A New Breed of Branded Entertainment: Honeyshed

There's a good Business Week article this morning on the news that Publicis and some of it's top thinkers are launching Honeyshed, a new video site for branded content. Despite the down-home/"creative"/emotional name for the site I think it's got HUGE potential (sarcasm).

Honeyshed intends to erase the line between branding and entertainment altogether. But its content won't be traditional online advertising. No banners. No rollovers. No 30-second spots. Instead, it will provide a mix of live programming and character-driven sketch shows paid for by—and promoting—sponsors

Ahhh, the line between branding and entertainment was erased in 1984, that's not innovative. They state the core objective as "...overt advertising based on the idea that people love brands." People love some brands, Apple, Mini, BMW...but that's because these brands consistently PROVIDE A LOT OF VALUE.

To Business Week's credit, they do ask the right questions...

The biggest conundrum, of course, is whether consumers really do love brands as much as those working for brands and their agencies do. And even though transparency has been a buzzword in marketing for a while, will viewers really choose to navigate to a site with such blatant consumerism at its core? Unlike sites such as eBay (EBAY) or craigslist, this still seems like something of a one-sided deal.

BUT, ebay and craigslist aren't brand marketers they are marketplaces where blatant consumerism is the whole point.

Assuming that Marketing is one of the most important customer touch-points (aren't they all important?), why can't Marketing provide value too? What happens when we start doing authentic marketing that provides value to customers...from the very beginning? Entertaining a customer is valuable, that seems relatively clear, but, at the end of the day, it's really just a way to pay the ad agencies. I'm not convinced that this is the future of online advertising.