Brand funding dos and don’ts: the media agency tell-all
Insights from WPP Media’s Simon Kennedy
Everyone knows the traditional television commissioning process is undergoing a sea-change.
With broadcasters restructuring and financial belts tightening, indies are filling funding gaps by actively seeking finance from brands.
But it’s not as easy as cold pitching marketing directors on LinkedIn.
To make advertiser-funded programming (AFP) work for you, you need to understand the mechanics of it, what not to do and how brands’ media agencies measure the return on investment (ROI).
This week, senior associate director of branded entertainment at WPP Media Simon Kennedy - who worked in TV previously on shows such as National Geographic’s When Sharks Attack - breaks down the reality of brand-funded TV.
Collaborations his department - which also covers sport - has worked on include Dragonfly North’s Cancer Detectives for Channel 4, which received funding from Cancer Research UK and led to the charity recording their highest day of regular giving.
So read on for Kennedy’s insider’s view on how media agencies evaluate projects and how you can make your pitch to brands count.
His insights include:
Routes to securing brand funding
The economics and ROI evaluation
Opportunities in social branded entertainment
How to pitch effectively to media agencies
Routes to brand funding
Everyone wants to find ways of filling funding gaps.
WPP Media’s senior associate director of branded entertainment Simon Kennedy says many people start by “looking on LinkedIn and sending messages to marketing directors of brands, hoping that they’re going to get some traction.”
Or they approach consultants, who are often ex-agency staff, former marketeers or producers who have done brand-funded shows at an indie and now set up on their own.
Kennedy says he’s “agnostic as to how an idea is brought to me. I personally am fine with where the work comes from. I speak to both the consultants and the production companies directly. And the broadcasters and the talent agents - whoever wants to bring me something. I’m not fussy.”
But it’s rare to have someone like him at an agency that indies can approach.
He explains: “We are the largest media agency in the UK, so I’ve got hundreds of brands under our umbrella [but] most other media agencies don’t have this dedicated resource.
“So whilst I want to say, ‘Speak to me’, I think it is sort of a lie to say that speaking to media agencies in general is a way to get your work made. You may get some traction. There will be people that have done them before. But as far as dedicated resource goes, that’s more rare.”
His experience of having been a TV producer also helps as “it means that I can be a way to connect a good idea to the money that could fund it.”
For indies trying to access this capital, timing and transparency are paramount. Bringing an idea to a brand that isn’t fully formed before securing genuine broadcaster interest can burn valuable bridges.
“You really only want to take it to a brand once the commissioner has said, ‘If you’ve got the money I’ll commission this.’ Coming with a spurious, ‘Well, they sort of smiled when I showed it to them and when that’s happened previously, that’s meant they’ve sort of liked it’ gets us into trouble,” says Kennedy.
He warns against exaggerating interest from one party to the other in the hope it makes one of them commit. Kennedy also stresses that for indies the commissioner relationship “is the most valuable thing, because I am tagging on brand money to a process that you’ve already undertaken to get the channel to be interested.”
Plus, “if it’s not going to go on the channel, then nobody’s going to see it. Therefore, it’s of no value to the brand.”
Takeaways: don’t just cold pitch marketing directors; look strategically at who brands have representing them and what their track record is; secure real commissioner commitment before pitching brands; don’t over-hype commissioner interest to a media agency or brand partner and vice versa
The economics and ROI evaluation
The avenues available to indies searching for funding may have expanded, but to access that money you need to understand how brands manage their budgets.
Kennedy points out that at the beginning of the financial year a brand has “already planned how it’s going to spend every penny that it’s got. It’s going to spend this much on making a new ad, this much on television advertising, billboards, radio etc - it’s all set in stone. A very small minority of brands hold money for branded entertainment.”
Around 99% of most brands’ annual marketing budget is already pre-allocated, therefore any pitch must be good enough to persuade them to divert funds away from their existing media strategy.
