EP400: The Power Of Brand Integration: Exploring The Impact And How It Works

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Stacy Jones: Welcome to marketing mistakes and how to avoid them. I’m Stacey Jones and I’m so happy to be here with you all today. And I want to give a very warm welcome to Philip Lomax. Philip has a deep expertise in neuromarketing, technology and media. As the EVP of business development at media science, he drives strategic initiatives and fosters key partnerships and advertising research on the subconscious biases people feel when watching content. His career includes contributing over 130 million in reoccurring revenue at Uber Eats and he currently serves as a thought leader through influential white papers published by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, and has spoken on AI based approaches in marketing at Neuromarketing World Forum today, Philip and I are going to be chatting about the power of brand integrations and how that shows the impact of why it works.2
Stacy Jones: We’ll learn what works from Philip’s perspective, what should be avoided, and how some businesses miss the mark in this practice.3
Phillip: Thank you so much, Stacey. It’s an absolute pleasure to be here with you. I’ve been following Hollywood branded’s journey for the past, you know, four years or so since I’ve been at media science. So it’s really wonderful to speak with you today on such an important topic.4
Stacy Jones: Well, I am super excited because it’s not every day that I get to speak about brand integration and why and how it works on a level of not just psychology, but data driven insights that support. So I’m super looking forward to that. And in the meantime, let’s start off with, how did you get here today? How is it this career?5
Phillip: Absolutely, it’s a great question. So during my tenure at Uber Eats, I was lucky enough to work my way up to begin to do work with enterprise restaurant brands across the United States. And this involved conducting business with some of the largest brands in the US. And some of the questions that I started to receive from the top tier franchise groups across the United States was around the power of advertising on Uber Eats. Right? So you might have the context if you’ve ordered third party delivery before that. The power of Uber Eats is to enable eaters around the world to eat whatever they like, whenever they want at the speed of Uber. And each tile on the UberEats platform is the same size.6
Phillip: So something that I used to tell my restaurant partners was, you have the same opportunity to entice an eater as McDonald’s does, because the size of your advertisement on the UberEats platform is the same size as Mickey D’s. But once you have developed some relationships and start to understand the day to day operations of a business like that, you start asking additional questions, such as best practices as to how to advertise within this platform. And that led me on a journey to try to understand what were the best in class technologies, to understand how we can impact audiences and influence them to purchase on a platform like Uber, but also on other platforms like television, on social media, et cetera. And that journey brought me to what’s called the Neuromarketing World Forum. And at the time that World Forum was hosted in Rome, Italy.7
Phillip: So back in 2019, I traveled to Rome and I listened to all of the different vendors at the Neuromarketing World Forum that were leveraging consumer neuroscience to understand how audiences perceive advertising and what advertising actually impacts audiences. And what I found is that media science was a significant leader within the space. And in fact, media science started out as the Disney Media and advertising laboratory back in 2008, around the time when I graduated from high school. And they had worked with Disney for five years, exclusively on hundreds of subjects. So advertising is always a subject of interest within the media and advertising industry. And the tools that they were using were highly advanced.8
Phillip: They were using tools, and we continue to use tools today, such as infrared, medical grade eye tracking cameras, heart rate data, electrodermal activity data, facial expression analysis, and electroencephalography, which is eeg data. So brainwave activity. But the approach that they were taking to understanding media and advertising, I thought was really important, which was classical experimental design. So back in school, I didn’t choose to study science as a major. I actually chose to study theater as a major. And my intention was eventually to go to Hollywood and be a film star. But I approached my study of theater, I think in a very strong academic approach, in that I really wanted to understand how the greats within acting, within film, within screenwriting, and theater playwrights are able to influence audiences and cultivate what I call frames to help the public see new perspectives, basically.9
Phillip: So, all this to say, it’s been a while journey, and I’m lucky enough to collaborate with some of the largest media companies in North America today on very important topics around innovation. And all of this under the approach of classical scientific, experimental design, leveraging the most advanced tools in the marketplace.10
Stacy Jones: Well, I love hearing scientific designs around brand integration. Now, we always have marketers and media decision makers who. That’s the number one question. Does it work? You know, if I’m actually having my brand be put into a movie or tv show, is a consumer actually going to take notice of it? Is it going to register. And will it eventually drive to a sale whether it’s top of funnel, bottom of funnel? But that’s always a question that comes up and I always look at people back a little bit and they’re like, you know, well, do you think traditional television advertising works? And comment I usually get is if someone actually is watching it, yes.

