back

topic

Related Barbarians

Eva McCloskey

Press

posted 03/27/08 by Rick Webb

Sometimes we get press. Sometimes we talk about the press. Sometimes we talk to the press. Actually we talk to the press a lot. This is where we’re going to talk about talking about the press. Or something.

Here are some recent posts from our employees about Press:

adweek article on long-term branding

posted by on June 30, 2008 at 03:33 PM
filed under: Press

another article for ADWEEK

ADWEEK article #3: BRANDED CONTENT

posted by on May 27, 2008 at 04:17 PM
filed under: Press

Here’s another in my column at ADWEEK. This one’s about branded content, content, tigers, etc.

Branded Content: Not a Good Idea
Compromising art for marketing goals could really bite us in the ass
May 19, 2008
-By Benjamin Palmer

Branded content. It sounds awesome, doesn’t it? After all, our industry is married to the content industry.

TV commercials keep the lights on at every broadcast network, and indirectly keep the cable bill low enough that HBO can exist. Content producers make their cool shows and make it worth brands’ money to put commercials on the air. Magazines and newspapers know they can write all the cool articles and do all the cool photo spreads because of the ads. And we can all aspire to be directors.

But most of the time, something that’s going to make a perfect TV or Web show, proper video game or film is going to be an idea that doesn’t inherently play directly in line with the brand story (like, let’s say, insurance.) Because, what makes a great show, game or film? Artistic merit, humanity, story, talent. These occasionally overlap with marketing demographic, industry sector and brand penetration, but more often than not, they do not. God, that’s sad. We’re sort of in denial about that, aren’t we? But I think perhaps it’s best that we accept it: Great art does not necessarily have a brand angle. So there’s going to be some compromise to make the content and the brand story align with each other, and if the brand is footing the bill, guess who’s going to win that argument every time?

The problem with the notion of branded content being a sort of “direction we should all go in” is that it will end up hurting content, which in the end is going to hurt the industry.

So here is the real, immediate problem with content right now that we should be working to solve: It’s a giant pain in the ass to buy media online. Say you are a car company and you want to budget $50 million to TV media and $50 million to online media, for people who watch Lost. For TV, it’s dead easy: You make an ad and make one call and, bam, your ad is on the show, money spent, eyeballs zapped. For online media, it’s not so simple;there’s not actually $50 million worth of media to be bought online for the people who watch Lost, and certainly not with one phone call. But the interesting thing is that all those people who watch that show on TV (and that show in particular) are spending a crap load of time on the Internet, doing all sorts of interesting things. There’s no one way to capture audience yet. Every time we undertake a marketing gig, along with whatever banners we might be able to buy, we usually have to also build a custom solution from scratch.

So let’s take insurance as a category. There is a good example here: Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. Look it up if you never saw it on TV, but I’m sure you’ve heard of it. It’s a nature show, sponsored by a brand. But it is actually a good idea for a show that was sold to a brand, and has nothing to do with the brand. They took some cool content – and, man, who doesn’t love lions taking down a gazelle? – and stuck their name on it. And 20 years later, even though I only saw the show a few times, I still remember Mutual of Omaha.

This is actually super Internet friendly, and future-proof. The Internet will always want good content, including games and utilities. Good ideas will never go out of style. It would be really great if that was the “new thing,” that brands and agencies and our industry in general were all just trying to find a way to make new kinds of content that people really liked, and multiple brands could sign on.

So what’s the answer? The biggest change needs to happen with how we treat content, particularly how online and television content interact. Television is a viable medium—it’s current, it’s passive. We all need to turn our brains off once in a while. And it’s still better than the Internet in terms of really absorbing someone else’s story.

But storytelling also needs to have an element of participation or interaction for when we don’t want to turn off our brains. For that to exist on a grand scale, like it does on television, in our ad-supported capitalist society it needs to have a model where it can be “free” because of advertising.

On top of that, in case you haven’t noticed, the Internet is hard. It’s difficult to create this stuff, far more so than linear content. And on top of that, it’s unproven to a large extent. There hasn’t been a massive success in terms of unbranded, interactive content online (though of course the makers of World of Warcraft would disagree), let alone branded.

Hulu is a good example of centralized content with multiple brand participation, but is still kind of trying to create the Internet version of a TV network. Funny or Die is maybe a better example, because it has a narrower vision and subject matter, and it’s way more “Internet” in the sense that it has some element of user ratings and vaguely user-generated content. In the gaming/social area, Habbo Hotel and Club Penguin have been hugely successful in terms of numbers, but maybe not intensely profitable from advertising revenue.

So the answer really is that we as an industry – and by “we” I mean big agencies and more specifically big agency/media companies – have to find a way to make and/or fund online content, utilities, games and platforms that can be owned or sponsored by many brands. And rather than wait for Hollywood or Silicon Valley to build them and then buy ad space from them, maybe we should think about building our own.

Benjamin Palmer is CEO of The Barbarian Group.

