How Sonic Gods Studios Uses Brands to Fully Fund TV Shows

Each company is one of seven “60 Day Hustle” sponsors, the others being BetterHelp, Chime, Square and Artlist. The six-episode series, which launched on Amazon Prime Video on August 8, is the product of Sonic Gods Studios, a new production company that sits at the intersection of brands and entertainment.

Sonic Gods is the product of a few big trends. Brands increasingly want to be part of filmed entertainment as filmmakers seek new sources of funding as Hollywood budgets tighten. That way, Sonic makes shows that aren’t just backed by product placement dollars, they’re fully funded by them.

“We’re very much in an advertising age,” said Michelle Delamor, one of Sonic’s founders. “We saw the writing on the wall. We also saw interesting brands that wanted to get into entertainment, but in a way that wasn’t as passive as product placement.”

Brands getting product placement and sponsoring entertainment is nothing new, of course. “American Idol” has had 208 product appearances. But as people increasingly reject traditional advertising, industry operators have seen more brands looking to do everything from weaving in broadcasts to making high-quality TV shows and movies that they can sell to big distributors like Netflix.

“It’s another opportunity for brands to engage in premium storytelling, and studios can find alternative financing to tell the stories they want,” Julian Jacobs, partner at UTA, who heads the entertainment marketing arm, said of Sonic Gods. “It’s rare for a production company to develop something and start by finding brands to do product placement to finance a show. The risk is that no one really wants this – “We told everyone we were going to get it on Amazon, now what?”

In the case of “60 Day Hustle,” Sonic had distribution on Amazon before approaching brands, according to a studio representative. “60 Day Hustle” was distributed through Prime Video Direct, Amazon’s user-submitted program that pays publishers based on performance metrics.

Competition-style reality shows lend themselves to multi-brand engagement and can be a good way for a lesser-known company to raise awareness, said Jen Cowan, VP of entertainment at Omnicom’s agency The Marketing Arm.

“The risk is if it’s not authentic, but productions are a lot smarter now about how they place things,” she said.

Sonic Gods involves brands early in the production process

Sonic Gods was started as an advertising agency by Delamor, a singer and “American Idol” finalist, and her husband, Chris Hayman, a music composer. They decided to move into entertainment and teamed up with producer Adam Horner to form the studio. After trying to find a single brand to build a show with, they realized they would have a better chance of success by finding a handful of brands that wanted to reach a similar audience.

Sonic’s shows start at about $3 million, and brands pay more than six figures to attend them, Delamor said. She and her team start thinking about marketing early in the process, from identifying topics that Gen-Z audiences care about to finding creators to promote the show. Entrepreneurship taught by Sonic is a popular topic among Gen Z, for example. The studio worked with 250 influencers to promote the show to their audience, Delamor said.

“We start projects with marketing in mind from the start,” she said. “Even the biggest manufacturing companies think about marketing after the fact. There are a lot of great shows on these platforms and they don’t put any marketing behind it.” It’s a common complaint among Hollywood producers that the big tech platforms, especially Netflix, don’t put enough resources into marketing their shows.

Sonic has several shows in the works

Sonic also involves advertisers early and deep in the production process. Branding tends to be open. At the beginning of the first episode, Mawer invites the contestants to help themselves to “some red Pilot pens” to write their business plans. The pens are given a close-up as the contestants are shown scribbling in their notebooks. During the second episode, Mawer tells the contestants that they will be offered therapy from BetterHelp, “the world’s largest online therapy program.”

Teach:able saw the show as a way to raise awareness, said Bethany Cantor, its director of brand, content and creative. Sonic let Teach:able have some of its creative users appear on the show and give contestants access to the platform. Teach:able even provided the language to model Mawer’s script.

“We really didn’t want to be just a logo on a screen,” Cantor said. “But we helped narrate our show. I feel quite spoiled because their willingness to be flexible and let us be involved was so wonderful.”

BetterHelp saw the show as a way to show Gen-Z audiences how its therapy platform works in real-world situations while protecting patient privacy, said Olivier Sinson, senior director of partnership development at BetterHelp. While it’s too early to tell if the partnership is paying off, contestants have already said they want to continue with their BetterHelp therapists after the show, and BetterHelp is talking to Sonic about sponsoring future shows, he said.

Delamor said Sonic Gods has another unscripted show coming this year and plans to have a dozen or more go into production over the next two years, ranging from women’s lifestyle and pop culture shows to competition. Over time, Sonic hopes to move into scripted shows and become less dependent on brand funding. But for now, Delamor said he feels Sonic is capturing a moment by using brand dollars to fund its projects.

“There’s a huge growth in brands moving into entertainment and that’s a big part of where we’re headed,” she said.