By Kristin Wilcha

The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) held its annual television advertising forum last week (3/23) at New York’s Grand Hyatt Hotel. Bob Liodice, president/CEO of the ANA, noted during his opening remarks that “the past few years have been marked by a significant transformation of the marketing landscape,” with consumers being more in control of the advertising they interact with, while marketers are being held more accountable than ever before.

“Customers have enormous leverage and power to determine what they want to see and hear,” said Liodice, alluding to the proliferation of DVRs and other devices. “We marketers must determine how we’re going to get invited to the table, because, in essence, marketing is becoming ‘by invitation only.'”

While the marketing landscape is shifting, with viewers able to zap ads via personally empowering technologies, and advertisers increasingly looking at other ways to reach consumers, Liodice remains bullish on TV, particularly in the areas of sponsorship and branded entertainment. Liodice said those areas will “continue to unfold in new, creative ways with consumers giving greater permission to advertisers to engage with them. Specifically, I am pointing to the evolving opportunities afforded by branded content as well as the development of video on demand. These vehicles will provide alternatives to the traditional thirty-second spot by generating more personalized advertising and content specifically focused at target consumers.”

Unveiled at the event was an ANA survey of marketers’ attitudes and thoughts on branded entertainment. The survey, which involved 118 respondents, all of whom are ANA member companies, found that 63 percent had participated in some sort of branded entertainment project. Meanwhile, 26 percent had not, and had no plans to pursue branded projects, which were defined by the ANA as the integration of a product within an appropriate context. The remaining 11 percent of those marketers surveyed said they had yet to engage in a branded project, but plan to get involved in the next year.

Among other findings in the survey was that a significant number of respondents–42 percent–felt one of the top benefits of branded content was to forge a stronger emotional connection with consumers. Fifty-two percent of respondents reported that the funding for branded projects had been shifted from the traditional TV budget. Seventy-one percent reported that funds allocated to branded content amounted to less than five percent of their marketing communications budget. Although they find measurement of effectiveness challenging, 56 percent of marketers engaged in content projects make efforts to do such measuring. Twenty-four percent said they measure without difficulty, while 20 percent don’t measure at all.

A panel discussion was held to discuss the findings. Participants were: David A. Burwick, senior VP/chief marketing officer at Pepsi-Cola North America; Mark Kaline, global media manager at the Ford Motor Company; and Stuart Shlossman, senior VP/media and client development at Madison Road Entertainment, which seeks to develop relationships between marketers and programmers. Jonah Bloom, executive editor of Advertising Age, moderated the session.

Schlossman noted that he was not surprised that 63 percent of marketers engage in branded content, but surprised at the high percentage–26–that don’t do branded entertainment and have no plans to do so within the next year.

Kaline said that marketers who had the most success with branded entertainment projects were those who pursued “brand integrations that are organic.” He noted that if integrations were too obvious to consumers, the project wouldn’t be effective.

Burwick noted that for marketers, including Pepsi, the impetus for engaging in branded entertainment is reach and relevancy–“the two biggest issues we face, and branded entertainment has allowed us to crack that.”

Schlossman related that in terms of funding these types of projects, taking money from traditional TV makes sense in that it has perennially been the largest budget. Ford’s Kaline said taking money from television made sense considering that the “lions share of integration is in TV,” although he noted that video games, movies and promotions also play into the mix. Burwick also noted, “for us, it’s the law of large numbers. [The TV budget] is the biggest one to play with.” He also said that in these early days of branded entertainment, as with most things, budgets come from other areas.

“People haven’t committed resources commensurate with the press,” said Kaline, “but that will increase [over time.]”

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