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Stacy Jones: So what product placement and brand integration does is it allows a brand to be embedded into content that is non skippable, that is able to be not just aired that first time, but that has a lifetime, potentially for a decade to come. So I am so looking forward to hearing how you believe and what you’ve seen from research and actual science on the reasons of why it actually works.

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Phillip: Absolutely. So I think when I put on my sales hat, I think I would easily say, it absolutely works and, you know, you should consider investing in it. But when I put on my scientist cap, I should say it depends, right? Just like everything in media and advertising, it depends on the particular opportunity that you have as a brand to choose what type of context you’d like to integrate with. We can look at this in a few different ways. Let’s look at it first at a macro level. There’s been a massive shift of audience behavior moving towards streaming platforms on what we call connected television, in which they would prefer, sometimes prefer to watch non ad supported tiers. So this will severely limit the opportunity for brands to connect and engage with audiences in a non ad supported environment.

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Phillip: And of course, there’s been growth with ad supported video on demand. But let’s talk about premium tier of consumers that we’re trying to reach with our brands that are willing to pay a bit more to not be advertised to. How else are we meant to engage with an audience member without branded integrations? So I think the immediate opportunity is accessing an audience in, as you said, Stacey, content that’s non skippable, that’s integrating products within the show. But also, there’s a few different ways that we can achieve this. We categorize it as active, branded integrations in which the characters are interacting with that product, as well as passive integrations in which we might see the product as a billboard or poster in the background or even the foreground. Even with those differences, active versus passive, we see significant differences in performance of brands.

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Phillip: And additionally, even within the passive brand integration as a category, we’ve seen differences between integrations that are in the foreground of the shop versus the background of the shop, etcetera. And the size of the product placement also matters as well. So again, it depends at a category level the way that we execute these brand integrations. But what we know in terms of best practices for brand and integrations is that they do work. And the way that they work is as a priming effect for adjacent advertising. So the best opportunity for a branded integration is within something like a television show that is within an ad supported tier for streaming. And what will happen here is by seeing the brand integrated into the content, we’re able to prime the audience to get ready to see the brand within the ad break.

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Phillip: And what we found is that the ad in the ad break actually performs superiorly versus seeing the ad without a brand integration present. And what’s important here, Stacey, is again, that classical scientific, experimental design, other companies, when they conduct this type of research, they show the audience member the brand integration and ask them about the branding integration. And that’s just a joke, right? How can you show someone what you were trying to test them on and ask them, what did you think about this can of Coca Cola sitting on the table? Do you remember the shot that you saw earlier? What are your thoughts on it? It’s just absolutely silly.

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Phillip: What we do at media science instead is we have a team of video editors, and what we’re able to do is we’re able to remove the brand integration or place the brand integration using digital rotoscoping. So, as an example, within a classical, scientific, experimental design, we might have the show with Coca Cola integrated into it. And then we’ll take that same show as a brand, and we’ll remove the Coca Cola from the Shaw, and then we’ll ask both of these groups of participants, the ones that saw Coke and the ones that didn’t, about Coke. And then we’ll be able to compare the actual lift of integrating Coca Cola into the show versus Coca Cola not being in the show at all. And that’s really important for known brands, as, you know, as we do this type of work with these types of clients.

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Stacy Jones: Well, you just said something that’s really important for known brands. Can you share a little bit more when there’s a brand that’s a little lesser known? Because there’s a lot of brands who leverage the world of product placement and brand integration in order to get that larger footprint, that feel of being a national or even global advertiser?

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Phillip: Absolutely. Well, in order for a brand to grow, a brand needs to be thought of when a purchasing opportunity comes about. Right. Professor Byron Sharp out of the Ehrenberg Bass Institute talked about how we need to build memory structures around a brand, so that when it comes time for us to purchase this brand category, like toilet paper or soda or a vehicle, we recall that the brand exists and branding integrations are part of that journey. We talked about them being a multiplier, basically, of advertisements that are adjacent. If I was a brand marketer of a lesser known brand, like a mid market tier brand, I would look for affordable and accessible brand integration opportunities, both in the physical world as well as the digital world, to begin to create a narrative around the use of my products and services within everyday life.

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Phillip: So again, the Bren integration is an opportunity to create those memory structures and that narrative. What we know is that because of this priming effect, we should be, in fact investing in advertisement adjacent to these programs. And I think that this becomes easier when we create direct binds with these publishers as well, or through great companies like yours. But this opportunity is diminished in the world of programmatic advertising. And I think there’s a tremendous amount of benefits with programmatic advertising, for sure. But this could be more of a tailored approach, especially for those, like I said, SMB and mid market sized brands.

