40
|
ISSUE 2 2014
|
THE CHANNEL
With so many new avenues of distribution opening up, corporations are realising that
their messaging can reach a global audience more directly than ever before. We talked
to Shell’s Global Head of Creative Development, Sven Herold about the oil giant’s
expansion into branded content, and asked him ‘What exactly is branded content?’
t is a term very much used
in the industry right now.
For me, when I hear that
word, it sounds very much
like a marketing thing. And
I think that is what it was in
the past, product placement
or a way to get into an editorial
space with a brand message. In
most companies, it’s usually been
generated by the marketing
department, and that’s where it had
been sitting at Shell when we did
documentaries for Discovery
Channel and other big networks.
I think what is changing now in
the market, and what we’re also
trying to do at Shell, is to take a
more journalistic, communications
approach. For me it is not “branded
content” anymore. I would rather
just call it “content” – it’s just
created by a company.
There was a show running on
the BBC called
Supermarket Secrets
.
It was a show about Waitrose, Tesco
and all the big supermarket brands
in England. Would you call that
branded content? Or is that just a
good story? So I think where we’re
moving toward is to open that
space a little bit.
How do you select and develop
content?
What we’re trying to do is bring
great stories, from Shell, which
haven’t yet been told, where we
don’t look at the brand first, where
instead we look at people, at
exciting things happening.
We have built a department in
Shell with experts from the
industry, which includes former
television journalists, like myself.
We work with agencies too, but I
think it is extremely important that
you have a creative content team
in-house that has their own
knowledge of the market. It’s not a
corporate storytelling team. It’s
more of a journalistic team which is
embedded in the company.
When it comes to story research
and identification of good
characters and looking for the
ingredients of the story, we use the
same approach as any large TV
network. It’s also important for me
to have people from different
regions, who have worked in those
regions. We have to tell a story in
China very differently from how
We are a
journalis-
tic team
embedded
in the
company
“
”
I
OUTOFTHECORPORATE
SHELL
