‘Advertising is lazy marketing’: The creative veteran pushing long-form video
Creative veteran Tommy McCubbin is committed to showing brands the opportunities of being entertainers, not just advertisers, with the launch of his production studio Showstarter.
As someone who has spent his career working with brands across the world — including at leading agencies CHEP Network, Ogilvy London, and Clemenger BBDO — McCubbin said he started to notice the effectiveness of brands “showing up” via long-form entertainment.
Rather than irritating audiences via an ad break, or cramming information and creativity into a 30 second TVC, he wants to reframe how brands interact with audiences.
He described Showstarter as a studio that “empowers brands” to produce their own show formats and build long-term audience engagement.
“I took all my learnings from being a creative director, and applied them to creating entertainment,” McCubbin told Mumbrella.
“Long-form entertainment is a perfect way for a brand to open up their world beyond the 30 second spot. It can create user experiences which can bring people in. We’re not trying to sell anything, essentially, we’re trying to educate, entertain, and create a whole new funnel.
“If you can create great entertainment, people won’t care if its brand-funded or not.”
McCubbin said if production is focused on talent, great writing and research, long-form content can be achieved with any budget.
“If you’re exclusively just doing advertising, then when your media money runs out, you become irrelevant. But an always-on platform isn’t a huge investment, and you can build on that each time. You have a platform there you can work off where you don’t need to start from zero again,” he told Mumbrella.
“I don’t see why a brand wouldn’t consider this. I’ll go as far as saying I think just advertising is lazy marketing. I think the door is wide open for ambitious brands to actually make a dent in culture and actually be a show people choose to watch, as opposed to the ads they’re desperate to skip.”
Showstarter has already created shows for brands including Telstra, Shopify, Microsoft, and Sportsbet. According to the media release, the Sportsbet series — ‘Australian Football Fan League’ — attracted an audience of over one million viewers across Fox Footy, Kayo, and Youtube during the 2024 AFL Grand Final week.
Showstarter has developed a process called ‘Concept to Culture’, similar to what marketers expect from their agency partners.
He described it as a process that helps brands develop shows with cut through, by first understanding their audience’s screen behaviour to find the entertainment gaps they can fill.
“We start with an audience deep dive, come up with opportunities and themes, then I’ll essentially pitch show ideas,” McCubbin said. “‘Concept to Culture’ is about making it really easy for brands to get started.”
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Lauren McNamara is the associate editor at Mumbrella, covering the agency beat. She joined in November 2022 as editorial assistant, after completing a Bachelor of Communications (Journalism) at UTS.
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So content marketing then.
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If someone recommended me a tv show that was made by Shopify I would call the police
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