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Stacy Jones: And with programmatic advertising, it can be a lot more difficult, you know, well, just to give our listeners a little bit more of an insight with product placement and integration. How it works there’s three reasons why brands are able to get into the world of a movie or tv show. The first is through trade, and not three ways. So the three ways that a brand can actually get embedded into content. The first is through trade. So a production needs to actually bring their set to life. There is a benefit here to the prop master, the set decorator, the art director, the director and even the cast, where a brand is going to help storytell what is going on in that scene.

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Stacy Jones: You’re going to see a luxury character, someone who has a lot of money, who is going to be surrounded with brands like a Mont Blanc or a Ferrari or a Rolex, or all of these types of brands that lead to a prestige thinker. Then you also have opportunities, though, that are about investing in. So now we could actually have a fee that’s paid into the movie or the tv show, so that the production has not only that value of identifying and storytelling, but now they actually have some additional cash that it’s not going in their back pocket, it’s going to be reinvested in the content, it’s going to go towards better music, better scoring, better special effects, different casting, anything that is going to help offset the production budget. And a producer is very eager to help offset where they can.

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Stacy Jones: They’re not making millions of dollars from these brand deals either. So it’s actually very conservative amounts of dollars that are coming in. And the partnership has to make sense to them because they literally are going to be shooting a mini commercial spot when all cameras are stopped and action says go and everyone is surrounded, making sure that brand’s logo is turned to screen. The messaging’s right, that everything’s playing out based on the contract that cash fee actually secured. So it’s very difficult to actually get a production to agree to do these bigger investments of bringing in a guaranteed brand integration, because it actually stops the flow of their shoot. It also has to make sure that it’s part of the creative process, that it’s not taking anything out of the scene.

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Stacy Jones: The world of Hollywood is filled with creators who are very careful of the world that they’re constructing and not wanting it to look too addy. They want it to look organic. But at the same time, if you don’t have brands, the world also looks a little fake. So there’s a line there that you have to come together. And then the third way that brands are able to work with productions is a bit. What Philip’s touching on is either guaranteeing that there’s additional media that’s going to be supporting, so that now the networker distributor is getting their ad and there’s a benefit to the production.

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Stacy Jones: Because, yes, you’re going to have a heightened affinity and association from seeing in the brand, in the content and then having it reinforced with that ad with a call to action that’s actually going to drive you lower in the overall funnel and chain. But it also enables the brand to get some really cool creative going on where, let’s say it’s not a television show, but it’s a feature film. Now, there’s no ways to necessarily advertise in that film. You could do pre roll on a platform or you could do in movie advertising. Those are ways. But traditionally, people aren’t watching movies with ads around them and breaking the content.

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Stacy Jones: So you can look at developing co promotional campaigns where now you’re taking some of the ip from that property that your brand is integrated into and you’re building it into your other media, your retail, your point of sale, your websites, your digital universe, where you’re now taking a bigger piece and a bigger conversation. So you’re getting that reinforcement Phillip’s talking about. I bet he can dive in here a little bit more about co promotional partnerships too, where you’re getting that added reinforcement that is not necessarily at the time and moment of the content playing, but it’s certainly around the world of it. So that’s really how this whole thing plays out. Product placement is not an easy marketing activity to do. It’s something that we strongly believe everyone should do.

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Stacy Jones: When you’re doing a product placement program and you’re doing a trade, you know, there’s still the investment of the product, there’s investment of your agency, your team doing it. You’re having to read scripts, look at them, make sure that they’re safe for your brand environment to be in. You’re getting all of the negotiations, you’re getting everything. So that it’s a very comprehensive marketing practice, but it delivers cpms that are below a dollar. So it’s just a phenomenal world to be in. And now I’m going to stop my whole world of product placement and go back to Philip. I just touched on co promotional advertising. How does that play into some of your studies?

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Phillip: Philip? Absolutely. I think that one of the most innovative marketing approaches that I’ve seen from a QSR, a quick service restaurant brand over the past few years, is actually Dennings and their matrix activation. I’m not an insider at Dennings, but what I can say based off the research that I’ve done on them, is that this brand is in need of significant innovation. And I think that this was the right step for them to differentiate their products and their services within a very crowded marketplace. And I watched the Matrix film and it didn’t feature a Denny’s, and I was just fine with that. I think that’s a huge opportunity for brands with real world services to leverage something fantastical like the Matrix, and it works across platforms as well. The main point of what we should be focused on within the industry is distraction.

