he branded content for brands is not new. The networks have promoted it for a decade, and mutated with the new narratives of millions of influencers. But the trend turned. Today, branded content is promoted in webseries format, an evolution of traditional audiovisual content for brands: miniseries designed in formats of minutes and seconds that have the function of exposing a line or product to a specific target audience. And that target audience is usually centennials, Generation Z, one who changed the influencers by micro influencers and content creators; to Instagram by TikTok; to inclusion by cancellation, and then by the universality of the neutral.
Branded
The emergence of digital channels such as Youtube -decade and a half ago- opened a window for companies to exploit the possibility of branded content that until then was configured around of brief PNT (non-traditional advertising) in movies and TV series where a product was shown. Unlike that, the new brand content expanded the story around the values, personality, mission and vision of the company. And with the branded content in webseries format managed to impact the public with non-invasive content about products and services.
Brands found that this new format, which can take the form of a documentary series or a digital web series, expanded the advertising narrative and had other value for their audience. And so dozens of successful examples appeared.
Among them “Guilty Party” (AT&T Guilty Party), in which the telecommunications company communicated the value of the brand to Gen Z through nine influencers, with a cumulative reach of 38 million fans. “Guilty Party” attracted 42 million views, 351 million impressions, and 38 million likes, with a 5.7 times higher engagement rate than the standard. While, Science and Star Wars by IBM it allowed the tech company to showcase its contributions to the sci-fi saga in 10 episodes. And General Electric’s “Drone Week,” showcased the company’s massive infrastructure that supplies the construction, food and medical industries: it reported a positive social sentiment of 96%.
sets
Branded content web series proved that, with the right strategy, they worked to improve not only marketing, but also brand health in the marketplace. “Appetite for Life”, by Toyota, presented in 5 chapters the Prius V model (the most famous ecological car in the world. “The Guild” by Xbox Live was financed by PayPal, to motorize purchases on the Microsoft platform.
“A day in my neighborhood”, from DIA Supermarkets, showed the link between the store and the community; and “Are you app”, by Movistar, aimed at portraying couple conflicts and how WhatsApp promotes confusion.
In tune, “El Show de Mister Trapo”, an initiative of the cleaning products company, connects the brand’s values and an educational message about caring for the environment, healthy eating and the importance of integration, addressed under the umbrella of the neutral language.
“They called me for the project. The brand was very clear that they wanted it in neutral. And I knew they were right at the touch. I am a neutral teacher and I do dubbing in neutral, and for the kids, speaking in neutral is natural”, remarks Caro Ibarra, star of Disney Channel (“Soy Luna”, “Zapping Zone” and “High School Musical”, among others), which provides the voices for some of the characters in the web series that already has 10 episodes on YouTube produced by Sfymedia.
“The client identified that it had to be done this way for Latin America. It is that the neutral is a phenomenon that the platforms and the pandemic enhanced. And it matches perfectly with an average audience of four to seven years old”, adds Ibarra, about the series starring the actor and clown Nazareno Móttola who plays Mr Trapo, who like all the characters, is designed from recycled materials.
Neutral
“Neutral is a language invented for the audiovisual part, so that all of us who speak Latin understand it. But teenagers and boys and girls are incorporating it as their language. For them it is their language, their way of differentiating themselves from the greats. And show that they share problems with a boy in Mexico, Colombia or Chile. In addition, our Buenos Aires way of speaking seems very imperative to them, and the neutral is more friendly, ”concludes the host and actress.
“The younger generations have always invented their own language, with their own words and endings. We also did it before, and the mission is the same: shock the elders. Today they take the ‘e’ as a protest. But diachronically, if you look at the trends of young people, they age quickly,” he explained. Adriana Loved, who sees neutral and inclusive language as a temporary phenomenon.
For the entertainment industry it is also a generational phenomenon. While children prefer the neutral, audiences from young adults upwards celebrate accents and regionalisms, because they make the product more visible.
“For me, one of the main problems with content made with Latino audiences in mind is that it felt fake, because they were obsessed with neutral Spanish, or with general cultural references. To the surprise of many, what has worked best on the platforms are the programs that are perceived as authentic and that speak with regionalisms”, contrasts Gabriel Nunciowriters of “La casa de las flores” and the second season of “Luis Miguel: The Series”.
“Both helped to put an end to the myth that people did not consume programming with accents different from their own, or that the use of jargon would provoke an automatic rejection in the public”, celebrates Nuncio.
Changes
The influence of social networks, YouTube tutorials, and neutral series on Netflix have made the Spanish language nuanced. In Latin America, the witness case is Chile, previously recognizable for its melody and its idioms, but today mutating towards the neutral according to different studies.
“Many linguists agree that the Spanish of Chile and that of Honduras are the ones that are changing the fastest in the Hispanic world,” says Chilean linguist Ricardo Martínez. “There is an impression that the speed of linguistic changes is related to the types of social structure,” adds Darío Rojas, a member of the Chilean Academy of Language.
“The educated population, the one that goes through the university, has taken colloquiality to formality,” adds Soledad Chávez Fajardo, a professor at the University of Chile. “A concrete example is the modification of pronunciation, such as the way of marking the ch, which was highly stratified by social groups. The speech of prestige pronounced Chile; the speech of the lower classes used to say Shile”, Martínez points out.
For Rojas, the new university generations seek in the neutral a way of expression that takes off from the older generations, and that in turn differentiates them from the inclusive language.
“I teach at public and private universities, and in both the ‘e’ is very present. ‘Todes’ and ‘les alumnes’ are used as a form of protestive political action against the dominant ideology. But if it were normalized, it would stop be disruptive. The neutral appears on the margin as a look of a globalized and evolved youth”, he highlights. A phenomenon that advertising is attentive to sound inclusive without promoting rejection.
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