May 31, 2006
Studio One: Single-Sponsor Shows Have Good Consumer Recall
By Senior Editor Jon Lafayette

Once upon a time, radio programs and later, television programs, had single sponsors.

Now the advertising tactic is staging a revival on the Web.

A company that creates Internet shows has produced research showing that single-sponsor shows-without product placement, integration or any other editorial fingerprints-can bring remarkable results in terms of consumer recall, consideration and intent to purchase.

Studio One Networks, formed seven years ago by former Time Warner Director of New Business Technology Andrew Susman and Bob Blackmore, former executive VP for sales at NBC, is using the research that indicates the very old single-sponsor technique is still very effective.

Clients including CBS television stations, AOL, Amazon, Wal-Mart, United Airlines and Netscape are turning to Studio One to improve their Web sites' usefulness, Mr. Susman said.

"These are programming agreements where they rely on us for the quality of our content because they can't afford to create everything that they want," Mr. Susman said. "In exchange, to cover the costs of creating the content, we bring in a corporate sponsor, almost similar to a Mutual of Omaha."

That company for years was the sponsor of "Wild Kingdom," which is now seen on Animal Planet.

Studio One uses a very strict definition of single sponsorship that it calls "true sponsorship." In its model, the content is designed to be useful and the sponsor is uninvolved in its creation.

"These are not advertorial," Mr. Susman said. "The content is editorially independent. There is not advertiser review of the content."

Most of Studio One's content is on the Web, and none of the sites have traditional banner ads or buttons. Instead, they carry an acknowledgement on every page that the content is brought to the viewer by the marketer.

For example, Nestle Infant Nutrition, which makes baby formula, sponsors Studio One's "Your Baby Today." That content reflects the idea that breast milk is best for children, a message that can be clicked on for links to Verybestbaby.com, where after a few more clicks, a user can find information on Nestle‚'s Good Start baby formula.

"We reflect the idea that breast is best, even though they are a formula company, because they know that some percentage of mothers will for lifestyle or health reasons choose to use infant formula," Mr. Susman said. "For those mothers that do, they will have better consideration, [our] having provided high-quality information solutions to them."

Studio One's "Cat Daily" and "Dog Daily" are sponsored by Purina Pet Foots, and Bridgestone sponsors "Driving Today." Symantec sponsors two packages: "Online Family" focusing on Internet safety issues, and "CIO Strategy Center," targeting business users. For Unilever's Thermasilk brand, Studio One's "Style Sessions" features how-to video on creating hairstyles.

The research shows that a light touch can work for sponsors.

"What it universally shows is that the psychology of advertising is very different than the psychology of sponsorship," Mr. Susman said.

Mr. Susman said that the psychology of advertising is that the advertiser is taking something from the prospect involuntarily, such as time or attention. By contrast, the psychology of sponsorship is that the sponsor is giving something to the prospect, which they accept voluntarily.

"The persuasion effects are very different," Mr. Susman said. At a recent Advertising Research Foundation meeting, it was shown that this form of sponsorship was seen as more effective than television advertising, he said.

Mr. Susman has a theory why this works, and it's based on gratitude.

Studio One tracks its syndicated material using research by Sponsorship Effectiveness Index, which found that gratitude translates into more willingness to buy than interruptive hard-sell pitches.

They key is quality, he said.

"If you give content that is legitimate, is considered scarce and valuable, and you make the audience aware that but for this sponsor it would not be available-but you do not compromise the programming or spoil the gift-your results in terms of those three main measures (awareness, consideration and intent to purchase) are multiples higher than what they're doing in traditional advertising," Mr. Susman said.

At this point, most of Studio One's online content is text and pictures, because until now, there were few consumers of online video.

"Until about three years ago, video didn't have significant reach, and a lot of people were selling into an audience that didn't exist," Mr. Susman said. "Today video is starting to have some significant reach. It's not the whole pictures, but I'd say on a percentage basis in terms of what we're creating, going forward its probably about 25 percent video. People are actually using it."

Studio One is looking to bring its sponsorship model to TV again, now that video is expanding and the rules of television have changed, Mr. Susman said.

"One of our plans is to leverage back video that we're creating online for narrowcast situations," he said.