It might be that I’m one of The Chosen People. Or perhaps it's my years in the investment industry. Whatever the reason, there is no acronym that makes my heart flutter quite like ROI. In my previous career as an equities analyst, return on investment was at the crux of all my investigative efforts. And in my personal life as well, it’s never far away. Whether it's forecasting how many espressos that new coffee shop must sell to break-even or calculating how many tomatoes I must cut to justify purchasing a pricy new knife sharpener, ROI is always on my mind. Read more…

YouTube is reportedly planning to spend $100 million to launch 20 different channels, and support the creation and distribution of original, TV-like programming for them, in a bid to provide a legitimate alternative to broadcast TV. Their goal is to get TV viewers to switch over and watch YouTube in the future like they do TV now. For viewers, this may be a welcome opportunity to end their love/hate relationship with cable distributors. A cheap and cheerful new way to begin love affairs with serial, scripted shows. Read more…

Who doesn't love being entertained? We all do. And if you're in the business of creating branded entertainment, that must be the ultimate goal, right? Not so fast!

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Most of the marketers I've worked with over the years have a handful of "go-to" questions they look to satisfy in order to hire a new company like ours, or move forward with a new initiative like branded entertainment. And these questions tend to fall into two categories; how is this new and innovative, or how is this tested and true. Not many initiatives answer both, but branded entertainment does. Read more…

Two years ago, when Fresh Baked was in its infancy and there were only a handful of branded web shows online, our conversations with marketers were sparked by a mix of curiosity and naivety. “What the heck is branded entertainment?” was how they typically started. At the time, those brave enough to wade into these waters ahead of others were largely doing so because it felt like the right thing to do. The case for branded entertainment, for them, would come from trial and error. Read more…

Funny thing about funny.

It’s hard.

The old chestnut about “dying is easy, comedy is hard” isn’t just a happy coincidence. Funny that stands up (oops: 86 that pun)—like Chekhov, the Marx Brothers, Mel Brooks, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Dorothy Parker and Shakespeare—touches the universal in ways that drama can’t touch.

Think about this: I reckon wit played a huge part in the downfall of Communism. Laughter is about resistance too, a dose of the anarchic in our all-too-conformist lives. Why? Because laughter is about truth. Read more…