Director & Producer Ryan Beickert on why branded content isn’t just a trend in the industry but an evolution of advertising altogether.
Branded content is not simply a trend, it is an evolution of the advertising industry. Today the expectations of what a brand represents are so much greater than in the past. This is attributed to the efforts brands have placed in fostering closer bonds in their marketing efforts, in addition to the rise of transparency that the internet and social media provide. You often first hear uproar about a brand’s ethical or moral positioning over any buzz on the quality or utility of their actual products. News breaks faster about a brand taking a position for a particular cause before you might ever find out about a new product offering. Having the same tone-deaf conversation with everyone is equivalent to copy and pasting the same conversation to everyone on Tinder—it’s not how you stand out, and it’s certainly not how you begin an actual relationship.
Branding is all about telling a story; the process of creating the persona of a brand and aligning it to a target consumer authentically involves research into art, culture, and philosophy, and being connected to the greater zeitgeist. Branding has evolved and is replicating a lot of tools and skills that have been used in traditional storytelling for a very long time. Having an expertise in how brands specifically can use these tools gives you the ability to create with the brand, opposed to just creating your own thing and finding a way to wedge a brand into your art.
