http://www.adweek.com/aw/esearch/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003538566
Jan 29, 2007
-KAMAU HIGH
When the managing partner and founder of San Francisco-based Science + Fiction watches television, he doesn’t pay much attention to the advertising. Yet the branded entertainment executive, 46, has been blending brand message and TV content in such high-profile projects as The Rookie: CTU, a co-marketing partnership between Fox’s 24 and Unilever’s Degree Men, for which he wrote and executive produced original content. A former vp at Lucas Digital, Townsend, married and the father of four, is also a retired member of the Guardian Angels. –Q: Consumers are getting savvy about branded entertainment. Should we expect the same fast-forwarding they do with spots?
A: The new 800-pound gorilla is somebody that’s half copywriter, half scriptwriter—a person who can balance marketing and advertising with character development. Those are the people that hit the sweet spot, so you won’t get people flipping through branded programming.
Are big agencies stumbling in the branded-entertainment arena?
The reason Science + Fiction exists is because the big agencies have not responded. Advertisers turn to them for solutions and, this is a generalization, the big agencies said you should do more 30 second [spots]. … It’s not about online or DVD or television, it’s about the skill set to create engaging stories and characters that have longevity. … They have stumbled.
Can you point to some examples?
You look at Crispin. They do good stuff, but you would hope that some of the bigger agencies would have reacted a lot sooner. I think advertisers just finally said, “You know what, forget it.” More than two times we’ve been brought in to create programming and the creative agency has been asked to step out of the room [after being told] your presence here is more destructive than it is helpful. … That’s because advertising agencies are unprepared for the tectonic shift that happened. … Look at the latest Degree-24 stuff—there’s a support advertising campaign, but the major distribution platform is online and that’s controlled by Unilever.
I was going to bring that up because it’s driving traffic through a spot on network TV.
Well, I would beg to differ. I’m not going to discount the validity and the effectiveness of the campaign, but I think that to say that’s the main reason or the only reason would be to underestimate the online social networking aspect. Degree and 24 share an audience and … once we tap into that audience, then the great thing about what’s been created is it’s very portable. I can tell you about it and you can tell your friend about it and I can access your network and his network. …The strength of online is your ability to create concentric and almost never-ending distribution channels.