Millennials are skeptical of traditional advertising but have significant spending power. To market to them effectively, brands need to get their message across without it seeming like an advertisement. One way is through web-series partnerships, where the brand works with online influencers to create content that engages Millennials organically. BMW and Kohls have both seen success using this approach, with BMW's "The Hire" series boosting sales and Kohls' partnership increasing traffic and correlated sales. Branded web-series take advantage of influencers' existing audiences and social interactions to introduce the brand in a natural, non-intrusive way.

1. Written by: Emerson Fortier For: Lexicon Studios LLC. Blog Word Count:815
Emerson Fortier emersonfortier@gmail.com (989) 701-8536
Copy/ContentWriter
Marketing to Millennials With the Web-Series
Let’s get the facts straight. Millennials don’t care about your brand, but 1.3 trillion in spending power
means we care deeply about getting them attached to our brand. So how to bridge the gap?
To the Millennial generation, all advertising is suspect. Gone are the days when advertisers could win
over a customer by simply spouting off the numbers about the many benefits of a given product.
Millennials are so bombarded by advertising that today any sighting of a brand instantly informs the
potential customer that it's time to stop listening and wait for the ad to end. To capture the Millennial
generation, we’ve got to get sneaky.
Fortunately, advertising without advertising is one of the oldest tricks in the book. Since Hershey’s first
paid to have their product featured in a film, product placement in film has offered a valuable marketing
tool for advertising a product or brand without the associated stigma of advertisement. Product placement
has saved some brands, launched others, and turned others into international success.
Today however, the product placement world has changed. While it continues to be a potentially lucrative
way to get product moving, it still resist’s a brand’s usual need to hit target social group XYZ, with
branding statement ABC, and can sometimes even subvert the brand, as occurred with a Budweiser and
a variety of other alcoholic beverages in the movie “flight”.
“It’s a very tricky industry,” says Cristel Russell, assistant professor of marketing at American
University. “If a company produces a commercial, they know exactly what’s going to be in the
commercial. Product placement is very different. The movie people will always claim creative
freedom.”
Today however, with the costs associated with film production falling, it has become increasingly viable
for companies of every kind to begin producing their own content and films to market their products,
maintaining control over the way their product is portrayed without losing the advertising leg up that film
entertainment provides.
In 2001 BMW created a series of short films entitled “The Hire” starring Clive Owen and directed by
various popular directors including Ridley Scott, and Ang Lee. The first episode of the series was
premiered at the Cannes film festival and received rave reviews before being posted to a dedicated
website along with its partner films. After 11 million views two million subscribers, and a 12% increase in
sales in 2001, the campaign expanded dramatically to include fancier premieres, TV airing, an alternate
reality game with a variety of subplots. At one point in 2004 there was even a partnership with Dark Horse
Comics to publish a comic book series based on the episodes, of which only one was published after the
marketing head for the company moved to another division. It has since been pulled down, but it remains
to this day, an enduring example of the power of the branded series.
Since YouTube's birth in 20005 the whole landscape of branded web-series marketing has changed.
In September of 2014 Kohls partnered with “Awesomenesstv”, a youtube multichannel, to promote their
new line of clothing, the “Life So Rad” brand. Awesomenesstv then went out and partnered with a half a

2. Written by: Emerson Fortier For: Lexicon Studios LLC. Blog Word Count:815
Emerson Fortier emersonfortier@gmail.com (989) 701-8536
Copy/ContentWriter
dozen independent teenage youtube stars to create the series “Life S.o. R.a.d.”, bringing together the
youtuber's collected 15 million subscribers to generate over 10.5 million views across the 21 episodes
and a swarm of social media activity as the youtubers each revealed pieces from the line which Kohl’s
had invited them to design. The results seemed encouraging enough that Bouttier, the COO of
AwesomenessTV said it is possible to point to a correlation between the show's success and the increase
in sales at Kohls.
“While it’s not an exact science, there’s enough data to prove that what we’re doing is
resonating…it’s causing people to go out and buy something.”
In the age of YouTube, these partnerships are exactly what give the Branded Series an advantage over
traditional product placement. The ability to engage with consumers where they are. Rather than begging
for their attention through traditional media or annoying pop-up adds, the brand appears in their feed
organically, as something that they want to hear about through the voice and opinions of personalities
that they already love and interact with. The Branded Web-series hijacks the social interactions and
prestige of existing stars to gain attention from audiences that otherwise have little time to listen to what
the brand has to say.
So let’s get the facts straight. Millennials don’t give a crap about what you have to say. But maybe it’s not
because you’re just a marketer, maybe it’s simply because you aren’t talking to them in the places they
congregate and share. Maybe it’s simply because you aren’t part of their online world. Maybe it’s time to
think about a branded web-series, and at their low comparative cost, how hard can it be?