(article @ adweek.com)

ADWEEK article

posted by on April 18, 2008 at 04:37 PM
filed under: Press

hey this is my second ADWEEK article as a guest columnist.

its about the internet, brands, the world, etc.

i am not usually a writer so i don’t know if its good or interesting or whatever, so let me know what you think please, i am doing these on a regular basis now, so constructive feedback is Awesome™

We write letters

posted by on August 08, 2006 at 01:29 PM
filed under: Press

N.B. This post was from the last version of our site

A little while ago there was a piece in Adweek about the Subservient Chicken. We decided to write a response to that piece because that’s the polite thing to do. Go check it out and make sure you bring your Adweek Username/Password with you.

more from this post » No comments

Creativity Magazine

posted by on December 13, 2005 at 06:57 PM
filed under: Press

N.B. This post was from the last version of our site

Well look at that. Five pieces were named “Interactive Work of the Year” by Creativity Magazine in this week’s issue. Five. And we built TWO of them. Method’s Come Clean site we did with Crispin and the Milwaukee’s Best Light site we did with Mother New York. Two out of five. Dare we say we did 40% of all the awesome work on the web? No, we wouldn’t say that. But today, just today, we will feel 40% more awesome.

more from this post » No comments

FWA goodness

posted by on November 22, 2005 at 06:56 PM
filed under: Press

N.B. This post was from the last version of our site

I’m a bit behind the wagon on this one, but the Comcastic site was selected as Site of the Month by the Favourite Website Awards (FWA) people for October. They told us it was seen as the “freshest and most ground-breaking” site out of over 2900 nominated sites and 31 winners. That’s pretty awesome.

More timely, and a propos the FWAs, they have an interview with Barbarian Partner and ECD Keith Butters over at their site this week.

Hope you’re all about to have an awesome holiday.

more from this post » No comments

Four sites, two articles, two new peeps

posted by on October 17, 2005 at 06:53 PM
filed under: Press

N.B. This post was from the last version of our site

Oh. My. God. So much going on. Where to begin? First. Comcastic. We teamed up with Goodby, Number 9, our pal and sound designer Sean T Drinkwater and Erik Natzke to build out this site. TBG was responsible for the High Speed Internet section which entails 5 skills games that will eventually lead players to a tournament for their chance at getting into the Guinness Book of World Records. As a player, you will be able to challenge and chat with other logged in members to compete in the games head to head. Your score will be recorded, making you eligible to become the best mouse user EVERRRRR.

Next. The Passat B6 Minisite, created by our one and only Robert Hodgin, in conjunction with Arnold Worldwide, is live. There is going to be a total of 120 mini-videos that showcase the new features of the car. Right now, there’s about more than a third of them up, but the rest will be incorporated within the next couple of weeks. Check it out!

Third. The Milwaukee’s Best Light Poker Game. Made in conjunction with Mother New York. This is really awesome. Went up on Thursday on our Milbest site, alongside some other Poker-related content, all very fun. Test your poker skills against Poker champ Chris “Jesus” Ferguson:

Fourth! God, we’ve been busy. You know how when you call and we say “oh yeah, it’s pretty busy.” See? We weren’t kidding. Finally, we offer you Boston.com’s tenth anniversary game, Lobstah Bash. Defend boston from a rabid candle and present hurling lobster. Don’t ask. Just play. And be warned. It’s HARD.

IN OTHER NEWS: Gametap, a project we’ve been working on with Mullen, got a nice writeup in The New York Times yesterday. I saw a decent article in AdWeek this week as well, but that one, ahem, didn’t mention your Barbarian friends. We josh. Anyway, if you’ve seen the enigmatic Get Goatz or What Is Adat spots on Adult Swim, you might begin to have some idea what we’re takling about here.

Speaking of Adweek, they did a really nice writeup of the insanely, completely addictive game we did for Saucony with Nail.

Finally, we’d like to welcome Jill as an interactive producer. She was last at Electronic Arts. And we’d like to welcome Cole as our latest rock star Flash designer. We found him on Flickr. No joke. Who says the Internet’s all hype?

more from this post » No comments

Just When Things Were Already Awesome

posted by on June 05, 2003 at 06:17 PM
filed under: Press

N.B. This post referred to v1 of our site

Hey! Look at that! We were just about to post our site update, and those nice people at the Commarts Network just bestowed us with a Design Interact Site of the Week. This award comes to us for our work with Arnold Worldwide and Volkswagen on the New Beetle Convertible Minisite. We are, of course, pleased and thankful for such a glorious honor. And if you’re visiting us from their site today: hey, welcome. You can check out our other VW work in the ‘our work’ section.

more from this post » No comments

the barbarian group

topic

Related Barbarians

Press

posted 03/27/08 by Rick Webb

Here are some recent posts from our employees about Press:

adweek article on long-term branding

ADWEEK article #3: BRANDED CONTENT

ADWEEK article

We write letters

Creativity Magazine

FWA goodness

Four sites, two articles, two new peeps

Just When Things Were Already Awesome

It’s gonna be awesome.™