Fox Mobile Studio’s Brainstorm: Branded Entertainment Part I
Branded mobile entertainment just got a wintergreen punch with Fox Mobile Studios’ Brainstorm, an eight-episode scripted comedy series for mobile and online platforms that revolves around Altoids, “The Curiously Strong Mints.” The entire series launches today ( Monday, September 28).In the series, FMS created a storyline that integrates Altoids; Yoghurt, a struggling advertising agency works on the Altoids account, with a cast 
of quirky characters including the agency’s new freelancer- self-proclaimed ad-wizard Rock Shanz.
This is the first branded entertainment endeavor from Fox Mobile Studios, a unit of Fox Mobile Group. FMG is a division of Fox Entertainment Group, which is wholly-owned by News Corporation. Altoids is owned by Wrigley U.S. Gum and Mints, which has operations in more than 40 countries and distributes its world-famous brands in more than 180 countries. Wrigley is a subsidiary of Mars, Inc., a $30-billion, family-owned company.
MobilizedTV spoke with both Michael Wallen, vice president/creative director for Fox Mobile Studios and Steven Amato, a partner in Omelet, a hybrid creative and entertainment agency that produced Brainstorm. The interview with Wallen is Part I; Part II’s interview with Amato will appear tomorrow in Part II.
MobilizedTV: How is this being distributed on the mobile phone? Is it an iPhone app? Who are your partners for distribution?
Wallen: This is a web exclusive with Daily Motion for one week. That releases on Sept. 28. On Oct. 7, it’ ll be on MySpace, Break, Vimeo, YouTube and all the usual suspects. The mobile release is part of the Oct 7 wide release. We’re going to place it on AT&T, Sprint and we’re also doing a deal with Nokia, for all Nokia handsets worldwide and in their Ovi store. We’re still negotiating exactly where it’s going to be placed; we’re looking at all the options. But it’s already guaranteed that it will be on their content deck.
In addition to the eight episodes, we’ve produced six viral promo clips that talk about the rules of brainstorming and we have a trailer that just surpassed 100,000 views on Daily Motion. After a long debate, we decided to release all eight episodes at once. The reason behind that is our metric for success is impressions. because we’re not building towards the release of a TV show or other event and it’s hard to keep an audience online. Our thinking was, if we have a willing and able viewer who is engaged in the series, they’re is no reason to stop them from enjoying the whole series at once.
How did this deal with Wrigley come about? Had you been looking for a good fit to try mobile content with embedded product placement?
You’re absolutely right. We looked at video content as that next frontier in mobile content, moving beyond personalization and subscription models. It’s a tricky world for non-premium content, for original short-form content with no brand equity. it would be challenging to sell that kind of content. The Simpsons or The Family Guy can sell clips or be part of a subscription. But a show that no one has heard of was a bit of a reach. We thought that there is all this chatter about branded entertainment and that seemed like a viable option to subsidize the cost of production and mitigate our overall costs. That’s the general school of thought: we have a really unique concept that could be a value to a brand, not just to us.
This is going to be a lot of fun. This is a really organic concept to support the brand integration movement. While we’ve seen a lot of shows about advertising such as Mad Men and Trust Me, none of them portrayed real modern brands that were still relevant. So we felt it was a business and marketing opportunity for a brand. We started showing this around. We produced a small teaser, shot here in our offices. We reached out to some talented folks from comedy troops like the Upright Citizens Brigade and The Groundlings and did a one-day shoot and went out and showed it to a couple of brands. The first brand we showed it to was Wrigley’s, which has a huge portfolio of brands. We originally thought we’d sell each episode to a different brand. But what we found out was we could bring a brand in for the whole story arc and tell a more compelling story.
When the dust started settling and we wanted to move in that direction, our conversations with Wrigley had evolved. We did have discussions with other brands. But we flew out to Chicago for the initial pitch with Wrigley and there was an undeniable chemistry there. We got really lucky: they got it, they understood the content and thought it was a great opportunity. Having worked with clients and brands and entertainment studios, when you have a connection and two people excited about the same thing, magical things can happen.
How are you going to measure the success of Brainstorm from the point of view of both Fox Mobile and Wrigley?
I can certainly speak on what I consider successful for Fox Mobile Studios. I would venture to say it’s awareness and impressions. For Fox, there are a couple of objectives. It’s our first branded entertainment piece. The first implies there’s a second, third fourth. We’re excited about this vertical with video: to have a brand participate and make that free option available for the consumer is exciting. Success is to launch this vertical and get season 2 going and other branded entertainment going.
We’re looking at this as a show and not a pre-launch for a product. This is a show in itself. We’re looking at impressions for the major metric of success. That’s how we’ll know that we’ve done a good job. We’d love to have Altoids call us and tell us sales was up a certain percentage. The brand’s participation adds texture and realism. As Fox, we want people to enjoy the programing. We’re not an ad agency, we’re an entertainment studio.
Regarding metrics, we’re tracking everything, using a service that enables us to get all sorts of analytics: how long they watch the video, when they drop off, whether they send it to a friend, post it to Facebook page. That’ll be super important for us to know where our missteps were and how we can improve for the next season. I think metrics are getting better. We’re able to capture a lot of data. As video on mobile becomes more of a now thing and not a down-the-line thing, the tools will meet the content available to the consumer.
Are any other branded entertainment projects in the works?
Yes, there are. Fox Mobile Studios is a very small creative studio, but we have a lot of relations with the entertainment community. There are lots of great directors and producers knocking on the door and saying they have a great idea. Mobile and web is a great place for people to get that idea off their chest and in front of consumers. We’re embracing the community and our internal development process. We’ve lined up five additional projects on our slate that are all entertainment properties with organic brand integration opportunities. We’ve shot down a lot of concepts that were poor attempts to integrate a brand. If it takes away from the entertainment or is a thinly veiled advertising campaign, we’re not interested. We’re building great stories here. We’re not in production yet on any of these ideas on the slate, but I can say that we’re doing a show about a fictional band. we’re doing a music-oriented show. and we’re doing a Hollywood gossip Entertainment Tonight parody show.
Would there be any result of Brainstorm that would convince you not to go down this path again?
I firmly believe that we’re just meeting consumers’ expectations. As a mobile phone user and a consumer of content, my expectations for availability of content has gone through the roof as has most peoples’. They have an expectation to turn on their phone and there better be really good content. The expectation will grow and we have to meet that somehow, someway. Creating mobile serial content is my duty. We might stumble out of the gate or have some series not as popular as the other, but I feel we’re on the right track. There are a lot of folks moving in the same direction and that gives me the sense we’re on the right track. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. We hope to come out on the other end as having been trailblazers.
Tags: Altoids, AT&T, Brainstorm, branded entertainment, Daily Motion, Fox Mobile Group, Fox Mobile Studios, Mad Men, Michael Wallen, mobile analytics, mobile content, mobile metrics, mobile serial content, MobilizedTV, Nokia, Omelet, Ovi Store, Sprint, Steve Amato, The Groundlings, Trust Me, Upright Citizen's Brigade, Wrigley
This entry was posted on Monday, September 28th, 2009 at 9:00 am and is filed under Advertising/Marketing, Content, Home Feature, Monetizing Mobile.
