Summary
This presentation addresses how brands can build research communities through social media. It looks at what works and what doesn’t, and provides case studies into how social media communities are currently being used to move beyond buzz towards deeper insights for brands, products and communication. Future opportunities for realising social media's full potential for customer understanding are looked into, including uses of the image-sharing website, Pinterest.

Summary
Branded entertainment has been around since the 1950s with the Procter & Gamble funded 'soap operas' a staple of daytime TV in the US. However, the cost and strict rules meant this approach had limited appeal to advertisers, so brands experimented with product placement, particularly in movies which gave Hollywood glamour, A-list endorsement on the big screen and loose regulation. The digital revolution has now blurred the line between TV and online viewing, in turn creating a whole new arena for branded entertainment. The opening up of thousands of new TV channels via cable, satellite and online video has generated a demand for content that cannot be met by traditional producers and can usher in a new golden era for advertising.

Summary
Young Asian audiences have more cash than ever before and are spending more of it on entertainment and media. Although the TV market is largely dominated by drama, news and reality shows, audiences are now yearning for more exciting and engaging entertainment and they are turning to online to satisfy their hunger. To combat the online migration, many local TV broadcasters are entering into co-funded projects with advertisers, licensing existing international formats and creating bespoke advertiser-funded programming. But while TV is currently the dominant force in Asia, the internet is the future.

Summary
Brands have spent a long time aiming to be invited into consumers' lives by providing them with 'branded entertainment' and the challenge to amuse or stimulate grows as the contest for share of attention span grows more fierce in a cross-screen world. The advertising world has always produced great populist entertainment, at the heart of which lies good storytelling. In order to keep the commercial savvy at the heart of our content output, advertisers, as brand guardians, must stay true to three key areas of good practice/expertise: placing brand truth at heart, creating compelling narratives, and managing transmedia access. Examples of practice come from Dulux, V05 Extreme Style and Chivas.

Summary
What actually constitutes branded entertainment is diverse and for this reason, as a discipline, it can seem very difficult to evaluate. It is also often a part of a wider campaign and so isolating its success is another challenge. A key question is: what did it contribute compared to a conventional spot? Using an experimental design, Ipsos aims to measure the effectiveness of branded entertainment in a controlled environment and delves deeper into how consumers can be exposed to a particular campaign, using examples from the Glastonbury Festival and HSBC Private Banking.

Summary
There is no doubt that brands have to work harder to engage with increasingly sophisticated audiences, but how do you measure success? E! Entertainment channel, Tilda rice and the English Beef and Lamb Executive have all eschewed the traditional advertising in favour of creating engaging content. An ad has seconds to say what content can convey across many hours in-depth, so when it comes to measuring success, it should be valued more subjectively using a mix of PR and product placement methodologies that apply a 'matrix' of values based on spot ads/pre-roll equivalents.

Summary
Branded content on TV has seen a spectacular rise in China, with rich companies vying for programming opportunities. Hour-long blocks of prime-time drama are being booked out a year in advance and, behind-the-scenes, bidding wars break out as soon as news of hot new entertainment shows hit the market. Big local brands can work directly with the stations but for multinational corporations, original programming formats developed from consumer insights will be the way forward as they bring something genuinely new to the market. This is where non-traditional media such as the internet and mobile offer a ripe and cost-efficient opportunity for brands to fill the void. Above any other type of online advertising, pure content is the most cost-efficient for the reason that there are no established rules of engagement. Those who get in early and experiment will have the added advantage of having built a base of benchmarks to negotiate with.

Summary
This briefing offers an overview of the history, theories and key trends related to Branded content. It summarises, briefly, the development of the genre and highlights some core issues for marketers utilising branded content strategies. These include the importance of developing techniques to plan and measure branded content, and new challenges from phenomena such as crowdsourced branded content.

Summary
Woody Allen is reputed to have said, “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” Unfortunately this cannot be taken for granted in the world of branded content, even though many brands pay for the privilege of showing up in movies, TV programs and video games. How can marketers maximize the value of these appearances for their brands?

Summary
This article discusses advertising on mobile phones through the provision of video content. The prospect of forming engaging relationships with a young market that is hard to reach by other means is attractive to marketers, but the medium is increasingly complex, and there are dangers: for example, it is easy to become too intrusive, or simply transferring TV content and styles of commercial, which will not work. Rather, a more flexible model is needed which puts the consumer fully in control. The content must have perceived value to the user, and the winners are likely to be those who succeed in creating original and unique content for the medium. Best practice guidelines are given, and current operators in the market are briefly summarised.