Written by: Rupert Maconick, EP Saville Productions
Last year alone, $600 billion was spent on traditional advertising. But there is a new advertising approach happening right now, which is a throwback to a bygone age: Brands are shifting away from traditional TV commercials to funding and sponsoring documentaries, television programs and specials, and films. Brands will emerge as the film and TV moguls of the future.
Sponsored programs are not new. In the late ’40s, brands like Texaco and Admiral sponsored some of the earliest TV shows starring Milton Berle and Sid Caesar. In the 1950s and ’60s, the term “soap opera” was coined because shows were sponsored by soap brands like Procter & Gamble. In the successful TV series “Perry Mason” (1957-1966), the protagonist drove a new car model in every episode, reflecting the different models of cars that the auto sponsor produced at the time. The insurance company Mutual of Omaha sponsored “Wild Kingdom” until they became firmly connected with the title.
The traditional advertising agency art-and-copy creative model was born in the 1930s for print advertising. A copywriter writes an ingenious print advert which is combined with eye-catching images from an art director. In the 1960s, the real “Mad Men” came along and in conjunction with the world-wide explosion of TV sets in every home, they invented the 30-second hard sell spots for the captive TV audience. In other words: They modified their existing methods of advertising to match the trends of the time and made the changing marketplace an opportunity for incredible growth.
Today, every brand and everyone in the advertising and broadcast industries are faced with a similar challenge – and opportunity: Our challenge now is that consumers are no longer watching traditional TV. Most consumers under the age of 40 do not have cable. The future of advertising is transforming, shifting away from television, billboards and magazine ads to platforms like Netflix, HULU and Amazon.
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