At that strange place where branded content meets convergence, there’s bound to be confusion. There’s been a lot of talk about what constitutes both, but when it comes to actually designing and executing a plan, there’s nowhere to stop and ask for directions. In the case of Cadillac’s ‘Innovating Tomorrow’ project, when the rubber hit the road, it meant mapping out a whole new model for advertising.

The goal

It’s no secret that the Cadillac brand has been struggling as its core group of buyers ages, because to date the brand hasn’t been able to stir up desire in the next generation of successful, status-conscious consumers. General Motors is trying to change that with a whole new line of cars. Current messaging is attempting to attract a new type of buyer by repositioning the brand as cutting-edge, powerful, technology-rich and sophisticated.

The execution

The plan consisted of the largest single-source converged media buy in Canadian history, including three half-hour shows that aired from March to May on CTV, TSN, Discovery and Report on Business Television; 17 vignette interstitials airing in rotation on those same channels; an innovatingtomorrow.com website; three supplements in the Globe and Mail and articles in ROB magazine.

Toronto-based Q media solutions, a television production company with a background in corporate work, was hired to produce the three half-hour shows and interstitials. Toronto-based Formula Productions, a freelance writing firm, was hired to write the pieces for the Globe.

Q media producer and senior partner Dorothy Engelman received the first contract on Jan. 15, just two months before the first show was to air, so she had to work fast. And while the total budget Bell Globemedia received for the project was substantive, she describes the portion that trickled down to her company as ‘reasonable’ but ‘low end’ for that type of project.

Engelman, whose past experience includes working with Catalyst Entertainment on the recently completed series Entrada for PBS, along with stints on Life: The Program at CBC, On The Arts at Newsworld and Live it Up! at CTV, was asked to write three half-hour shows, each based on one of the project’s three communication pillars: ‘leadership in technology,’ ‘leadership in design’ and ‘leadership in business.’

She only had five days to write the first script, based on the ‘leadership in technology’ pillar, and the immediate challenge was coming up with an approach that made the abstract topic relevant to the desired audience.

‘We wanted to do something driven by people and their stories,’ Engelman recalls, ‘so rather than approaching the technology of some new human genome project – something that’s very hard for people to grasp – we wanted to look at how technology is affecting the way we work live and play. That was the basis for how we handled the editorial content for all three shows.’

Show number two followed with profiles of well-known Canadian designers, such as Karim Rashid, and the third episode, which aired May 12 on CTV, was based on ‘leadership in business.’

As well as producing each show, Engelman had to work closely with Bell Globemedia’s Web and print teams, providing them with access to subjects for their coverage, and checking in with them to ensure the direction she was taking would work equally well in print and online.

Q media was under contract with CTV, so Engelman didn’t retain any rights or have access to government funding for production, but she says that she had no problems with Cadillac execs looking over her shoulder. The work was clearly separated into programming the client didn’t have approval on – namely the three half-hour shows and their interstitial offspring – and programming the client did have approval on, which consisted of eight additional interstitials assembled out of interviews with General Motors executives.

Despite the tight budget and tighter schedule, now that it’s complete Engelman describes the project as ‘a very positive experience,’ saying that it was particularly gratifying to have a hand in producing stories that could be spun off on the Web and in print.

‘I don’t think the key to convergence is the logistics of making it happen – the key to convergence is making content that can resonate on so many different platforms all at the same time.’