Despite Tougher Regulations, Branded Entertainment OK With UK Viewers

The United Kingdom has one of the strictest regulatory regimes around advertising and branded content on television, led by the government-funded BBC’s complete ban, but also regulator Ofcom’s close industry oversight of even private commercial networks such as ITV and Channel 4.

Which makes the results from a survey on UK audiences’ interest and tolerance for branded TV advertising – to be released Wednesday at a London conference as part of Advertising Week Europe – all the more intriguing. The study was conducted by the UTA IQ, the data-analysis division of Hollywood’s United Talent Agency.

Basically, most English viewers (90%) said they weren’t bothered seeing brands prominently visible in entertainment content. Around two-thirds are open to some version of branded entertainment, though only 22% said they feel confident in defining it. Also, intriguingly, audiences take it more seriously when a brand is on a traditional TV show or movie more than when the brand is attached to an online creator.

“The top line for me is the TV versus social (comparison) actually, because so many times I’m asked how do you define branded content?” said Sam Glynne, the London-based head of the EMEA region of UTA’s Entertainment & Culture Marketing division. “When you see an influencer, we’re holding a brand name (compared to) branded entertainment, which is a much more high-quality, all-encompassing piece of entertainment that people will seek out regardless of whether or not it’s been funded by a brand.”

In industry-speak, “branded entertainment” generally means a long-form program that’s been funded partly or wholly by a brand, and typically features the brand’s products in some significant way in the story line. In the UK, brand appearances are tightly regulated; Glynne said the de facto limit from Ofcom is three appearances in an episode by a product.

Product placement, branded and sponsored entertainment are widely used on social-media sites such as TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. Indeed, such deals are perhaps the biggest source of income for many major creators on most of those platforms.

Audiences “understand this is how these influencers make their living, right?” Glynne said. “There’s a tacit agreement between the audience and the influencer, that they are able to watch this content because a brand has funded it.”

It’s a different dynamic as the production costs and platforms go higher up the food chain. Glynne said in some ways premium programming becomes a validator for the brand that’s involved in sponsoring the show. While some survey respondents said that branded content can be cringeworthy or disruptive to the story, perhaps the really important stat is that nearly 60% said they looked into buying a product or brand after seeing it on a show.

“I’ve been in this industry and branded entertainment for 20 years now,” Glynne said. “And I was absolutely thrilled to get this data back.”

Glynne pointed to Netflix
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hit Emily in Paris, “which has done some really interesting brand partnerships, and there are some more clunky than others.” But brands increasingly seeing programs like that and wanting to do their own, “because they’re seeing it is really a legitimate way for the to market now.”

The study also suggested that a majority of UK viewers think a brand’s involvement could enhance what they’re watching. The classic example was the Aston Martin and various expensive watches in James Bond movies. But more recently, Glynne pointed to “brand-funded programming” on Britain’s Channel Four backed by Unilever
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hair brands, and Dulux, the British paint brand, which did two seasons of a series called Changing Rooms.

“The other thing to remember is, it’s not just about the money,” Glynne said. “So whenever I work with brands, part of my job is convincing producers to go, ‘it’s okay to have a brand in your content.’ Because it’s not just the money that they bring, brands bring access to talent, they bring access to events, whether it be Formula One or football events, they bring marketing budget themselves, so that helps co-market the final product. And you’re going to drive viewers to watch the show.”