Capital One Tries to Score with Branded Entertainment

Regadless of how you feel about last night's game, college basketball season is over. But Capital One's YouTube Channel Spoof: Visigoth SportsNet promises that "March is about to get Medieval" and it serves as the centerpiece of Capital One's NCAA-themed campaign.

The subjectivity of sports, comedy and timeliness aside, I think this is an important example of branded entertainment's potential.

Ads Morphing Into Entertainment
Capital One is far from the first brand to take this approach. While you may argue the entertainment value is questionable, it’s a step in the right direction for any brand trying to launch a story-line extension. Its Viking plot line has always made “What’s in your Wallet?” a more humorous and memorable question.

The Battle for Attention Spans
It’s interesting to consider that consumers are expecting more content from brands as their attention spans continue to dwindle. Capital One’s approach is also a defensive measure to capture a few more seconds of its target market’s time.

So it's no surprise to see the :30 second spot evolve into a longer, web format….and smart that it’s not being blown out into long form content. The Capital One series reminds me more of The Daily Show than Sports Center. But the challenge is deciding how long the story should go. Remember what happened to the Geico Cavemen when they were given a series? It was the longest month in TV.

Middle Ages’ Middle Ground
Branded entertainment offers Capital One a comfortable, more sustainable and successful middle ground. And as brands, media and consumers continue to morph their roles, it’s an interesting development. We’ll surely see even better examples of this format in the future. It depends on the story and its execution.


Cross-posted to my work blog 

 

Comments

[Superman]

Funny Visigoth or funny Viking? Hm..

[Chris R. Keller]

I agree, marketing is all about grabbing people's attention and entertainment is often a great way to do this.

I like your blog and I think it fits well with what I write on. Would you be interested in doing a blog article swap? Basically I would write an article for you and you could write an article for me. We would post them on each other's blog and it would be a way expand both of our readerships.

What do you think?

[mypups]

Isn't this just plain old sponsoring? Hasn't this been going on for years?

[Kevin Dugan]

Mypups - Good question. And I admit it can still be a bit blurry as to when it's sponsorship and when it's branded entertainment. In this case, regardless of who actually drove the creative, it seems that Capital One drove the creative/content. Normally with sponsorships it looks like the opposite -- as if a sponsoring brand pays to have their logo added to an existing franchise/content like the NCAA.

[Clay Hanback]

--Sorry this is the post for this story, disregard the other comment!!
I really enjoyed this post. As a major College Basketball fan I watched all of the games. I also love the Capital One commercials. Just recently, in one of my classes, we read a chapter about branding. One of the most important parts of the chapter, to me, was when it talked about being memorable. Well, Captial One has done this very well. When I personally think of Captil One, I think about the Viking Man standing by his goat saying, "Whats in your wallet." For some reason or another Capital One has gained my attention, and its because they have done very well in making themselves a memorable company.

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