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Lure of Branded Entertainment Gives Rise to a Bicoastal Effort

THE increasing interaction between the advertising and entertainment industries has been a trend long enough to inspire phrases evocative of intersections like “Madison and Vine.”

Now, in another example of the trend’s strength, a New York advertising agency is teaming up with eight writers and producers for television and movies in a joint venture that will offer marketers ways to reach consumers beyond traditional tactics like 30-second commercials.

The venture is named BB Hollywood, reflecting the West Coast provenance of the writers and directors along with the name of the agency, Brooklyn Brothers — which, despite its handle, is based in Manhattan. The résumés of the Hollywood contingent include work on films, series and pilots like “Cheers,” “The Hard Times of RJ Berger,” “Les Misérables,” “The Office,” “Partners” and “The Way”; they also have development deals with, among others, CBS, Fox, Showtime and TBS.

BB Hollywood will compete with dozens of agencies, production companies and content specialists that include the Brand Studio at U.T.A., Break Media, CollegeHumor, Content and Company, Funny or Die, OgilvyEntertainment, @radical.media and TBWA/Chiat/Day Los Angeles.

The inspiration for BB Hollywood was a so-called branded entertainment campaign created last year by Brooklyn Brothers for the New Era Cap Company, which was centered on a trash-talking rivalry between Alec Baldwin, a fan of the New York Yankees, and John Krasinski, a fan of the Boston Red Sox.

The New Era campaign was composed of eight video clips that were released periodically online throughout the baseball season, forming a kind of Web mini-series.

“The campaign took on a life of its own,” said Guy Barnett, a principal at Brooklyn Brothers. That led to a discussion of the value of “going to the writers,” he added, “who create the source material, who generate the audiences brands are looking for.”

Mr. Barnett and another principal at Brooklyn Brothers, Paul Parton, own 60 percent of BB Hollywood, with the writers and producers owning the rest. (Brooklyn Brothers is owned by Mr. Barnett, Mr. Parton and a junior partner, Stephen Rutterford.)

The growing clamor among marketers for branded entertainment — embedding brands and products in the plots to make it more difficult for viewers to skip or ignore the sponsors — is a major reason for the start-up of BB Hollywood, along with the increasing appetite among consumers to watch video online as well as on television.

“Audiences are willing to find entertainment wherever, willing to give almost every kind of storytelling a chance,” said Rob Long, a writer and producer who is a member of the BB Hollywood lineup.

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The logo created by Brooklyn Brothers for BB Hollywood, a new venture into branded entertainment with makers of television shows and movies like "Cheers," and "The Way."

Mr. Long, who won an Emmy for “Cheers,” compared the present attitude about branded entertainment with what happened when the “Cheers” writers once “wanted Norm and Cliff to be eating Cheetos” for the purposes of a punch line.

Despite the potential laughs, “the network and the studio both called to say, ‘You can’t say “Cheetos,’ ” Mr. Long recalled, “and we threw the joke out.”

Incorporating brands into entertainment is effective “if done intelligently, if done well,” he said, adding: “That is the challenge we face. That’s what I like about what we’re doing. We’re trying to start with a story, then engage with the audience, rather than try to sneak anything past them.”

Another writer and producer who is part of BB Hollywood, Lester Lewis, also stressed that point.

“I thought the New Era campaign was hilarious, and didn’t realize they were ads,” Mr. Lewis said. “I loved that you could tell a short, great story that was also appropriate to the brand.”

During the Hollywood writers’ strike in 2007 and 2008, Mr. Lewis said, “I tried with a bunch of writers to do something like this” and rectify the fact that “advertising pays for what we do but we don’t have direct contact with the brands that support our shows.”

The idea proved premature, he added, but now “is the perfect time, because content for the Web is getting more and more legitimate.”

Adam Kulakow, a screenwriter who is joining BB Hollywood, called branded entertainment a natural outgrowth of how “the word ‘brand’ is used all the time in Hollywood, especially in the film world,” which is so dependent on making movies that are “pre-existing titles and franchises with pre-existing awareness.”

“There’s a pool of talent here, talent that wants to get into the branded space,” Mr. Kulakow said, partly because it offers a chance to produce creative writing that does not have to pass muster with the usual gatekeepers at the studios and networks.

Once, when working on a script with Disney, he recalled, an executive asked, Can we make it more fun?

“That’s a hard note,” Mr. Kulakow said with chagrin.

Paul Ruehl, a writer and producer who came aboard BB Hollywood through Mr. Kulakow, said he, too, found the idea of being able to “take out the middleman” attractive.

“The irony is, the corporate world is less corporate than Hollywood now,” Mr. Ruehl said.

As for the commercial nature of the work that BB Hollywood will produce, “television has always been about selling soap,” he added. “This is the modern version of that.”

The name BB Hollywood echoes BBH, which is how many in advertising refer to Bartle Bogle Hegarty, an agency owned by the Publicis Groupe.“We hope to make our own fame,” Mr. Barnett said. Mr. Parton said puckishly, “We’re just hoping they aren’t going to try to trade off us.”

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section B, Page 4 of the New York edition with the headline: Lure of Branded Entertainment Gives Rise to a Bicoastal Effort. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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