The Entertainment Flip

The same model, hoping for a different result

Almost everything about how people spend their time has changed. Audiences have scattered, attention is fragmented, and people have more choice than ever about what they watch, read, listen to and do.

Yet most campaigns are still built the way they were decades ago. Same brief, same starting point, same structure. It's muscle memory, and it's so strong that most of us don't notice we're doing it.

A lot has been written about branded entertainment by a lot of very clever people. But as marketers we have a habit of overcomplicating things. I think the real problem is much simpler, and much more fundamental. We still think of branded entertainment as something that supports an advertising campaign. It should be the other way round.

Where your campaigns usually start

Picture a line with your brand at one end and your audience at the other. Every campaign starts somewhere on it.

Advertising starts at the brand end. Think about how most campaigns begin. You brief your agency on what you want to say: the brand attributes, the key messages, the proposition. Their job is to wrap all of that in an idea that communicates it and is engaging enough to get noticed. Or at least noticed by a small group of people, gathered by a research company to watch it in a way that bears no resemblance to how anyone watches anything in real life.

Then your media budget does the rest, whacking people round the head with it, again and again, until frequency does its job.

Entertainment starts at the other end, with your audience: what they love, what they're interested in, what they'd choose to spend time with.

The question advertising never had to ask

Anyone who makes entertainment for a living starts with one question:

Why would anyone choose to spend time with this?

It has never mattered more. Your audience has almost unlimited choice in how they spend their time, so you're no longer competing with your competitors. You're competing with everything.

Advertising rarely has to ask the question. Media spend is the comfort blanket. Nobody has to choose to watch your ad. You've paid for the privilege of interrupting them.

Where it goes wrong

So the ad idea sits at the centre of your campaign, and everything else, from PR and social to partnerships and branded content, gets briefed to build around it.

If you've ever briefed your PR agency on a new ad campaign, you'll know the look: polite nods, blank faces, and a quiet sense of "what exactly are we supposed to do with this?" There's nothing to say about it, because nobody outside the brand has any reason to care. The idea was designed to carry a message, not to be chosen.

Through my career I've worked on both sides, in PR and communications and in branded content and entertainment, and I've been on the receiving end of that brief more times than I can count. It's the same story for social, partnerships and branded content. They all end up working hard to make something of an idea nobody would choose to spend time with.

Make the flip

The best agencies have recognised this for a while. I was brought into BBH as part of a new Engagement Planning team, an early attempt to put an engagement idea, rather than an ad idea, at the heart of a campaign. The flip takes that thinking to its natural conclusion.

It starts with your brief. Instead of starting with what you want to say, start with your audience and one question: why would anyone choose to spend time with this?

Then put an entertainment idea at the centre, one that passes that test, and design everything else to support it, advertising included.

Your ads become assets built around something people already want to watch, read, listen to or attend. Your media budget stops forcing a message on people and starts amplifying something they've chosen. You stop pushing against a closed door and start pushing on an open one.

A brand that gets it

I spent many years working with Red Bull out of Austria, and it's a brand that understands the flip implicitly.

That's not to say it doesn't advertise. It does. But look at how it's done: the same cartoon campaign for decades, simple, consistent and focused on performance. It does its job, and it takes a small share of the budget and the effort.

The lion's share goes into events, experiences and content that engage deeply with a very defined audience. Around them come countless opportunities to support the product and the brand message, from what happens at the event itself to retargeting the people who engaged.

The entertainment is at the centre. The advertising is there, but it's never the main event.

It isn't advertising or entertainment

This isn't an argument against advertising. There's a place for both. The point is that an entertainment idea gives your advertising something better to say, a reason for people to pay attention rather than a message they're asked to sit through.

In short

• The usual way: your message → an ad idea → everything else spun off it.
• The Entertainment Flip: why would anyone choose this? → an entertainment idea → advertising and every other channel amplifying it, and your brand.

Before your next campaign

Next time you're planning a campaign, give yourself the space to ask whether you could make the flip.

And ask the same of the partners you work with:

• Is their muscle memory so strong that they can't see beyond the traditional model?
• Do they have the experience to genuinely ask why anyone would choose to spend time with it?
• Do they see your audience as people looking to be entertained, or as people to be reached with messages?

Where I come in

Every partner has a bias. A content studio will tell you entertainment is the answer, even when it isn't. A production company will tell you video is the answer. An advertising agency may simply be reluctant to give up the security of the 30-second TVC. Your in-house studio may be too close to the brand to judge whether anyone outside it would choose to spend time with the idea. And nearly all of them will fill the meeting with people you're not sure should be in the room.

Often, what you need is one person who's been there and done it. I've led some of the industry's most respected agencies and studios, and worked alongside brands and media owners, so I've seen this from every side. As an independent with nothing to produce or sell you, my only interest is whether the idea is right. And if the flip isn't the answer, I'll tell you.