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Phillip: We are in a noisy world full of clutter, especially through digital channels. By aligning strategically with partners like incredible legacy properties like the Matrix as an example, a legacy brand like Denny’s can differentiate themselves within the category of breakfast or the category of burgers, etcetera. So there’s a huge opportunity there. But I actually want to go back, Stacey, to talk a little bit about preserving the audience experience, which is very much in line with the work that were doing with our great partners. Freewheel, which is a comcast company. And I want to try to connect a few dogs for your audience, too. Okay, so you talked about just now how producers, directors, and creators within, you know, the film and television industry, they’re very conscious of the audience’s perspective and in some ways television as well as social media, et cetera.

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Phillip: There’s a constant battle between preserving the audience experience and maximizing revenue opportunities. And of course, branding integrations are one of those revenue opportunities you talked about earlier. We want to give the opportunity for the brand to shine, but I would go further and say, well, how can we give brands the opportunity to shine within perhaps the least amount of time possible? And what levers and controls do we need to be aware of that we have in order to achieve the maximum throughput with the minimum negligence to the consumer, let’s say, or negligence to the viewer? I want to connect that dot to the work that we did with free will recently. The work that we did with them is part of a longer term initiative called the Viewer experience lab. We announced that in can just last year.

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Phillip: We’re just about nine to ten months into the partnership now. We put out some incredible reports, but the ones that connect here are around the viewer experience. So the first thing that we learned within that research is around the ad pod architecture of television advertising. What we discovered is that the optimal ad pod duration is two minutes. Anything more than that, we start to disrupt the audience’s experience. So we’ve got a two minute window. And then what we also discovered was that within that two minute window, all of the ads should be the same length rather than mixing and matching lengths. Okay, so it comes down to the perception of the audience’s gauge of time. When we mixed ad lengths within that two minute window, the audience perceived the amount of time that they were being forced to watch.

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Phillip: Advertising basically was longer than the actual amount of time that they spent watching advertising when all ads were held the same. So we’re counteracting intrusiveness. And then further, we understand now the optimal amount of frequency within an ad pod and an episode. We should be showing audience members no more than two of the same advertisement within an episode. And further, it’s far better when we show audiences a brand through creative one as an example and follow up with a different creative. And that creative might be a narrative, right?

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Phillip: So putting these things together, what we learned from preserving the audience experience on television and applying it now to brand integrations, some of the questions that I would be asking are, well, what’s the amount of time, the maximum amount of time that I need to display a brand like General Motors as an example within my film for the audience member to recall that they saw General Motors coming out of that film experience? And do we need to basically level up in terms of that branded integration in a few different ways so that we build those memory structures even more so, and what’s the maximum or what’s near the threshold of intrusiveness, how could we get that? We could get that within testing and then in editing as well. So that’s kind of point number one.

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Phillip: But point number two, that’s connected to point number one is, well, what are the tools that we would use to understand exactly how we’re impacting audiences? We need precise tools to understand things like visual attention, and we achieved that type of measure through eye tracking data. We can know specifically and precisely how long someone was looking at that brand on the screen. Did they notice the brand or, you know, was the brand non memorable? Things like electrodermal activity and EEg. Right. So brain activity. We want to understand if a brand elicits some type of response, if that’s what were trying to do in the first place. So something like Bumblebee transforming from a car into a robot, that elicits some level of response. So let’s now quantify that level of response.

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Phillip: And if a company, like, if a vehicle company thought that they received an incredible return on investment in a brand integration like that, how can we elicit a similar level of response to achieve the same type of investment that transformers was able to achieve from them? Those are some of the things that I’m thinking about when I approach brand integrations. And we can talk about digital brand integrations, too, which is a really interesting topic as well, Stacey, but I want to kick it back to you.

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Stacy Jones: Okay, so how do you go about it? How do you approach this study? What is required for a brand to say, we are interested in figuring out a focus group and understanding what this looks like for us.

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Phillip: Absolutely. So we have to stick with reality. Right. So the first question that I would ask as a researcher is, well, how are we going to show audiences this brand integration or this film or television show for the first time? So if it’s going to be a film, we should be doing research in a movie theater. If it’s going to be a tv show, we should be doing research on televisions. So we need to have platform ecological validity. Right? So, you know, in layman’s terms, basically, if it’s going to be on tv, we should be testing it on tv. If we’re testing tv on mobile, then we’re flawed from the get go. The next step that I would take is understanding the opportunities or the brand integrations that we’re testing right. So are we testing more than one brand?

