Enrique Magro Soto
With the growth of the streaming market and the lack of spaces specifically devoted to advertising, the industry has found that the best way that brands don’t miss this opportunity is through product placement or brand integration in the most popular titles or content. This model is becoming a trend and Grateful is one of the platforms that is successfully developing it.
The company has become the first product placement platform for premium series in Latin America that connects streaming content producers with brands.
The process for a successful integration requires an exhaustive analysis of the needs of the brand, followed by the search for the ideal content for it. Once the match is made, a strategy is established working hand in hand with the content producers.
“This is the moment when we work creatively with the production of the series, to sort out how to integrate consistently the line of communication, the discourse, the values, objectives, and personality of the brand, and tie all this with the story in a way that it’s organically perceived,” explained Enrique Magro, Grateful’s managing director in Latin America.
This model has effective data to support it, both in brand positioning and sales. For example, since the “Vans Slip-On” model was included in the Squid Game, the brand’s sales grew 7,800%. Likewise, the portal Chess.com reported a 1,000% increase in downloads compared with the same period last year when the Queen’s Gambit series was broadcast on Netflix, in addition to the fact that chess sales rose 125% in the US.
“In Grateful we always seek that our brand’s integrations are comprehensive and strategic, not isolated. On the contrary, we coordinate them in such a way, that as soon as the content is on the platforms, it is complemented with related promotion and communication actions,” Magro said. One example was what Lays and Corona did with Luis Miguel: La Serie series, making videos for their social networks and backing the launching campaign of the series.
“Currently several channels traditionally used by advertising are in crisis, such as linear TV, due to a loss of audience that has migrated to other OTT platforms and digital advertising. Advertisers urgently need to be able to associate their products with a story, in a meaningful and clear direction; they need to generate empathy with consumers and not spend 80% of their budget trying to get a click from the user,” said Magro.
Grateful is in conversations with potential clients such as Mastercard, FedEx, Jumex, Grupo Modelo, among others, interested in developing this brand strategy. “We will start looking for opportunities in the series that we are working on. We are validating our model in the market and learning what brands need for SVOD to become a great medium for them.”
Ariel Tobi of Grateful at #PRODUprimetime: My passion is building business from scratch
