Millions of People Fooled Without Them Even Knowing

Each day millions of people are fooled without even knowing. They are fooled by a marketing tactic known as branded content.

Branded content happens all around us. We unknowingly see it every day on countless TV shows, movie trailers, web videos and social media sites.

Its essential purpose is to trick the viewer into believing what they are seeing isn’t an advertisement. The goal is to make the viewer think about the product that is almost hidden subconsciously within the advertisement.

“Branded content is essentially the guy drinking coke in a movie,” Matt Arden, VP& Creative Director at Screenvision said.

According to Matt Arden branded content has come into existence due to media fragmentation that has been caused by technology and modern viewers. Media fragmentation is fundamentally the problem right now as we as viewers are consuming media in ways it wasn’t intended to be.

Products such as DVR’s and websites such as BitTorent have allowed for viewers to rend advertisements useless, as they skip through commercials.

This has caused the industry to change the way in which they promote products.

Matt Arden during his tenure at ESPN was tasked with advertising the movie Battleship to sports viewers. His team at ESPN decided to mesh the movie intercutting a TV spot, which included footage from both Transformers and NBA stars Kevin Durant and James Harden. This clever ad is just one of several that is changing the marketing world, as we know it.

Branded content doesn’t stop at TV promos it also applies to events and social media.

Jodi Arden Director, Brand Marketing & Promotions for USA Network was responsible for putting on ‘Modern Family’ Fan Appreciation Day promoting the shows addition to the USA Network lineup.

According to Jodi Arden Microsoft Surface Tablet sponsored the event using branded content marketing to include their products with the fame of the TV stars.

“We used Nolan Gould the young boy on the show to run the social media for the event,” Jodi Arden said.

According to Jodi Arden they employed Gould to run the social media for the event using branded content marketing by giving him a Microsoft Surface Tablet. With which Gould took pictures throughout the event and posted on Twitter.

Matt Arden believes that branded content is the future of marketing, as consumers are becoming more savvy and disconnected from traditional ads.