Christmas examples from creators and brands
I might be peaking a little early here, but I thought this week I’d give you a few Christmas examples featuring creators, brands and a streamer or two.
Before getting going, there is an enormous 10 tonne elephant in the room which is the shenanigans with Warner Bros. Discovery, Netflix and Paramount Skydance. Here was my attempt at a guess from back in October:
As my goal is to help you plan for the future, detailing all the ins and outs doesn’t seem to add value at this stage, especially when other trade publications and commentators are doing it so well.
I’ll see how it shakes out over the next few days to see what to include for my Friday newsletter - at the moment, the main strategic headline for me is what this tells us about Netflix’s current vulnerabilities especially in relation to YouTube. On this point, here is something I wrote back in May, using a rather over-worked analogy of Game of Thrones:
Last observation for the moment: it has been noticeable how quickly people are jumping to conclusions in this hugely amorphous changing scenario, and these conclusions get spread, only to be corrected a day or two later as more insights emerge. So as a little example, here is a graphic doing the rounds this morning:
However, the WBD share of TV screen time includes the Discovery cable channels and streaming output, which currently Netflix doesn’t seem to want to buy. We don’t know how much of the streaming output of Max is of non-WB titles, but back in 2023 it was rumoured to be around 20%. So vats of salt are needed at this point, especially as Lucas Shaw reported this morning, it could take months for this bidding war to come to a conclusion.
For those involved - which is so many of us, either because of working for these companies, or we are in their orbit somehow - this is likely to be a hugely stressful time.
So instead of dwelling in the uncertainty, I thought I’d explore some (professionally relevant) Christmas cheer.
Pepsi MAX and YouTube Christmas
Pepsi in the UK and Ireland has launched a new series for Christmas as part of their Pepsi Pioneers campaign. Called Pepsi Max Mansion, hosts Luke Vernon and Saskia Marriott are overseeing a bunch of creators doing Christmas related challenges with one being evicted at the end of each episode.
This has been announced as part of step change in Pepsi’s marketing strategy; they’ve partnered with New Gen to produce the series and relaunch their existing channel that has been around since 2006.
These types of shifts towards TV-like shows for brands should be seen within the context of the past 20 years or so of the advertising industry, which are important for TV producers to understand as they look for brand funding.
