CULVER CITY, Calif.—Currently in the talking stages is a project in which a client is interested in having its brand featured as part of a music video with a high-profile recording artist. A TV commercial would break the same time as the video—so too would a video game that could be played on and/or downloaded from the Web.
"It would all be part of a seamless branding campaign we’re putting together," related Marco Brambilla, creative director of bicoastal medium, a new venture borne out of the teaming of bicoastal commercial/music video house HSI Productions and New York-based video game creative shop Immaterial.
Medium’s focus is on conceiving, developing and producing interactive branded entertainment, primarily in the form of video games that carry relevance to specific brands or products. The shop also specializes in brand placement within the video game environment. This branding would be updateable; for example, a movie marquee organically placed within a game could be changed to show new releases. Medium’s blueprint also calls for music related initiatives, which provide a revenue stream and marketing opportunities for record labels and recording artists while adding to the video-gaming experience.
The latter pursuit stems from the record industry’s recognition that video games represent a viable launching pad for bands and musical acts. Just as music exerts influence on and can be a key component of video games, so too do games help to fuel music sales, offering bands and performers major exposure to the pivotal youth demographic. As chronicled in SHOOT, a similar dynamic has emerged in music for commercials, which has helped to put both new and established acts on the charts.
The key players in medium are Brambilla, his Immaterial colleague, writer/art director Robert Auten, HSI COO/general counsel Randy Winograd, who serves as medium’s COO, and executive producers Kerstin Emhoff and Rebecca Skinner. Emhoff and Skinner also continue in their capacities as heads of the commercial and music video divisions, respectively, at HSI.
"The idea is to team the video game experience and resources at Immaterial with HSI’s advertising and music video expertise so that we can seamlessly bring together the different media and disciplines to help clients brand themselves on various levels, including entertainment," said Brambilla.
Formed about a year and a half ago, Immaterial has worked on several video game properties. The company handled scripting, designing and cinematic content while also providing consultation for Far Cry, a PC-based game slated for release this month by video game publisher Ubisoft. Immaterial was also involved in producing cinematic content, story consulting and scripting for Rainbow Six 3, the latest installment in the Tom Clancy series of video games from Ubisoft. Additionally, Immaterial conceived and is handling all development aspects of a racing game with a hip-hop urban tone. Currently with the working title Rolling on Dubz, the game has even undergone focus group testing. This game property is also slated for distribution by Ubisoft.
Brambilla, with a pedigree as a commercial (i.e., Nike, Coca-Cola, Levi’s), feature film (Demolition Man) and TV miniseries (Dinotopia) director, is a self-described big-time video gamer. It was the Dinotopia experience, which involved extensive computer animation at Framestore CFC, London, which served as a catalyst for his professional transition into gaming and the formation of Immaterial. "There was about a year of CG work on Dinotopia—and working with computers, CG characters and synthetic environments captured my interest," related Brambilla. "From that came interstitials and cinematic pieces for video games, and that got me turned on to game design and story development, where I could apply film-style production value and subtleties in direction."
Winograd said that Brambilla’s directing and filmmaking sensibilities were of particular appeal to HSI and helped finalize its decision to launch medium. Winograd sees Brambilla as a conduit for HSI’s directors to diversify if they so choose into the gaming/branded interactive entertainment sector. "Our directors can identify with Marco, who’s a director," observed Winograd. "Marco provides a comfort level to our directors. He can demystify or translate various aspects of the video game discipline, making it more accessible to our filmmakers. This can evolve into a whole new creative outlet for many of our directors.
"And," continued Winograd, "there are campaigns—encompassing commercials, music videos and video games—that a director can be involved in throughout, offering continuity to an advertiser client across all disciplines. Or even if the same director isn’t involved in each discipline, we can still offer that client one-stop shopping via medium and the HSI family on a campaign across these different media."
The aforementioned Auten has assembled video game credits that include the aforementioned Far Cry and Rainbow Six 3. He has also been involved as a writer/art director on a number of music videos and commercials (MTV, VH1, Capitol Records).
HSI’s Skinner has executive produced music clips for such artists as Eminem, Britney Spears, Jay-Z, Michael Jackson and The Rolling Stones. Emhoff has served as executive producer on ad campaigns for assorted high-profile brands, including Coca-Cola, Nike, Sony, adidas, Levi’s, the Gap and Gatorade. Together, Skinner and Emhoff bring more than 20 years of experience in executing marketing strategies for major recording artists and brands.
The formal announcement of medium’s formation was made earlier this month at the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences’ DICE (Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain) Summit in Las Vegas. Winograd, who’s attended several DICE confabs, said this year’s event program was different in that it included the topic of convergence and touched upon the difficulties that marketers and advertisers are having with audience fragmentation.
Spurring on and reflecting HSI’s interest in extending its reach into branded entertainment was the New Orleans Media Experience (NOME), an annual conference that debuted last year (SHOOT, 11/14/03, p. 7). Several HSI executives, including Winograd and founder/president Stavros Merjos, are founding members of NOME, a convergence festival that highlights advertising, music, film and video gaming.
But the prime dynamic for the launch of medium, said Winograd, is the fact that "marketing brands, whether they be musical acts or Fortune 500 brands, see the shifts in the market and the need to be in the entertainment space. … Advertising dollars are going to this space, including video games, which reach the key coveted demographic, thirteen- to twenty-four-year-olds. And as those people grow up, you’ll see many of them will remain gamers, which means that the overall reach of video games will continue to grow."
Brambilla, who is still available as a commercial director via DNA, Hollywood, added, "The video game business is as large as the movie industry, if you don’t include DVD sales. Advertisers and marketers are trying to figure out the best ways to get involved in this entertainment sector and that’s where we think medium can fill a key role."
Indeed, the advertising/marketing community has made some initial inroads into gaming as reported over the past year in SHOOT. These efforts include DaimlerChrysler’s Jeep brand, which struck a deal with the interactive gaming G4 television network to sponsor certain programming events. Jeep also tailor-made a TV commercial to run on G4, a :30 titled "Fanatic" that blends game-like imagery and live-action footage of a game character driving a Jeep Wrangler Rubicon.
Additionally, Chicago-headquartered brand communications/media firm Starcom Media Vest Group last year launched a specialty arm, Play, Chicago, Los Angeles and London, which aims to leverage the gaming industry as a marketing channel for clients (SHOOT, 7/18/03, p. 1). The company is pursuing such areas as product placement, event marketing and the sharing of assets, such as using a game character or other intellectual property in a brand’s marketing communications, and vice versa.
