Aaron Rose oversees a shoot for W+K Entertainment's WKE Channel.

Graphic novels, musicals, TV shows, art exhibitions, concerts, feature films. Until even 10 years ago, the idea of an ad agency creating these cultural events would have seemed ridiculous.

Last month we looked at how production companies have changed, launching art, content and experiential divisions to blur the lines between commerce and culture. This month we look at how agencies are doing the same thing, bringing the two closer than they’ve ever been.

The monikers are indicative of the intentions of these new divisions: Mother Experience, W+K Entertainment, OgilvyEntertainment. Along with new hybrid agencies Apologue, Guided and The ideaLists, these companies are reimagining the agency in structure, staffing, ideation, execution and output. They’re becoming entertainment companies, aided by technology to find innovative new ways to engage with consumers.

Mother has long prided itself on disrupting the norm in terms of its creative work and structure, and its experience arm is doing the same. “We are an entertainment company. We use entertainment to create meaningful connections between brands and people,” is their mantra, and that’s reflected in an eclectic mix of work across their clients. They’ve created a musical for snack food Pot Noodle, the Somers Town feature for rail firm Eurostar, a graphic novel for Time Out magazine, a free concert for Virgin Mobile, and commissioned acclaimed pop artist Peter Blake to create a seven-foot-high public artwork for Coca-Cola.
“Traditional marketers divide their activities between brand activation and brand building,” explains Dermot McPartland, who launched Mother Experience in summer 2008. “The split is usually 90/10. Most of the spend goes against telling people what the brand thinks and the remaining 10% brings the brand’s proposition to life. We believe that the traditional model needs to be flipped.”

McPartland also believes that the rise of brand utility and socially aware consumers means the public expects more value from brands. “What brands do for their customers is more important than what they say. As the old acting adage goes: All character is action. The new mold of iconic brands – Google, Red Bull, Innocent – are streets ahead of their competitors, because they provide their customers with some form of utility, not just a message. If we are told, we forget. If we experience, we remember. Acts of brand benevolence create engagement beyond a physical level and create a bottom-up, peer-to-peer network of believers, collaborators and advocates.”

It’s an ethos emulated by former director of experience design at Imaginary Forces Tali Krakowsky. She’s worked with MoMA, IBM, and Van Cleef & Arpels among others and recently launched Apologue, which aims to create events, immersive experiences and interactive architecture projects (among others) for retail, feature films, cultural institutions like museums, real estate and brands. “Branding is going to expand to doing culturally relevant, location-based projects that will be sponsored by brands. I think what experience design offers is creating local experiences that target your specific audience and that matter, that are embedded in culture, that contribute to culture, and through which your brand will be associated with goodwill. You can’t buy that. You can’t make a commercial about that.”

Becoming culturally relevant is something that OgilvyEntertainment has been tasked with doing from its inception four years ago. Set up in New York to create original content, they’ve partnered with production companies and broadcasters to create TV shows and web series for Hellman’s, Cisco and IBM with the BBC and Discovery Channel among others. “In 1950 you used to be able to reach 84% of Americans during The Ed Sullivan Show,” says founder Doug Scott. “Brands really need to begin to partner with content creators on one side. On the other side you have an oversupply of content. Technology is allowing more people to create content, and [it’s increasingly expensive for brands] to market their content in terms of breaking through the clutter. So producers of content are becoming highly dependent on alternative financing resources and brands have very large pockets. I call it the perfect storm. The eye of the storm is technology. It’s changing the distributor, the consumer and the producer.”

Scott is cautious about what brands should be involved with however. “If someone looks at this only as a production or content creation role, they’re limiting what needs to be done by the agency. Just creating content without making sure that it’s informed by brand strategy, it links into a creative campaign, is measured at the back end and is activated properly... it just becomes another log on the fire. Too many brands have too many things going on that are not interrelated, so they’re not getting maximum value out of it.”

W+K Entertainment, set up unofficially five years ago, works much like Ogilvy’s wing. Straight up branded content makes up 75% of its output, such as a skate DVD for Nike SB, says founder Bill Davenport, and they’re currently developing undisclosed projects with Proctor & Gamble, Coca-Cola and Dodge. The other 25% however is essentially an outlet for pure creativity, split between promoting fun projects within the agency and the WKE channel, creative directed by curator/director Aaron Rose. The channel features radio shows, music and variety shows. “The point was to give anyone in the agency who felt that they had something to say some space to do that,” explains Davenport. “Then we expanded that to working with a lot of musicians, filmmakers and artists. The thought was to tap deep into the culture, not just reflect it like a mirror.”