Top Brands Partner to Create Equity Through Opportunity with ‘Scene in Color’
Jordan P. Kelley, Content Director, Brand Storytelling
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Over the years, brands have grown to recognize that meeting audiences where they live requires a diversification of media created to reach those audiences. The more we adapt the way we consume media - via public platforms, paid streaming and social media ads - the more opportunities exist to find creative ways to win our attention. At the same time, the creator landscape and who gets to be a part of it is changing. The movement to acknowledge and honor the breadth of diverse voices vying for space in the creator ecosystem grows stronger each day.
In a creative, savvy, and effective move, Target and NBCUniversal launched the Scene in Color Film Series in 2021 – a talent mentorship program that spotlights new, diverse voices on camera in an entertaining format. In its second year, Scene In Color’s Summer series yielded three films from young diverse and talented filmmakers, along with plenty of supplemental content for audience consumption, achieving both the goal to make opportunities for diverse creatives more equitable as well as create awareness for doing so with predominantly non-interruptive content.
While Scene in Color is at its core a mentorship program, what makes it interesting from a brand entertainment perspective is its positioning as a sort of reality series. Hosted by producer and mentor Will Packer, the product championed at the center of the program is the three films produced by the program's young, diverse, and talented participants Josh Leong, Jane Chow, and Tayo Amos. Supported by Target and NBCU, the filmmakers were given access and opportunity to resources and mentorship to direct and produce their respective original films:
The Other Side
Directed by Josh Leong
Days before his 18th birthday, Abel finds himself about to graduate his orphanage and leave his younger brother, Kiya, behind. But when a prospective adopting couple threatens to tear their relationship apart, the brothers wrestle with waiting for a dream that may never be fulfilled.
Sorry for the Inconvenience
Directed by Jane Chow
In Los Angeles Chinatown, a lonely teenager tries to help her parents keep their seafood restaurant afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Magnolia Bloom
Directed by Tayo Amos
In 1950s Las Vegas, a black singer (Lex Scott Davis) is on the verge of her big break, but she risks it all when she learns her audience won't be integrated.
While the films serve as the primary product of the program, content like one-on-one interviews, mentorship sessions, and more were captured on camera and made available to view on Peacock and Rotten Tomatoes. For NBCU, it became an opportunity to share content produced by Creative Partnerships at NBCU and utilize the company’s One Platform – NBCU’s go-to-market strategy for reaching audiences across their various viewing mediums. Scene in Color ads also ran on Peacock specifically from Target that encouraged viewers to dig deeper and enjoy the fruits of the mentorship program and its surrounding content.
The partnership between Target and NBCU to empower a new generation of diverse up-and-coming filmmakers on its own is a meritorious effort. But the brands involved were able to take the endeavor one step further, by using the experiences surrounding the mentorship and filmmaking process to produce ads and entertainment that both make for good, non-interruptive content and take advantage of NBCU’s burgeoning ad tools and the Peacock streaming platform to spread awareness of the content itself and the brands’ purpose driven efforts. The result is a rather savvy multi-level purpose-driven marketing effort with plenty to show for it.
About Jordan P. Kelley
Jordan P. Kelley is the Content Director at BrandStorytelling. He is the author of BrandStorytelling's twice weekly newsletter and editor of the Brand Storytelling Forbes Brand Voice Page. He is an avid brand film and advertising trendwatcher and considers himself a "Professional Audience Member".