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Phillip: Do we have more than one opportunity to get in front of audiences? And then I would go back to classical experimental design, as I was talking about, I would take the original film or television show as it aired with the brand integration present, and I would remove that brand integration. So I would show one group of people the film with the brand integration present and another group of people the film without the brand integration present. And I would then ask both groups of people what their expectations of the film were around, you know, the subject matter. And then eventually I’d ask them about the brand integration as well. So we don’t want to tip people off and make them aware of what we’re studying when we go into these types of experiments.

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Phillip: And we want to create a clean, classical experiment so that we can isolate the contribution of something like brand Lyft for a company that’s decided to invest in this. And luckily we’re able to do that today, and we’ve done that for some amazing companies. So as an example, we did some great work with ABC around extreme home makeover, in which were able to prove the value of integrating products from basically washers and dryers, all that kind of good stuff, and understand the lift of advertisement that was adjacent to these brand integrations. One interesting fact, or one interesting finding from that study is that the brand integration actually helps the consumer with their advertising journey. So if the brand is integrated into the tv show, it actually diminishes the negative feelings that audience members have towards the brand advertising to them. Right.

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Stacy Jones: Why is that?

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Phillip: It’s because the ad was meant to be there. Right. The brand sponsored the show. So of course it makes sense that their advertising adjacent to the show. Right. You as a consumer, you’re sitting down and you’re about to consume a package of media. Right? So additionally, we did some work with Bachelor when it first came out, and Jared, the, I think it’s called Galaxy Galleria. It’s been a while since I purchased jewelry, but basically this was an opportunity for Jared to integrate within this at the time, new television show called the Bachelor. And Jared was going to provide the actual active integration opportunity, the ring. And then they also were going to host a pre show type of mini vignette prior to the television show. And at the time, I believe it was ABC, but don’t kill me, Disney.

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Stacy Jones: It’s been ABC the whole time. So you’re safe for all 19 plus seasons?

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Phillip: Well, we love Disney for sure, but they needed to prove that this would be meaningful to Jared. So they call on media science, and we set up classical experiments for each of those components that we talked about, you know, the active integration, the passive integration, the vignette of the show, and we could quantify the value of each. And if I recall correctly, we proved the value of those integrations. And remember, this is quantitative research rather than qualitative research. And this was so successful for Jared that I think that they kind of leapfrogged one of their competitors, or a few of their competitors within the jewelry marketplace. So it was a really meaningful opportunity for them as well. And that’s the type of work that your company, Stacy, and the media industry provides to brands.

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Phillip: It’s the opportunity to gain market share by gaining mind share, basically, or mental share around the subject that you would like to own. And brand integrations are incredible tool to do that.

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Stacy Jones: They are, absolutely. I highly agree with you. And you touched on film and television. My assumption is you all have done research into music and music videos and all sorts of things along those lines, too.

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Phillip: Yeah. So we’ve done some incredible work with Viva previously. So there’s some interesting opportunities here as well. Right. You know, I personally, you know, I wasn’t. I didn’t manage the relationship with BBO. So this might not be the best thing for me to speak about, honestly. But I think the opportunity here is an economical opportunity. Right? If television is accessible to you as a brand, then why not try music? Right? Why not try music videos, etcetera? And then further, if music is going to be the vehicle for you to enter a marketplace to achieve this particular demographic, then I would invest in advertising on vivo as well, or advertising on YouTube as well, to support your media investment. That’s all I could really talk about regarding music.

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Phillip: But with radio, there may or may not be some really interesting work that we’re doing within the audio space right now that I just can’t comment on just yet.

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Stacy Jones: That’ll be interesting through podcasting, through radio, through anything along those lines that are out there right now of what that impact does.

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Phillip: I think it’s incredibly important to quantify the value of advertising across those experiences. And product placement or sponsorship is a very meaningful part of that. You can also look to news. We know that product placements and sponsorships, et cetera, or co developed editorials, et cetera, are really important to brands. And we know with news, the reason why news works so well and why news is premium content is because of the context of news. Same thing with sports. I’d love to share a little bit about how placements in sports like kind of work, if that’s right?

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Stacy Jones: No, that’d be terrific. I mean, there’s everything, product placement and sports. And then listeners keep in mind there are fictional sports opportunities in movies and tv shows so that we can get, you know, really in your mind here of going deep.

