“Content That Serves the People”: A Deep Dive into the Launch of Martin Entertainment
Earlier this summer, The Martin Agency announced the launch of Martin Entertainment, a new offering that, according to a press release at the time, "will evolve how and where brands connect with consumers through premium storytelling in a variety of content mediums".
While the launch of Martin Entertainment is new, the reality is that The Martin Agency has been successfully playing in this space for some time. Just recently, it debuted the DoorDash short film ‘Soul of the City’ at the Tribeca Film Festival, released the CENTURY 21 and National Geographic documentary ‘Home Rediscovered’, and reimagined its children’s book IP ‘Now Upon A Time’ as an animated short film, ‘Lil’ Ruby Riding Hood’.
The person tasked with leading Martin Entertainment is Alanna Strauss, who joined as EVP, head of Martin Entertainment as well as head of its 'Cultural Impact Lab', which focuses on social, earned PR and influencer work.
Alanna joined Martin from Fender, where she was SVP, creative and content, leading brand strategy and creative across all Fender brands, digital, social and their learning tool ‘Fender Play’. Prior to Fender, she was head of creative - brand partnerships for Netflix, spearheading unique activations like the wildly popular and publicly acclaimed ‘Stranger Things’ campaign, ‘Live From the Upside Down’ - a partnership between Netflix and Doritos. She started her career at Saatchi & Saatchi New York before moving to work for the Ad Council.
LBB's Addison Capper caught up with her to find out about her plans for Martin Entertainment, and to pick her brains more generally on the ever-merging worlds of brands and entertainment.
LBB> Tell me about Martin Entertainment — what are your big aims and ambitions with this new offering?
Alanna> Martin has always been dedicated to building brands that move beyond awareness and appreciation into a space where people love hearing from the brand as much as they love and appreciate the product or service it offers. To deliver on that, it takes a commitment to crafting culturally fuelled creative that rises above the noise. Entertainment is the way to do that.
Our approach to Martin Entertainment goes hand in hand with the agency’s mission of fighting invisibility. To put up a good fight for our clients, we can’t just rest on the usual advertising channels and content platforms. We have to diversify how and where our clients are showing up by going where the attention is and meeting audiences where they are spending the majority of their time.
And with Martin Entertainment, our goal is to launch clients right into the heart of the entertainment scene, leveraging the whole spectrum of possibilities. And it’s not a ‘Barbie movie or bust’ approach. Don’t get me wrong — while a film of that calibre would be a massive win for any brand, it’s not the only way to enter and succeed in the entertainment space. And the great thing about entertainment is that it’s less about the format and more about the story - so you don’t have to wait for Greta Gerwig to take an interest in your brand to break into the entertainment industry.
We are excited to shepherd brands across the full entertainment spectrum - from IP partnerships to custom content to meaningful integrations to experiential activations. We will create and find the most compelling stories and opportunities based on who the brand is and what they want to achieve.
LBB> You've worked at a client in Fender and a streaming platform in Netflix prior to joining Martin. What big lessons did you learn during both of these experiences that are going to help shape the way you build and evolve Martin Entertainment?
Alanna> Authenticity and scarcity are key. A brand must find the story only they can tell. If the story could work for any other brand, it’s not the right one. The content should feel like something your audience has never been exposed to - something they’ve never seen or gotten anywhere else.
During my time at Netflix and Fender, I’ve seen the entertainment perception shift into one where it’s acceptable for brands to be viewed as great entertainers. Whether that’s via custom content like the Headspace show on Netflix, the 30-minute Doritos/’Stranger Things’ live concert that ran on YouTube, or an original series from Fender. Consumers are realising more and more that a brand can be as excellent as anyone at entertaining them - and maybe even better. But just like with any advertising, there’s a way to create branded entertainment campaigns that are successful and not so icky. As consumers, we have moments where we love and welcome brands, like the Super Bowl, and moments where we look at them as enemies that interrupt our experiences. We want to use entertainment to show people that the excitement and value they get from a brand in their lives can also come from where and how we talk to them in media and entertainment. We want to eliminate that gap between loving a brand’s products and getting annoyed when they talk to us by making content that’s worthy of a person’s time.
And to do that, branded entertainment needs to avoid being viewed as just another tricky way to get people to spend time with them. What we create has to be good enough to spend time with over anything else out there. It has to be content that people feel a connection to. When branded entertainment is done right, it creates content that serves the people rather than merely the brand, and maybe even something a person looks back on and says, “That made my day better,” versus feeling it was a waste of time.
LBB> One of advertising’s biggest issues in 2023 is the difficulty involved in grabbing and keeping people's attention. What are your thoughts on that?
Alanna> There is a common misconception that attention spans are eroding. The reality is consumers are eager to give you their attention, now more than ever, but they expect a higher calibre of content in return. So when we talk about audience expectations, I see two core reasons brands need to evolve into entertainers: necessity and opportunity.
