The American documentary film-maker and television producer, Morgan Spurlock, has said that brands need to be less “risk averse” and find original content makers that “match their DNA and ideology” to really cut it with younger audiences.
Spurlock, who is best known for the documentary films Super Size Me and The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, told an audience at Advertising Week Europe that “people have to want to like you and I think brands are just starting to realise that through certain content creators they can achieve that.”
The film-maker, who was in conversation with Dominique Delport, the global MD of Havas Media Group, spoke of his experiences in making The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, a 2011 documentary film about product placement, marketing and advertising in movies and TV shows in which the film itself was entirely paid for by sponsors.
Spurlock said that as he began calling brands to get them on board with the film, only 2% of the hundreds of companies he called wanted to take part and that most saw him as a “brand cancer” and a “troublemaker”, but in the long run the brands that took a risk felt the project paid off hugely for very little upfront cost.
“The Greatest Movie Ever Sold proved a point in a lot of ways about the over-saturation of product placement and the way brands [traditionally] make content,” Spurlock said following his experiences. “[But] they can create innovative content…without having to sell you things in the middle of a TV show.
“Brands are now turning to people who traditionally make content for a network or a movie studio and asking what they can do together. They have seen you can go to content creators directly and make great stuff.”
Spurlock said the next step for brands is about an “alignment of ideology and an alignment of DNA and ideas…finding a brand that matches a content creator means you can make really cool stuff that isn’t just about products.”
Spurlock also noted that Disney’s recent purchase of Maker Studios is an example of bigger businesses understanding exactly what the future for brands looks like. Maker Studios, a YouTube network that generates 5.5 billion views a month, was sold to Disney last month for $500 million.
With 90,000 – largely young – content creators uploading to the site every day, Spurlock said it was both a “future, youth audience” and a “talent pool” that could work with brands to make something “more innovative” than a traditional adspot during a commercial break.
“A lot of brands are stuck thinking [they need to] get people to know [their] name,” he said. “But there’s a way of [doing that] that isn’t your typical way of doing it.”
