This post was created in partnership with Atmosphere TV
Consumers are forgoing solitary time for social experiences, spending time in public spaces like bars, gyms, and restaurants. This shift presents a unique opportunity for brands that are ready to capitalize on this shared attention.
During an ADWEEK House Advertising HQ panel co-hosted with Atmosphere TV, Zoë Ruderman, chief content officer at ADWEEK, sat down with Blake Sabatinelli, CEO of Atmosphere TV, and Lindsay Sutton, SVP and head of marketing for Atmosphere TV, to discuss how brands can enter communal spaces and make an authentic impact on audiences.
The power of a communal experience
Sabatinelli opened the conversation by pointing to the post-pandemic cultural shift in leisure time and how people are more thoughtful about who they spend their time with and what they spend their time doing.
Community experiences matter again, he said, giving brands new opportunities to reach people “at the right time, the right place, with the right message in a way that’s far less disrupted and more accepted than what you get in other formats.”
Sabatinelli added that these communal spaces don’t just offer brands large audiences but also the heightened emotions of real-time connection.
“If you think about the mindset and mentality that you’re in when you’re watching sports, just think about the energy and the feeling that you have,” Sabatinelli said. “And if you’re a brand, you want to be associated with that feeling and that energy because it’s bringing a positive mindset.”
A creative opportunity for brands
Sutton explained that there are nuances in marketing in these spaces. Brands should avoid producing campaigns that feel intrusive or distracting to the experience, a process Sutton’s team at Atmosphere TV helps guide.
She added that it’s a collaboration between brands and her team: “We will ask, ‘What makes sense for this moment?’ and build that together.”
Sabatinelli shared that brands that have worked with Atmosphere TV in the past have had to think “out of the box.” He shared a story about a campaign for a financial services partner that had an interactive ad that tracked runners during the Boston Marathon.
“We’re doing things that you can’t get anywhere else because we have an engineering team that sits down and works with brands,” he said.