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Phillip: Absolutely. So it all comes down to understanding how contexts work, right? So different types of genres achieve different types of viewer states, or what we call context transference effects. So I’ll give you examples of two. Although media science has identified eight different context transference effects. So the ones that we talk about publicly are what we call excitation transference and cognitive transference or informational transference. So the first one, excitation transference effects sports is premium context because the excitement of live sports game passes on and is misattributed by audiences to sponsors and advertisers that show choose to invest in the sporting opportunities. And the way that sponsorship works is, again, similar to a product placement in that it’s a priming effect. So that when we choose to advertise adjacent to the sport, our ad performs superiorly versus just choosing to advertise adjacent to the sport itself.

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Phillip: So think about something like a major sports field, right? Anytime that a brand chooses to sponsor sports field, well, they’ve gone into the branded integration game because every time that you know that major sports team is playing at that field or any sports coverage, et cetera, it’s likely that their brand name is going to be mentioned. Further. Within the stadium itself, you might have players drinking a specific type of drink or an ounce of drinking a specific type of drink. I was on popular reality singing competition in which the judges drank a specific type of drink. So that’s a great product opportunity. And within those exciting shows like sports competitive opportunities, we achieve what’s called excitation transfer. So it builds up the performance of the brand because we’re excited. The other one.

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Phillip: The other excited, excuse me, the other transference effect is called cognitive transference or informational transference. And we achieve this viewing state in nudes in particular. When we go into watch news, we have activated our cognitive functions. And while we’re consuming news and we go into the ad break, we’re unable to switch off immediately those cognitive functions. So we’re capturing more information in that cognitive state, then we would be in perhaps a different genre, right? So we’ve gone to news to collect information and it just so happens that a brand decides to sponsor that news broadcaster or to advertise adjacent to it. Or both, which is even better. And because we’re in that cognitive state, we’re going to recall that brand much faster because we can’t switch it off, basically. So those are just two transference effects. Like I said, there are eight.

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Phillip: And I think that what the industry needs to grapple with and educate themselves on and do this type of research on is what genres and contexts can I leverage with my particular creative tactics, my particular communication tactics to achieve the type of return on investment that I’m looking for, or the type of return on influence that I’m looking for, or the type of impact that I’m looking for as well.

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Stacy Jones: It’s interesting.

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Phillip: These are tools that you’re going to use to grow your brand and to amplify your brand, basically, yeah.

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Stacy Jones: It’s interesting because there’s so many different types of genres of content that brands will more readily embrace. While there have been studies that have said that they actually should be embracing and yet much wider genre overall sometimes, or a more specific genre overall. And when I say this as an example, most brands who come to us, they’re going to say yes to rom coms, they’re going to say yes to actions movies, they’re going to say yes to comedies, where they’re going to say no to are horror movies and horror series. And yet there’s been actual studies separate from what you’re doing that show kind of a teddy bear effect that a lot of a younger demographic will embrace. Brands seen as seen for safety, almost.

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Stacy Jones: And so the psychological opportunities, the psychological studies, the psychological impact on all of this has so much research still to be done. And it’s a fascinating world.

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Phillip: We’ve actually done a lot of this research with incredible partners like Warner Brothers Discovery, WBD. We just released some of this work. And I think that we’re actually the first to discover this. You know, this, I can’t recall the exact name and I apologize. But basically, there’s a recovery type of effect with advertising, especially within hard, you know, hard genres. Like news as an example. Right. Most advertisements are pretty comfy and comfortable, so they act kind of as like a repair. That’s right. It’s a mood repair, transference effect. So the ad will repair the viewer’s mood, especially if they’ve been exposed to something really negative, like in, you know, some breaking news, etcetera. So there’s a really nice transference effect there, too.

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Phillip: But more recently, in our work with Warner Brothers Discovery, we actually set out to conduct an experiment to prove exactly what you’re talking about around what we call unsuitable content within median advertising. And through our experiments we measured various levels of unsuitability across different types of unsuitability. And I believe that we linked this to the garm framework. The long and the short of it is that brand suitability or brand safety, as you talk about, is largely a misperception by advertisers. And what we find actually within adult themed content that might feature sex or drugs or alcohol or violence, is that what we’re accessing? There is actually an excitation transference effect similar to sports, that excitement is passed on to the brand, it’s not misattributed to the brand and the brand performs a little bit better actually within those environments.

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Phillip: So this goes back to my perception of advertising and my perception of growing brands. We need to, first off, at an architectural level, we need to make sure that we will not be diminished in our tactics by distraction, which is really enemy number one, and what the industry should be focused on right now. We should pivot our focus from attention as a construct, which I’m sure you’ve heard of and, you know, people are aware of our stance on attention, but for those who aren’t, attention is multidimensional and attention as a construct would break down if we think that attention is linear as a construct, meaning that some individuals think that more attention means more sales or more attention is better. Attention doesn’t work that way. Attention is a gate. We need to pass through the gate.