What makes it necessary? 84% of ads are functionally invisible. People are willing to pay to avoid seeing ads, blocking them or ignoring them. And if you look at gen z, it is only going to intensify.
But what makes it so exciting is the opportunity. Since the beginning of time, brands have built their distribution strategy on being adjacent to great content — running alongside an article in GQ, at commercial time during ‘Scandal’, in the middle of an intense MLB game or as part of an activation at Coachella. Brands have forever wanted to affiliate themselves with the passion, fandom and commitment that entertainment content has achieved. And with the evolution of content platforms and growing acceptance of brands as entertainers, brands get to be THE story. They get to be what people are there for and not just the layover until you get to your destination.
The truth is, the appetite to be entertained is at an all-time high. Brands have an unprecedented opportunity to meet this demand and expand their storytelling universe far beyond what an ad allows.
With the average TikTok user spending 95 minutes a day watching videos on the platform and 88% of American adults admitting to losing sleep bingeing their favourite shows, it’s clear that people are more hungry than ever to be entertained. And social isn’t just about peer-to-peer connections anymore — it’s where you go for entertainment.
This is all to say the table is set for brands to own this entertainment demand and tell stories like they never have before.
LBB> Previous to the launch of Martin Entertainment, the agency had a good track record of creating branded entertainment — a short film for DoorDash recently debuted at Tribeca Film Festival. How is this experience influencing your work with Martin Entertainment?
Alanna> I think GEICO’s 2007 ‘Cavemen’ TV series walked so ‘Barbie’ could run! ‘Cavemen’ was so original and ahead of its time and showed the power of a brand creating culturally impactful characters that could live outside of a commercial.
And yes, Martin has been blurring the lines between entertainment and advertising for a while now across brands like DoorDash, Busch Light, AXE, OREO and GEICO. It’s exciting to continue building on this success with a team that is hyperfocused on ensuring we are looking through an entertainment lens at all times.
LBB> You have touched upon this, but what can we learn from the success of ‘Barbie’ and Mattel’s willingness to be open about the brand’s conflicted history?
Alanna> To build on what I said earlier above, people love authenticity and honesty. We all hold our own opinions of and experiences with Barbie, and those run from admiring the brand deeply to struggling with what it stands for. This film surfaced and acknowledged all of our existing emotions and successfully made us all feel seen, ultimately making us love the brand more. I think embracing who you are known to be, both the good and bad, builds credibility and relatability.
And let’s not forget it has an amazing female director and female lead who brought the story to life so beautifully. It was both the Barbie story and who told it that made it remarkable.
LBB> In your opinion, what have been the biggest successes in the history of branded entertainment? What is the gold standard?
Alanna> Over the last few years, there have been so many incredible examples of brands as entertainers — from Patagonia to Yeti to Liquid Death to Adobe to Dove and beyond. And I believe the marketing partnerships team at Netflix reimagined how powerful and culturally influential a relationship between an IP and a brand can be, with campaigns like ‘Ben & Jerry’s + Netflix and Chilll’d’, Doritos and ‘Stranger Things’, and ‘The Witcher’ and Old Spice. And of course from the Martin side — GEICO’s ‘Scoop! There It Is!’ and the ‘UPS x NY Fashion Week’ activation are great examples of iconic brands expanding their narrative and the stories you expect from them.
Red Bull is another great example. I will forever admire them as a leader in the space. Their commitment to evolving from an energy drink to a lifestyle entertainer shows how a brand can be so much bigger than their core product.
As far as the gold standard, there are lots of gold medals for me to hand out because the entertainment spectrum is so wide. For example, Netflix’s single OOH marquee on Sunset has evolved into a true piece of entertainment and a must-follow for people all over the world. Then you have something as brilliant and robust as ‘The Scale of Hope’ from Patagonia or the ‘Barbie’ movie. And to take it way back, for me Wilson’s integration into ‘Cast Away’ was more memorable than any other piece of advertising I could ever see from them. It felt so natural and organic and the brand became a character itself.
The brands who have succeeded in entertainment have one thing in common: an undeniably meaningful and great story at the centre of it.
LBB> Can you envision a future where a branded entertainment property could rival some of the prestige dramas we’ve seen on our screens, from ‘The Bear’ to ‘House of the Dragon’ or ‘Succession’?
Alanna> I think anything is possible, but it has to be done so organically and authentically. Viewers are smart and will get the ick factor quickly if it starts to feel like the brand is there intentionally versus naturally. So as long as the story is incredible and the brand’s involvement feels organic to the viewer, anything is possible.
I believe brands have better stories to tell than anyone out there. Look around our homes, our workspaces and think about our daily routines. Brands are a natural and important part of our lives, providing each of us with our own unique story about how we integrate these brands into our lives and what they mean to us. And depending on where you live, brand meaning will vary across cultures and locations. Imagine if we could each write our own story about a brand and why we like it. Why do we use it? I would bet a lot of money we all have something interesting and different to say.
Brands are sitting on a wealth of incredible stories, and bringing those to life is what excites me the most.
