Brands Sacrificing Truth For Attention: Google’s Benson

CANNES, France — Many brands nowadays are keenly commissioning content videos – but are they diving in to the opportunity in the right way?

“What you see too often – we saw a lot of it on YouTube and at the Cannes awards – people are sacrificing brand equity or brand truth to get noticed,” says David Benson, Google’s branding solutions director for northern and central Europe. “That, to me, starts to ring alarm bells.”

At Google, Benson has a “dating service”-like team charged with matching keen brands with YouTube creators.

“We get a lot of people who go, ‘Let’s just make something with a YouTube star because it will be free media. Is it right for the brand? We introduce them to each other.”

Benson spoke with Beet.TV during the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. Please find more coverage of the festival here.

By Robert Andrews on June 19, 2014June 19, 2014 @robertandrews

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Brands Sacrificing Truth For Attention: Google’s Benson

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