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SUSTAINING CREDIBILITY

BRANDS AND DOCUMENTARIES: At the core of documentary lie independence and credibility, or do they? Are brands and documentaries sustainable partners? By Bettina Rehmann

he Ofcom Broadcasting Code from February 2011 allows product placement in UK television documentaries for the rst time. Where regulations so en, new possibilities open up for the funding of documentaries, and in times of shrinking budgets, brands enter the scene as welcome sponsors. Independent documentary has long experimented with this uncommon partner. Brands and documentaries team up, running the risk of sacri cing the documentarys credibility and independence. e involvement of brands in funding and promoting documentary projects has seen a surge in recent years. Indicating this are initiatives such as the Gucci Tribeca Documentary Fund, administered by the Tribeca Film Institute, which has o ered nishing funds to social issue documentaries since 2008, or the longterm partnership PUMA.Creative entered into a partnership with the Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation, tendering a range of awards for documentary since 2010. ose collaborations institutionalize brand sponsorship. Apart from that, there is a broad range of brand involvement in documentary production, stretching from the creation of original content to commissioning documentary, to providing nishing funds or promoting documentary.
Brands as initiators

Karl Lagerfeld. Granting access in this way can become an indirect editorial in uence that needs to be avoided to sustain a documentarys credibility.
Another approach

The branding of a documentary can also happen involuntarily through the choice of the issue or main character of the film

of documentary lm are nothing new. In 1946, Standard Oil commissioned Robert Flaherty to shoot Louisiana Story (US, 1948) to give the companys oil rigging activities a positive spin. Today, Standard Oil is called Exxon Mobile and in 2009 its brand Mobil 1 funded Speed Dreams (Greg Whiteley, 2009), which was broadcasted on the Documentary Channel (DOC). e documentary follows the lives of race car drivers, among them Louis Hamilton, while examining the factors of their success, of which Mobil 1 motor oil is one. e US magazine Adweek (3/2009) referred to Speed Dreams as part of a long-form integrated marketing campaign. According to Jay Kelley, SVP Sales at DOC, who oversees branded content, the production is tailored to the brand but the story is cra ed to maintain credibility. While DOC

would not want be involved in a documentary demonstrating how an oil spill by a giant oil company had no impact, telling the personal story of racing stars, their lives and relation to technology would be authentic subject matter. Telling the story was possible, because Exxon Mobile was able to provide access to the prominent protagonists of the lm, which would otherwise have been very di cult. As gaining access is crucial, Klaus Stanjek, director and professor for documentary directing at the HFF Potsdam-Babelsberg, believes there is a risk of lmmakers sacri cing the critical distance they should keep to their protagonists as well as their subject matter. To Stanjek, the branding of a documentary can also happen involuntarily through the choice of the issue or main character of the lm. e winner of the Golden Dove in the German competition at the DOK Leipzig 2010, How to Make a Book with Steidl (Gereon Wetzel and Jrg Adolph, 2010) is according to Stanjek an example of a lm missing this critical distance. In this portrait, the publisher Georg Steidl grants the lmmakers unique access. e directors follow him to meetings with clients like photographer Robert Frank, writer Gnter Grass and designer

is facilitated by the Channel 4 Britdoc Foundation in the UK. e dairy company Arla Foods together with the charity National Trust and the British National Health Service (NHS) approached the foundation to help them nd a lmmaker who could produce a documentary with the help of their funding. A call-out under the motto Power of Nature asked lmmakers for their own ideas on relationships with nature. According to the foundations CEO Jess Search, the three partners have common messages, and a common target audience. ey all want to become part of a campaign which makes people question whether they have the right attitude towards the natural environment. ey would have an interest in fostering a public debate and a documentary lmmaker would be the fourth partner in this e ort, with total editorial freedom. You want to work with a lmmaker who also believes this and feels strongly that its time to question how our urban society behaves, and then together you have a very powerful campaign. While the National Trust and the NHS have a public mission, Arla wants to bene t from the association with the debate about nature. As the corporate partner in this team, Arla seeks to polish the brands image and ultimately pro t from the relationship. When companies dont want to wait to nd the perfect documentary to match up with, service providers such as A Brand Apart enter the game. Since 2008, the UK-based company has been developing, producing and distributing advertiser funded programming, which includes original documentary production for clients such as Procter & Gamble. One example is the 13-part series Extraordinary Dogs that has been fully funded by the P&G pet food brand EUKANUBA. e Documentary Channel acts as one of the distribution partners for A Brand Apart, broadcasting the series as EUKANUBA Extraordinary Dogs and pro ting from the additional ad spending of the brand surrounding the broadcast on DOC.

