Brand­ed film is a large­ly unex­plored medi­um, with “The Lego Movie” and “Somers Town” pre­sent­ing rare but notable endeav­ors. Con­sid­er­ing that film is such a pow­er­ful medi­um for sto­ry­telling, could brands be doing more with the medi­um to com­mu­ni­cate the sto­ries and val­ues of their brand to con­sumers?

As brands from con­sumer-fac­ing indus­tries all over the world look to increase the expan­sive­ness of their con­tent mar­ket­ing activ­i­ties, there comes a point where there will be more rel­e­vant con­tent avail­able than con­sumers can rea­son­ably be influ­enced by on their pur­chase jour­neys.

One huge chal­lenge for brands now is pro­duc­ing con­tent that can cut through the noise – con­tent that’s pow­er­ful, engag­ing, and per­sua­sive enough to influ­ence the per­cep­tion of a brand or prod­uct in the minds of con­sumers. The future win­ners of the con­tent mar­ket­ing game could be those brands that can cap­ture and thrill con­sumers with sto­ries that pos­sess such qual­i­ties.

[Tweet “The future will be owned by the brands who prove them­selves to be the most excep­tion­al sto­ry­tellers. {perma­link}”]

Sto­ry­telling is more than just com­mu­ni­cat­ing the crux of a brand’s val­ue propo­si­tions, it’s also com­mand­ing those mes­sages across the mul­ti­tude of chan­nels in which con­sumers expe­ri­ence media, main­tain­ing con­sis­ten­cy, and pro­vid­ing for the many needs and touch­points of a user’s brand jour­ney.

Enter Branded Film

Brand­ed film has the poten­tial to be one of the most pow­er­ful kinds of media to com­mu­ni­cate and cham­pi­on a brand’s core val­ues. With tech­nol­o­gy such as dig­i­tal dis­tri­b­u­tion and online stream­ing, the immer­sive, emo­tion­al, and inspi­ra­tional con­texts of cin­e­mat­ic sto­ry­telling can be brought to con­sumer screens with per­sua­sive and mean­ing­ful impact.

Sto­ry­telling via film offers busi­ness­es the abil­i­ty to talk about about them­selves in a way that isn’t self-indul­gent or irrev­er­ent; instead it allows for open­ing an hon­est and engag­ing con­ver­sa­tion with audi­ences on how a brand can ful­fill a gen­uine rela­tion­ship with con­sumers that com­ple­ments their lives – some­thing an adver­tise­ment, a com­mer­cial, or a mar­ket­ing cam­paign often fails to achieve.

The Success Of ‘Somer’s Town’

One notable recent exam­ple of how the medi­um can be uti­lized by a brand can be found in the Eurostar-fund­ed fea­ture length film, “Somer’s Town”.

The 2008 film had an esti­mat­ed bud­get of £500,000 and grossed £566,616 in box office earn­ings. How­ev­er, the real val­ue was achieved through the artistry and tal­ent of the pro­duc­tion.

Hav­ing a world-renowned direc­tor in Shane Mead­ows meant the film reached an inter­na­tion­al audi­ence, screen­ing at numer­ous fes­ti­vals, and win­ning the esteemed Michael Pow­ell award at the Edin­burgh Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val. Acco­lades enabled, no doubt, by grant­i­ng Mead­ows full cre­ative con­trol of the film’s sto­ry and pro­duc­tion.

What About ROI?

The suc­cess of “Somer’s Town” is clear. How­ev­er, the ques­tion-mark on the minds of mar­keters will be whether this sub­tle­ty of approach can ever ensure val­ue and return on invest­ment. Brand­ed film does­n’t push an clear adver­to­r­i­al mes­sage, nor does it offer a direct call to action that can be used as a jus­ti­fi­able met­ric.

What brand­ed film offer is authen­tic­i­ty, art, and long-term engage­ment.

“Somers Town” offered a sim­ple sto­ry about an unlike­ly friend­ship between two teenage boys, a mutu­al com­ing-of-age that cul­mi­nat­ed in a trip to France. Their meet­ing and even­tu­al jour­ney is enabled by Eurostar, but the brand’s pres­ence is tact­ful­ly felt and nat­u­ral­ly placed.

The under­ly­ing mes­sage that the film pro­motes is the spir­it of con­nec­tion, con­ti­nen­tal friend­ship, and the empow­er­ing qual­i­ties of trav­el. In oth­er words, Eurostar’s brand val­ues brought to life by ele­ments of sto­ry­telling with­in the cohe­sive­ness of film.

More Successful Examples Of Branded Film

Oth­er suc­cess­ful exam­ples include “The Lego Movie”, per­haps the most notable exam­ple of a brand­ed film to date, and BMW’s “The Hire”, a series of cin­e­mat­ic shorts direct­ed by inter­na­tion­al­ly-renowned direc­tors.

Sony Eric­s­son, Schweppes, and Pra­da (see below) have also invest­ed in the brand­ed film. In each case, the brands reap the ben­e­fits of inter­na­tion­al reach, achieved through the uni­ver­sal­i­ty of sto­ry­telling and the film medi­um.

Communicating Core Brand Values

The world’s most respect­ed brands are rec­og­nized because they have ingra­ti­at­ed them­selves with uni­ver­sal val­ues that peo­ple find relat­able. Coca-Cola’s grand vision for the brand revolves around the con­cept of hap­pi­ness, and Nike’s “Just Do It” cap­tures a sense of pri­mal impulse that has come to embody their brand val­ues.

John Mont­gomery, CEO of Thresh­old Inter­ac­tive, the L.A.-based dig­i­tal agency behind the Nes­tle-spon­sored “But­terfin­ger the 13th” told Momen­tol­ogy that brand­ed film expe­ri­ences are pow­er­ful because they emo­tion­al­ly con­nect with peo­ple.

“Brand­ed films have the abil­i­ty to trans­form an audi­ence unlike any oth­er audio visu­al medi­um by con­nect­ing with peo­ple for a very long time around a spe­cif­ic theme,” Mont­gomery said. “Pow­er­ful themes from film can be born from the DNA of a brand.”

“Film is an incred­i­ble sto­ry­telling device that allows you to build sub­tle nuances around a theme,” he added. “Because of that, it’s a pow­er­ful tool for brands to use. Doc­u­men­tary films, in par­tic­u­lar­ly, seems like an easy fit for brands to get involved in the sto­ries that peo­ple have.”

Brands that want to com­pete for those core val­ues, and to com­mu­ni­cate emo­tion­al or inspi­ra­tional ideas, have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to instill a per­cep­tion of those val­ues in con­sumer minds through brand­ed films.

The Future of Branded Film?

The future of brand­ed film presents excit­ing, unex­plored ter­ri­to­ry, accord­ing to Mont­gomery.

“There will be more brand­ed films com­ing in the future,” he said. “More brands will look to exper­i­ment and there’s going to be quite a few dif­fer­ent types of brand­ed films as the enter­tain­ment busi­ness looks to over­haul its mod­el and off­set devel­op­ment costs in cre­at­ing long-form con­tent.”

Film has the poten­tial to cap­ture the time­less ele­ments of sto­ry­telling that appeal to con­sumers on a deep­er lev­el than that of adver­to­r­i­al mes­sages. It was the late aca­d­e­m­ic Joseph Camp­bell who said “If you’re going to have a sto­ry, have a big sto­ry, or none at all.”

For the ambi­tious, brand­ed film could be the medi­um to tell those sto­ries.

What do you think of the brand­ed film oppor­tu­ni­ty?