Brands, festivals and the entertainment industry at La Villa del Mar

The new space continues to explore the synergies between the audiovisual and cultural industries and emerging technologies

Today's successful day began with a welcome from Poncho García-Valenzuela, CEO of IPG Mediabdrands Entertainment, who then opened a debate on the importance of creating differentiated entertainment brands and developing new models of collaboration and strategic alliances. "The content is abundant but the public's attention is limited. The solutions to this would be to create entertainment brands with different and valuable content, both to fill cinemas and on streaming platforms."

The Branding activities began with José Luis Rebordinos, director of the San Sebastian Festival, and a relaxed talk on the art of making industry, film festivals and how all available resources can be useful to make the story grow and evolve. His speeches focused on the keys to the new audiovisual panorama and festivals, as well as the active involvement of new actors who can transform the way of understanding the business.

"Festivals have a very good future ahead of them because we have to understand that it is a meeting place, and streamingwill never have that," said José Luis Rebordinos. He also emphasised his commitment to making it a showcase for the best of the year and increasingly a meeting place for the industry. "San Sebastian is not a market, but our industry can come together and reach different agreements."

The talk "From audiovisual content to an entertainment brand" focused on how important it is to choose content in a context where we are so saturated with it. It is necessary to take a global view of each audiovisual project to understand how to differentiate and maximise the economic return.

One of the films discussed was Campeonex. Pilar Benito, CEO of Morena Films, stressed that, in the case of films like this one, "the most important thing is originality and not being guided by algorithmic decisions that don't allow the film to be as original as it needs to be. The success of this is also due to having connected with the public."

For his part, Luis Manso, founding partner and executive producer of Películas Pendelton, points out that they managed to break away from the norm. "We were able to connect in a special way and have a social impact by taking a risk."

For José Pastor, director of film and fiction at RTVE, when it comes to success, one important thing is to be inclusive in the target. "The broader your audience, the more choice you have and the easier it is to attract a relatively large audience."

Ghayth Fawzat, creative director at IPG Mediabrands Entertainment, noted that they went into work with the second part of Campeonex to "make it big by reinforcing originality and bravery, in the production and post-production phase."

"We have to look for something that engages and makes people feel identified," says Rosa Pérez, executive producer of Atresmedia Cine. "As co-producers, we come in and help to make the films bigger and better and do well."

Product placement and advertising are becoming more and more integrated and contribute to better and better campaigns. By releasing less content you can focus more and each film has its own promotions. The same is true of trailers, which increasingly seek to be different and original.

Industry was also part of a consultancy on "The science of success: AI, strategy and measurement" to anticipate, measure and sophisticate decision-making throughout the process of developing audiovisual content with the aim of attracting larger audiences to theatres or on-demand content. The meeting was presented by Mapi Merchante, Chief Strategy Oficer IPG Mediabrands together with Diego Blanco, Head of Brand Entertainment IPG Mediabrands Entertainment.

Professionals and the general public attended a talk on the transforming role of brands in the entertainment industry. A reflection on collaboration models that make it possible to build strategic, profitable and sustainable alliances over time between advertisers, producers and distributors, as well as on the importance of knowing how to integrate brands organically and coherently.

The event was moderated by Diego Blanco, Head of Brand Entertainment IPG Mediabrands Entertainment and was attended by Anaïs Durand, TOUS Brand Development Director, who spoke about her brand's documentary. "This fantastic adventure started in 2019 when I was marketing director at TOUS and we were going to celebrate 100 years of history. Transparency was key for us, we wanted to take advantage of the moment to really explain what the brand is all about and capture a different audience with a brand evolution."

"We are content generators and we know how to produce it," says Javier Mendez, Head of Film & Scripted Content at Mediapro Studios. "We asked TOUS to be generous in order to showcase their brand well. We always search until we end up finding what we want to communicate."

Luis Manso, founding partner and executive producer of Películas Pendelton, spoke about Campeonex and the integration of the Caser brand in the film. "When we had the script and all the financing in place, the director came up with another, much more powerful and spectacular ending in relation to eSports." This meant an increase in budget, so thanks to IPG they saw the possibility of brands coming in naturally. "I attach great importance to this naturalness. The logo is on the screens on the athletics field in a natural way, thus reinforcing credibility. Moreover, it is a company with a foundation and a lot of sensitivity towards disability, so it was a perfect fit."

Continuing with Branding, the talk "From the model of interruption to the model of choice" was held as a review of the pillars of transformation of the global communication strategy of Canary Islands Tourism, a new player in the international entertainment industry. It was given by Nacho Cámara, Head of Brand Entertainment at IPG Mediabrands Entertainment.

Another highlight was an entertaining talk on Sport Entertainment or how to help consolidate a new category of sports content with a brand boost. The sports industry is currently undergoing a process of growth and transformation. In the talk Pablo Pinto, sports journalist at Cautro and DAZN, David Quintana. CEO of Wakai Media Group and Sergio Santos, Sports Director of Wakai Media Group.

In Storytelling of the Future, Hilario Abad, Javier Prada and Javier de la Chica presented the start of their Impromptu AI in which they were challenged to create a short film based on a technical script and a story.

During this fourth day, there was also a workshop on immersive live streaming formats in which Víctor García, CTO of YBVR-El Polo Digital, showed how virtual reality can transform live streaming events into a social and immersive experience, as well as another on volumetric capture given by Jo Sol together with Eugenia Rodríguez and Juan Molina.

Finally, Virginia Calvo, founder and director of GiantX gave a talk on content creation for the new era of entertainment moderated by Carlos Cantú, coordinator of La Villa del Mar.

The day was accompanied by the open-air concert from Soul Station.

Next activities at La Villa del Mar

Tomorrow the events will continue in the new Festival space. Among them, the Brand entertainment marketing activities will be of great relevance to learn about the importance and impact of social networks and audiovisual content, as well as the closing of Impromptu AI with content creators.
The complete schedule is on the website.