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Phillip: And once we’re through the gate, all the other components of how we’re supposed to communicate or try to communicate with audiences are far more important actually, right? The emotional journey, the emotional connections that we have, the actual architectural execution of the integration and the advertisement, those are very important components here. So going back to it, unsuitable content, this is largely misperception. We need to do a lot more research. But I think that at a structural level, in terms of delivery to the audience, unsuitable content is a great opportunity.

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Stacy Jones: And it’s even a greater opportunity to all of you out there who might be a brand marketer. They’re usually more affordable. Those are the opportunities that there’s less competition for and just because of a lower level of interest and an actual higher level by the production of interest, because these are all content that could actually be enhanced with dollars and co promotional partnerships, they’re going to do jumping jacks to work with you and it’s going to be actually a easier process to find success on screen.

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Phillip: I think that part of this honestly in terms of suitability, Stacey, is that if we’re around a dinner table together or at a cocktail party, you want to feel proud and feel great about the work that your brand is doing. I think that part of that equation is being more clever than your competition in terms of engaging audiences in ways that are sometimes, you could say, disruptive, or sometimes a different perspective, have green fields. What is important, though, is the nature of the context that you choose to advertise in. So there is a difference between what we call premium content and non premium content. And what we know from our research is that premium matters. So that’s an important thing to gauge as a brand marketer. You want to be where people are, for sure.

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Phillip: You want to show up in a meaningful way that doesn’t harm perception of your brand, for sure. But you also want to be in an environment that. That looks and feels premium. And I think that we can define that very well with our research.

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Stacy Jones: And usually when you are next to an A lister on screen, that environment is one that is premium indeed.

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Phillip: Well, as long as the a lister doesn’t distract from the brand. Remember, distracting.

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Stacy Jones: So with all of that, how can our listeners find out more about media science? How can they get in contact with you?

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Phillip: Well, there’s a lot of different subjects that we’re working on today from, you know, film and television, social media, gaming, usability. And, you know, some of the work that we’re doing is around technology as well. You can always find me via mediascience.com, or you can reach out to me via email. It’s lomax. Lomax mediascience.com dot. I look forward to our conversations.

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Stacy Jones: And Philip, as you know, some last closing. No thoughts. What do you think? If you were a brand marketer, where would you go? What would you look for the perfect environment for your brand? And I know that there’s a lot that goes into this.

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Phillip: Yeah. So I was listening to. I was listening to some videos recently about Gary Vaynerchuk talking about the attention economy and day trading on attention, you know, based off of our background and, you know, the scientists that I spend my time with each day. Attention is a very specific term, but what I think the industry is grappling with and what’s important is the ability to be in front of audiences in an environment that will provide your brand with a meaningful opportunity for. To be seen, but also to be remembered and to create an emotional, you know, an emotional, like, memory structure, basically. So I would always work with my foundation, which I think still is television. I know that a brand, and, you know, television takes many forms today, right? There’s CTV, there’s linear television, et cetera. And I would ride specific waves.

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Phillip: Although Professor Byron Sharp always talks about how we should basically be always on and divide our budget by 52 weeks a year or 50, I would look to platforms that provide me with an unfluttered experience. I think that there’s a tremendous amount of value within platforms that are accessed by billions of people or hundreds of millions of people every day, like, you know, the social media platforms of the world or the, you know, video sharing platforms of the world, of course. But I would require the types of formats that I know will present my brand with the best opportunities possible. And then I would leverage multiple platforms together, so multi platform campaigns to see how I can create narratives that follow my prospective buyers where it should roam.

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Phillip: So we should be looking at this at a platform level and then a multi platform level. And then based off the research that we just did with freewheel, I would try to create narratives around advertising, and a campaign turns into, rather than an ad, I’m creating an incredible ad narrative in which maybe I’ve said the same thing in a few different ways a few different times with the right amount of frequency. We just talked about two per episode. So now you have another guard realtor there, too. All of this to say, you know, when I got into this industry, I really wanted to understand how advertising worked. I think I’m understanding it more and more each day, but I’ve got a lot to learn.

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Phillip: But now we should be very precise with the way that we decide to advertise, with the knowledge that we have. And I just imagine all the brand marketers that have never read that free, real report and are making these types of decisions, or the brand marketers that have never read about how video advertising works on social as compared to CTV or television. All this knowledge is really important to try to make great decisions.

