Less Mad Men, more SNL: The case for branded formats in advertising
Agencies may understand the digital landscape, but they’re still thinking like traditional advertisers, when all audiences really want is to be entertained.
Tom Rickard, an executive producer at Aunty Donna’s production company Haven’t You Done Well Productions, explains how the model of sketch comedy offers a far better roadmap for advertisers than old Madison Avenue tropes.
The days of Dan Draper pitching a tagline should be over
The concept of Don Draper presenting a gif-filled Canva deck, pitching a six second social media film, or explaining why Sterling Cooper’s use of a meme will connect to culture amuses me. The disconnect between this show’s traditional representation of advertising and the current needs of clients and consumers would be even funnier if it wasn’t uncomfortably close to reality.
Yes, the industry has long evolved past the glory days of Madison Avenue. Agencies understand digital, they speak Tiktok, they know how to make a bespoke six-second. But they’re still thinking like advertisers, when audiences want entertainers. The tools may have changed but the mindset hasn’t.
Audiences these days aren’t content with a 30sec TVC in their feeds. Nor their 15s cut downs. People are craving entertainment, not interruption. Many brands still act like advertisers in a world that rewards entertainers. So perhaps it’s time for agencies and brands to think less like Mad Men, and more like Saturday Night Live. Because the real shift isn’t just from ads to entertainment, it’s from one-off campaigns to repeatable formats.
Build formats not interruptions
For over 50 years, Saturday Night Live (SNL) has built its brand on repeatable formats: Weekend Update, Celebrity Jeopardy, the “Live from New York” cold open sketch. The show itself is a format and SNL stays relevant by doing roughly the same thing every week: providing fresh content in a familiar framework. That’s the format advantage. They’ve created the perfect vehicle that allows them to both build long term brand memory while introducing new time-sensitive content weekly. What SNL built for culture, brands can build for audiences
the best branded content I have ever seen were the Subway and Honda episodes of Community