Branded entertainment, the dark side of the force.

Too much caffeine combined with Jetpack’s great post equals rant time. A critic on Yahoo! tore into the Hammer & Coop work for Mini, saying the writing was awful and that the whole concept was unoriginal in thought for such an original brand. Even held it up to the ‘standards’ of SNL. I gotta disagree. (This is a great example of what Russell Davis talks about when he says critics need to stop using apples and oranges logic: comparing the best of one category with the worst from a different one.)

Very few brands are doing what Mini is here: they’re basically leaving the ‘ad’ as we know it behind and heading over into the dark side of 100% branded entertainment–the new fav buzzword. But it fits. The upcoming Geico Cavemen TV show notwithstanding, most brands resist doing anything remotely like this. Typically, DOMs love an in-your-face USP sung by a shiny happy family sitting around the now defunct dinner table. And as most agencies know, cute is awful hard for America to resist. Especially when the agency suggests funky virals, let alone funky thinking. That scares the hell out of traditional brands and they fall back on what they think works.

Problem is, brands don’t buy stuff. Consumers do. Look, I’m not saying a brand like Sears needs to go all Crispin-ass wild, just make something people will watch. Get them interested. Don’t insult them, and stop selling them. For once, just try and entertain first. Go on over to the dark side. Consumers and ad bloggers might thank them.