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End of the Line

are interested in. e powerful medium allows them to reach beyond advertising to in uential audiences. Brands do not necessarily want to exert in uence on the content, but be associated with it. Jackie Cooper, UK Creative Director and Vice Chair of the global PR rm Edelman, points out that brands can bene t from their involvement in powerful, even controversial lms, as they provoke debates the company wants to own. Being associated with the debated issue does not require a brand to appear in a documentary. In fact, carrying a credible partnership involves that the lmmaker works independently and the brand only comes aboard as supporter at a later stage.
Klaus Stanjek believes that audiences have become less critical and used to brands sponsoring culture. He feels, the trustworthiness of documentary is at stake. He understands documentary as a sophisticated lm genre. A journalistic attitude, entailing a critical examination of social injustices, has long dominated documentary but has decreased in recent years, endangering the independent perspective a documentary needs to keep. Achieving this without brand involvement is di cult enough and Stanjek refuses o ers from brands to produce documentaries with his students at the lm school. Nevertheless, if a documentary lmmaker is able to keep his or her critical stance, he could approve of a brand partnership. Jess Search takes a slightly di erent stand: Companies are a large part of what drives the way the world operates, and lmmakers cannot ignore this. Nevertheless, lmmakers that want to enter brand relationships need to be aware. Even though Ofcom has relaxed the product placement rules for British TV documentaries, in most countries, branded documentary content on TV is under strict regulation. e option of distributing a documentary on television might be restricted through the involvement of a brand. Furthermore, documentaries that enter a brand relationship could be prone to include hidden advertising which the EUs Audiovisual Media Directive bans.
Bettina Rehmann is a freelance journalist, living and working in Berlin, bettina.rehmann@gmail.com

The art of mutual bene t in brand involvement

is mastered when both sides pro t. e documentary bene ts only when its credibility and its nancial and editorial independence are preserved. is, according to Klaus Stanjek, is best guaranteed when brands enter the partnership once the lm is completed, or close to completion, so in uence on content is not an option. at means brands come aboard to support the promotion and distribution of the documentary, a eld they have expertise in. According to Jess Search brand involvement can be a gain for documentary lmmakers who want their lm to have an impact as brands are already experts in communicating messages, trying to reach the hearts and minds of their chosen demographic just as the lmmaker. ere has to be an alignment between the brands philosophy and the mission of the lmmaker. Documentary professor Stanjek goes even further, stating that brand involvement could be welcomed if the brands corporate operations are worthy of support. e Channel 4 Britdoc Foundation was involved in partnering the feature length documentary e End of the Line (Rupert Murray, 2009) with the British supermarket chain Waitrose that promoted the lm and funded its marketing and distribution. e partnership started a er the lm was nished. e documentary examines the e ects of

over shing and gives concerned consumers advice on how to support sustainable shing. On the lms website, the producers describe the documentary as a campaigning lm and project which is integrated with the work of NGOs and progressive companies to achieve change. Waitrose, as one of those progressive companies, employs a rigid sh policy to source sh from sustainable sources. e mission of the lm and the companys sh policy were in alignment, which enabled a partnership. e lm is based on the meticulous research of journalist Charles Clover, so the brand deemed it trustworthy. In return, the lmmakers checked the claims of Waitroses sh policy and caused Waitrose to take sword sh, which is threatened by over shing, o their shelves before the joint promotion took o . Waitroses investments in the lm were pro table. According to an evaluation report Britdoc published in February, sustainable sh sales went up by 15% in the month following the lms launch compared to the same period in the preceding year. us, e End of the Line presents a positive example of mutual pro t and the reciprocal fact-checking helped to sustain the companys, as well as the lms, credibility.
According to Jay Kelley from DOC the credibility of a documentary is what brands

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