Back in 2005 (when we were URBANadvertising) we launched a content division called URBANcontent with the sole mission of creating branded content. We quickly were able land work for Vespa, TheKnot.com and MAC Cosmetics as well as CondeNast.
When we changed our name to Gigantic™ we blended those capabilities into our core offering, since we felt that was where advertising was headed. Sure, we may have been a little ahead of the time, but remember we declared in 2004 that blogs would become the future of agency websites. (URBANintelligence evolved into the blog you reading now.)
Today we are excited to share that we are more focused on Branded Content than ever. And it seems the industry is using the recession as a reason to focus on the practice, which we believe is still in it's infancy and a prime ingredient in the future of the marketing mix—from a recent article in MediaWeek:
51% men and 49% women - mainly aged between 25 and 44, almost one in three (32%) said they preferred branded content to any other advertising.
As brands become media, the content they program around them will define every aspect of what that brand stands for in the users' mind.