Brands Build Community with Sponsored Playlists - Steve Rosenbaum - MediaBizBloggers

There's a new ad unit in town - a powerful new tool that's appearing in some pretty classy places - and the funny thing is it doesn't even look like an ad unit. It's the long form video presentation called Sponsored Playlists, and it's the start of something big. Target, Kraft, and Nissan are all experimenting with variations on the concept - each of them using a mix of created, curated, and scripted content.

But the key word here is CONTENT. Brands, who have heretofore stayed at arm's length from Web content, or who've built wholly owned content landing communities (remember Bud TV?) are now trying a new approach.

Let's take a look at each of these clients, and explore their content creation and delivery strategies.

Target's Frugalista Campaign

Target is creating long form content that ties its brand to the concept of cost-conscious and fashionable. Using attractive on-camera talent, and an in-store location for the shoot, Target is able to create a straightforward presentation that is breezy and fun. Rather than trying to shoe-horn the message into a :30 spot, Target is doing mini-documentary style pieces that stand on their own as useful and fun. And then, working with New YorkMagazine, they present a Sponsored Video Playlist that provides a collection of videos to New York Web site visitors within a Target-branded player.

See it live here: http://videos.nymag.com/playlist/Target-Frugalista

Kraft's Family Phavorites Campaign

Over at the Readers' Digestsite TasteOfHome.com, they have put together a really delicious looking sponsored collection from Kraft brand's Philadelphia Cream Cheese. With cooking recipes like Marble Brownies and Salsa Roll-ups. Taste Of Home is able to offer the expertise of Kraft in a branded environment called Family Phavorites. Kraft gets to share long form content directly within a cooking community - and Taste of Home gets both revenue and quality content.

See it live here: http://www.tasteofhome.magnify.net/playlist/New-Family-Phavorites-By-Philly

Nissan's Master The Shift

Automaker Nissan is bringing its brand message to Rodale publishing's BicyclingMagazine. The Sponsored video playlist has Nissan sponsoring third party content from Chris Carmichael. The result, Nissan gets home page logo positioning around high quality and editorially approved Bicycling content.

See it live here: http://video.bicycling.com/

What does all this mean? Well, for one thing, advertisers are beginning to understand that they can get more 'mindshare' if they provide longer and more valuable information to their customers and potential customers. And at the same time, that there's a new option emerging that sits squarely between the old model of interruption advertising for video (putting ads in front of content) and destination pages (asking audience members to come and find your content).

Sponsored video content playlists are a powerful new model, and sure to see new and innovative uses emerging in the months and years to come.

Steven Rosenbaum is the CEO and Co-Founder of Magnify.net - a fast-growing video publishing platform that powers more than 50,000 web sites, media companies, and content entrepreneurs to aggregate and curate web video from a wide variety of web sources. Currently Magnify.net publishes over 50,000 channels of Curated-Consumer Video, and is working closely with a wide variety of media makers, communities, and publishers in evolving their content offerings to include content created by, sorted and reviewed by community members. Rosenbaum is a serial entrepreneur, Emmy Award winning documentary filmmaker, and well known innovator in the field of user-generated media production. Rosenbaum Directed and Executive Produced the critically acclaimed 7 Days In September, and his MTV Series Unfiltered is widely regarded as the first commercial use of Consumer Generated Video in US mass media. Steve can be contacted at steve@magnify.net Follow Steve Rosenbaum on Twitter: www.twitter.com/magnify

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