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Humor is subjective, and not every brand lends itself to comedy. But advertisers that can make people laugh are poised to win and keep customers.
“Even brands that aren’t ‘traditionally’ funny do have an opportunity to be more playful and to amuse,” said Stephen Loguidice, SVP and head of partnerships and advertising at Hartbeat, a media venture owned by actor and comedian Kevin Hart.
Hartbeat develops, produces and distributes comedy shows, films and podcasts in partnership with brands such as Sam’s Club, Old Spice, Samsung, Pepsi and P&G.
The vast majority (72%) of people say they would choose brands that use humor effectively over their competitors, while 80% say they’d recommend a brand they find funny to their friends and family, according to Oracle Advertising.
The challenge is helping brands “find their funny” while also standing out from the deluge of branded content, not to mention all the non-sponsored content choices people have across streaming services and social platforms, Loguidice said.
“Around 2016 or 2017, there were a lot of brands that said, ‘Hey, I’m going to create an internal content studio and it’ll be great; we’ll get all of this attention,’” Loguidice said. “But the truth is it’s hard to do, especially because brands also need to get reach.”
Stand-up for scale
Scale is a big part of Hartbeat’s pitch to advertisers.
The company was created last year after two Hart-backed entertainment companies merged: Laugh Out Loud Networks, a subscription comedy streaming service launched in partnership with Lionsgate in 2017, and Hartbeat Productions, a comedy content production studio for TV, film and audio founded in 2009.
Laugh Out Loud content is available across a bunch of different OTT services, including Peacock, Pluto TV, Roku, Tubi, Vizio, Crackle and Plex. The newly formed Hartbeat also produces live experiences, including comedy shows, and has a media division that handles distribution deals on behalf of the brands it works with.
Altogether, Hartbeat’s potential audience reach is roughly 280 million people globally across all of its channels.
Not every piece of content that Hartbeat creates will get in front of that many people, said CEO Thai Randolph; the point is to get in front of as many of the right people as possible.
The company creates different distribution and targeting plans depending on the brand, the audience the brand wants to resonate with and the content itself.
In some cases, that’ll be content specifically for TikTok or another social platform. And in others, it might be a more involved production with distribution across multiple streaming platforms, like the “Cold as Balls” series that Hartbeat developed for Old Spice. Each episode features Kevin Hart interviewing famous athletes while they both sit in a freezing ice bath. (There’s eight seasons of this stuff!)
“The proliferation of digital and streaming, the democratization of content creation, the fact that pretty much every consumer is a creator – all of that has converged,” Randolph said. “And it means that we as content creators, marketers and distributors need to be thoughtful about getting our stories in front of the right folks while also making sure they’re entertained.”
Merry engagement
Because the fight for attention is real.
And there’s no reality in which people will willingly watch what are essentially advertisements if they aren’t also entertaining.
“The bar for what counts as entertainment doesn’t lessen or diminish because you’re telling a brand story,” Randolph said. “If anything, it’s a higher cliff to climb.”
Last holiday season, Walmart-owned Sam’s Club worked with its then-agency of record VMLY&R and with Hartbeat to produce a Christmas-themed two-minute trailer for a fictitious Hallmark Channel-esque movie called “Merry Like This,” starring Kevin Hart and “Black-ish” and “Grown-ish” star Marcus Scribner.
Scribner plays Hart’s daughter’s boyfriend, who’s planning to propose. Hart doesn’t like the boyfriend, which is made abundantly clear on a food and party-supplies run to Sam’s Club. But he wins Hart’s favor in part by introducing him to the Sam’s Club mobile payment service so they don’t have to wait in line to check out.
The trailer was screened in 1,700 theaters across the US, including AMC, Regal, Skylight and Cinemark in November and December. Different cuts were also distributed across social channels backed by paid media.
The cinema setting added so much verisimilitude that some people actually thought the trailer was previewing a real movie.
“Viewers connected with it to the point that I had people asking me when the movie was coming out and where they could watch it, like whether it would be on Netflix,” said Ciara Anfield, SVP and chief member and marketing officer of Sam’s Club. “The best branded content takes people out of the mindset that someone is trying to sell them something.”
Performance is no joke
Although, someone is trying to sell them something.
Branded content may not always lead directly to a sale, but there are associated KPIs and performance goals that advertisers have to measure.
Sam’s Club tracked engagement, likability, audience sentiment, shares and views, working with TV ad measurement and analytics company iSpot.tv to see how the holiday spot performed in comparison to broadcast TV spots from other retailers.
The trailer fell into the top percentile, based on iSpot’s rankings, for likability and rated highly on attributes like “curiosity,” which represents a desire to learn more about a brand.
Although it’s difficult to say exactly what the impact was on Sam’s Club’s Q4 2022 results – it was a good quarter for Sam’s Club, with an uptick in both sales and membership sign-ups – Anfield attributes at least some of the boost to the brand’s holiday marketing push.
“There are a lot of factors that go into the strength we see in the business in any given quarter,” Anfield said. “But we know that a campaign like this adds value and contributes to our overall success.”
