“That can really start to drive that brand salience, brand preference, and move you into the consideration set in a way that you probably wouldn’t be able to do from just standard advertising,” he said
Kate McCagg, who leads Amazon’s Brand Innovation Lab, said the strongest brand integrations come from a “shared DNA” between the client and the show.
“We can tell a story together that we both have a right to tell, and it lands a lot more believably with people when they see it,” she said.
Inside the Off Campus playbook
The panel’s marquee example was Amazon’s integration of Liquid I.V. into Off Campus, a college hockey romance series streaming exclusively on Amazon Prime Video.
Jenny Burke, director of global video strategy and go-to-market at Amazon Ads, explained that the seed was planted when Liquid I.V.’s team connected with Amazon Ads at last year’s Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity.
The partnership led to multiple bespoke integrations throughout the show. For example, one of the lead characters is a college athlete who has an name, image, likeness (NIL) deal with Liquid I.V.
“There’s signage in the hockey rink and products as well, so there’s a lot of integration that feels very organic to the storyline,” Burke said.
