In the three years since it was formed, The New York Times’ sponsored content production agency T Brand Studio has made plenty of custom creative work for clients – now it wants to more tightly integrate its newsroom with the offering.
“The big shift this year was… if you look back at the the last three NewFronts, a lot of our ad work was focused on T-Brand Studio,” says New York Times advertising and innovation SVP Sebastian Tomich in this video interview with Beet.TV. “It’s all owned content, but it was somewhat isolated from our newsroom.
“This is the first year we’ve thought about, ‘How can we use our newsroom as a launchpad for these T-Brand campaigns?’ The big shift now is thinking about the newsroom.”
This means, Tomich confirmed to Beet.TV, that – unlike many sponsored series made by T Brand Studio – he will now work with the newsroom to create a video series that will later be sponsored.
T Brand Studio activations can be as animated as this one for CA Technologies. No wonder the studio has previously claimed engagement with T Brand-produced Paid Posts, as the Times calls them, can be as high as for standard editorial.
Talking about brand partnerships with the publisher, Tomich cites examples of BMW and Samsung previously partnering with The Daily podcast: “There was maybe three of them last year, we want to do 10 this year.
“In the future, we want to do about 10 of those. That requires both daring from our partners and the truth and authority that the NY brings.”
At this year’s NewFronts, Tomich pitched advertisers with a palette including VR, AR, audio and video, observing: “Brands are saying, ‘We want to go bigger with fewer, we want never-been-done-before creative ideas that may take shape in a media program but could also take shape in producing a VR film or hosting an event’.
“So we’ve staffed a 150-person creative team in four continents to help brands do that, we acquired two agencies.”
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the IAB’s Digital Content NewFronts 2017. The series is sponsored by the IAB. For more videos from the the #NewFronts, please visit this page.
