Branded Entertainment is Soon to be Everywhere

From blockbuster director Brett Ratner opening a brand consultancy to TV networks working products in to the storylines of their shows, branded entertainment is growing and doing so quickly.

A new deal-making process is grabbing attention during the biggest buying time of the TV season: Branded-entertainment conversations are taking precedence over large-volume prime-time bookings this upfront.

To get that $16 billion in cable- and broadcast-TV upfront dollars on the table, the networks are increasingly offering marketers the option to meld their brands' DNA into a story or cause that captures an audience's interest.

And that might be a good idea: With ratings steadily declining and commercial ratings entering their second year as the upfront metric of choice, networks and marketers often fight a losing battle to keep viewers hooked during ad breaks. Branded entertainment is an increasingly attractive solution, giving marketers more engagement with products and allowing networks to charge more for exclusive relationships. (via Ad Age)

I have written about branded entertainment in length in the past...see "Branded Entertainment is the Future of Advertising" and believe that the format embodies where media buys and advertising placements are headed. The platform offers an infinite amount of creative possibilities and opportunities for brands to elevate beyond traditional advertising.

Branded entertainment, such as viral videos from Sony - which I wrote about last week, makes ideal content for digital signage networks. The format provides digital signage network owners with a "two birds with one stone" solution that delivers engaging, dynamic content to capture people's attention while providing advertising revenue on the back end. When people get pulled seamlessly into a branded advertisement, unaware that what they're watching is trying to sell them something, advertisers and digital signage network owners both win.

Listed below are a few branded entertainment deals that we'll see on TV this coming season:

- TNT and Dodge will pair up in July for "Lucky Chance," a branded microseries produced by Espionage and Omnicom Group's Full Circle Entertainment. The 20-part series follows an undercover Drug Enforcement Agency agent named Lucky Chance who uses his 2009 Dodge Challenger to transport $50 million in four days to a mob boss threatening to blackmail him for a crime he didn't commit.

• AT&T also came onboard as an integrated sponsor for its global positioning system and will help Dodge cross-promote the series through on-air spots.

- GM is the exclusive national and integrated sponsor of "Greensburg," a Discovery Channel docu-series produced by Leonardo DiCaprio that focuses, in part, on a Kansas-based Chevrolet dealer who loses his dealership in a tornado and is in the process of rebuilding a new, environmentally friendly model. GM is even commissioning Discovery Studios to produce in-house ads for it during the next two months to further align the two companies' green-marketing messages.