Media agencies evaluate branded content opportunities by comparing the cost of funding a show against the rate-card cost of equivalent traditional advertising, along with other metrics to determine whether an AFP proposal is going to give a worthwhile return on investment.
Kennedy gives the example of an indie wanting £1m of funding for a six-episode 9pm ITV show. To work out if it’s of value to the brand, he takes into account the sponsorship bumpers the broadcaster gives (usually 80 seconds over an hour) then, “I would look at your format and see roughly how much is my brand actually going to show up within the content and I put an estimate of, basically, the product placement value of the opportunity.”
He will then “tot up a few other things like the PR value of being able to say you’re launching a new show, the value associated with any additional assets that might be generated, the value associated with being adjacent to a famous person…all of these things.”
Also taken into account are things like the rate-card for if he had to buy that much airtime at 9pm on a weekday at ITV etc. If the resulting value exchange “is more than the £1m that you’re asking me for to make your TV show”, say around £1.4m, “then it’s genuinely a good investment.”
Of course there are additional ways of evaluating the campaign’s success, such as using research to test if a brand allying itself with a particular show has improved viewers’ perception of it.
But it’s worth remembering other competing media routes for brands such as influencer marketing - which is usually cheaper than the amount of finance an AFP will ask for - are easier to evaluate as the value exchange can be measured more easily than a linear ad-funded TV show. “There is slot average and that is useful. But you don’t know if a show is going to do well or not. There is an inherent risk.”
Takeaways: brand budgets are pre-allocated early in the financial year; structure pitches so promotional and media value exceeds the requested funding commitment; stress the ROI you can deliver
Opportunities in social branded entertainment
Although there are some big linear deals happening, innovation in branded funding is occurring mostly in fast-turnaround digital formats.
Kennedy uses the example of Channel 4’s digital YouTube commissions, which offer advertisers social branded entertainment opportunities.
“They have digital YouTube commissioners that commission shows just for Channel 4’s YouTube channels. Those are what are sold to brands and then they also buy some paid media to help support a guaranteed viewership across those products.”
An advantage is speed (“they can turn it around in 12 weeks; it’s a quicker process”) plus “it’s a lower entry point of cost and…it does match the growing viewing habits of YouTube being on the main screen of the home.”
A key thing Kennedy says to ask is, when people say branded content should be put on YouTube, you should think: “Yes, but whose YouTube? It’s got channels, but it hasn’t got ITV. It’s not like television. It’s different. If the brand puts it on their own, will a viewer think less because it feels like an ad? If a creator puts it on their own, but the brand pays for it, does the brand really get the benefit of that audience or actually is it to the benefit of the creator?”.
He cites Channel 4, Cancer Research UK and Dragonfly's Cancer Detectives andElectric Robin’s The Great British Phone Switch for Tesco Mobile and Channel 4 (in which parents and their children swapped digital lives for 48 hours to understand each other’s phone use better) as examples of projects executed well.
Takeaways: explore digital-first social branded formats for faster turnaround times and lower budget barriers; whose YouTube account will the content be on?
Working with media agencies
As well as approaching conversations with an agency with complete transparency about commissioner interest, indies should be honest around editorial flexibility.
Kennedy advises producers to identify early on what elements of a show might be changed to accommodate the brand’s ambitions, without compromising the creative vision for the show.
“You need to be honest about how flexible you can be with certain bits of the format. On a travelogue with two celebs, is the commissioner attached to the celebs or the destination? If you say, ’It’s a travelogue across Australia’, but my travel brand doesn’t sell holidays to Australia, can it change? The term I use is the ‘editorial cost.’”
He explains: “I will work with the production company to find things that are of low editorial cost to the show and repackage them as highly valuable opportunities for the brand to be in the content.”
Takeaways: gauge the flexibility of your format to accommodate a brand’s needs; be transparent about what the ‘editorial cost’ might be
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