An article came out today in the LA Times by James Rainey discussing our TV shows and the new wave of Branded Entertainment, which we have defined as “Brandutainment”. In the article, James Rainey is highlighting the differences within the marketing and advertising industry when it comes to paid content, brand integration, social media and today’s engagement platforms. We believe that there are companies and individuals who understand and embrace this new wave of media, while others may doubt it or reject it. We are welcoming the opportunity to further educate about our programs and what we do:

Branded Entertainment and Brandutainment

Branded Entertainment is a growing form of marketing. Many brands believe that BE provides for alignment of brand with relevant content. They recognize that BE builds brand affinity with a desired target group/demographic, and know that it is effective in avoidance of traditional consumer clutter. They believe it provides for protection from increased consumer control due to new technologies, ie. Tivo.

It is clear that the future of Advertising is different from the traditional interruptive advertising model, and as Rainey clearly states: “producers probe relentlessly for ways to slip advertising inside programs, because old-fashioned advertising increasingly gets screened out by the owners of digital video recorders”. That’s why we pioneered Brandutainment™ as a logical extension of Brand Integration and Product Placement strategies into TV programs, while entertaining, educating and engaging viewers with the solution.

Our Content Partners

We strongly believe that companies that appear on our shows are helping us deliver on our mission statement which is to entertain, educate, and engage our viewers through solution oriented content. Unlike an infomercial, no sales attempts are made and no call to action is employed, only informative, educational and entertaining content is shared (and we know the difference as we have another division that produces Direct Response marketing and infomercials with a clear intent of selling products).

Through our Brandutainment shows, our only goal is to deliver informative content to our viewer that is both entertaining and educational. Companies that partner with us get valuable brand exposure, and get to position their products as solutions for the real life challenges that our viewers tell us are important to them (1).

To take it further, the main difference in our programming format compared to traditional branded Entertainment is the fact that our shows are by invitation only. We must believe the brand is a worthwhile solution for our audience or they will not be invited to participate as content partners - even if they are willing to contribute towards the production of the segment. Each day our producers are turning down brands as they fail to meet the criteria of content partnership. Brands that are not selected for participation as content partners still have the opportunity to buy commercial time within the program; however this is sold through our Advertising and Sponsorship Division.

Since 1992 our business model has been consistently validated. After working with over 8,000 brands including P&G, Wal-Mart, Microsoft, Disney and many other leaders, we continue to work with top brands and hundreds of Fortune 1000 companies and we are adding more and more celebrities to our shows to create content rich solutions.

Our Viewers

Brandutainment is an evolved form of Branded Entertainment that we at O2 Media are helping to pioneer. Although our version is unique in many respects, it is not dramatically different from the style of Brand integration that is used in other mainstream media and news magazine shows today. We trust that our viewers recognize the difference, and appreciate the value that we offer them.

We know that our viewers are tuning into our shows to hear what solutions brands have to offer them, and our “balancing act woman” chooses to watch our show over other news morning outlets, knowing that she is going to “meet” the brands she loves (or doesn’t know about yet) and get solutions for her everyday challenges in an entertaining, educating and engaging way. This is the wave of the future in engaging content creation, and we are proud to be a part of it and lead the way.

(1) Every day our website gets filled with ideas for shows our viewers would like to see. We work very hard to find the companies that can help turn those ideas into compelling content for our viewer, and we distribute the solution not only through Television, but also through our websites, newsletters, and email campaigns.