they do not visit the products website often?
I think there are some great ideas behind Branded Marketing on the internet and that this form of product communication has the potential to take off in a big way. However, there still seem to be some questions in my mind surrounding the effectiveness of such a medium.
I think Webisodes is a great idea. I know personally, that when an ad on the radio comes on I switch the chanel or put in a cd. And my roommate mutes the television during comercials. So I think having something fun/funny like webisodes would catch the attention of the audience a lot more.
ReplyDeleteI have watched a few webisodes from several different companies. The advertising messages seem to be the same as those of other mediums. Many of them are just extended commercials. Gatorade had several that used a humor approach. They were funny but I don’t believe the webisodes were more effective than an average commercial. I have watched a couple that demonstrated new and unusual uses for their products. Many of the ideas were submitted by customers which ads credibility and makes them interesting.
ReplyDelete