Branded content sounds good. Less broadcasting, more story. Less advertising, more relevance. But honestly, much branded content is still advertising, just better packaged.
Most branded content starts with the brand. What do we want to say, what needs to be included, which message cannot be left out? Understandable. But the viewer asks a different question: why would I want to watch this? And that is where it starts to clash.
An entrepreneur talking about what a hack did to his company. A customer showing how he deals with energy. A group of friends casually sitting down at McDonald’s. These are not messages, they are situations. And that is exactly where attention begins.
“The viewer does not ask what you want to say,
but why they would want to watch it.”
We create a lot of branded content series for brands such as ANWB, Vodafone, McDonald’s and Exact. What stands out is actually very simple: the moments that stick are never the moments where the brand explains something. They are the moments where something happens.
The reflex is to lock branded content down. Add the USPs, make the brand visible, steer the story. But the more you steer, the less it feels like something people would choose to watch voluntarily. And that is exactly the problem.
Branded content that works starts somewhere else. Not with the brand, but with something that is already interesting in itself. A situation, a moment, a real conversation. The brand connects to that. Not by taking over, but by being present.
Internally, we often use one check: would you still watch this if the brand was not attached? If yes, you are on the right track. If no, it is probably too forced. Branded content does not compete with advertising, but with everything. So if it is not interesting in itself, it will always lose. That is what we keep seeing in practice.
Johan van Hasseltweg 43
1021 KN Amsterdam
+316 526 71 274
info@formatique.nl
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