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Stacy Jones: Well, I love what you just said about creating a very comprehensive campaign. So we just did this with pilot pens, a brand that we’ve worked with well over a decade. We have them in every episode. The Kelly Clarkson show for the last four years, 180 shows a year. So that’s some brand frequency. And they do advertise around it because it is important. They do see an impact from doing that. We add them in every episode of Project Runway year over year for them. Also accompanied with tv ads because it had an absolute boost in overall sales. But we partnered them most recently with Mean Girls, the new movie that came out. And so we had product placement within the film, but then we also took that content and turned it into a commercial, so they ran traditional advertising.

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Stacy Jones: We also created a exclusive, mean girl themed inspired pen pack sold on Amazon that sold out in the first day, did an overlay with influencers. So there was a very comprehensive, very proactively created social influencer overlay where that pink Pack was seen and there was unboxing and discussing, and it just went on with press and more. And these are the types of campaigns that our team gets so excited about building, because you just see the smile on the client’s face afterwards, because you see where the seed started with a creative in the form of product placement in a movie or tv show, and then actually just builds upon that. And it’s why we work with so many agencies who will bring us their clients so that we can create that seed of really creative.

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Stacy Jones: It’s building creative for the brand and then allowing that agency to expand in all the different ways that they can expand. So product placement is a doorway to marketing that so many brands just have not taken advantage of yet. And Philip, I love the fact that you have made this a part of your heart and soul to understand more and to get inside and truly understand the benefits. So I really appreciate that.

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Phillip: Absolutely, Stacey. And I just love that type of activation that your team was able to achieve further, just to continue on our path of ideation. As we move into the realm of connected television, we unlock the opportunity for an advertising innovation renaissance. And I’d like to paint the picture for your audience as to where we could go in the future, especially advertising on the largest screen in the household. What if, within your activation, you were served while you’re streaming mean girls, as an example, the opportunity to draw on your television with your remote control using those products. Basically, what if you had the opportunity to have interactive formats across digital in which you’re able to use the product? I know that a lot of companies are investing in augmented reality.

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Phillip: As an example, what if you could create, through generative AI, entire worlds based off of that particular product and that particular brand integration? So you unlock this entire new world through platforms like Roblox or gaming platforms, etcetera. So you can take this a lot further. And the reason why you’re going further is because you want to achieve a larger reach, basically. And then finally, I might say, in order to save ourselves time and money, we should be approaching all of this around. Advertising, brand integrations, understanding context, the gamut, with a very principled scientific approach. That’s how we created the greatest innovations within our culture. It’s how we achieved flight. It’s how we achieved how we will achieve interstellar travel. It’s through classical scientific experimentation in which we test things within controlled environments.

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Phillip: If they work in a controlled environment, then they could very well work out there in this crowded, busy world. But we should know that these work prior to going to market, so that we save ourselves time and money, and also we achieve the best output possible. So with that, I just wanted to say thanks so much for having me on your show, and I hope your audience enjoyed this episode.

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Stacy Jones: Well, Philip, thank you, again, really did appreciate it. And to all of our listeners, thank you for tuning in to another episode of marketing mistakes and how to avoid them. We have talked a lot about product placement and brand integration. And if by now you do not know Hollywood branded, which I founded 17 years ago, this is what we’re experts at. This is what we do day in, day out. We work with literally every tv show, every movie, every music label, anyone who you can think of within pop culture, we have partnerships with, and we build these on a daily basis. What Philip was talking about is absolutely right. These things work. The reason why we know they work is clients keep on coming back for more, and they spend more money on a continual year over year basis.

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Stacy Jones: If it was not working and they were not seeing sales move, they would not be doing it. That is a bottom line fact. I love the fact that Philip has science behind him. There’s more proof here, I think, that there could be even doors and worlds and galaxies unlocked on how to make this marketing practice this even better. And it will become better. It’s changed a lot over the last 25, 30 years, and it is a whole world that your brand can become part of. And what’s best of all is once you get into that movie or that tv show, when you’re doing that intergalactic travel that Philip is talking about, one day, or maybe more recently, you’re going to be sitting on an airline. That content keeps on airing year over year. You can advertise against it, you can do campaigns against it.

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Stacy Jones: About elf, I worked on that movie so many years ago. I think it just celebrated. I think it’s the 25th anniversary of it. I put pop tarts in it along with some other brands. But you just saw Krispy Kreme, who wasn’t in it, do a whole takeover for the anniversary. They did a collaboration. They had customized boxes. I bought them by the truckload for our office to show them how cool it was. You can take content and reuse it, repurpose it and run with it for the years in the future. So think about that for product placement and repeat.