Jimmy Fallon and Bozoma Saint John were pressing the flesh with advertising folks at Cannes Lions earlier this year to get them behind their reality-business-competition show On Brand with Jimmy Fallon. As it launches on NBC in the U.S., the international format sales folks are in Cannes, but this time at MIPCOM and hoping to sell the idea to international buyers.
Hannah Mabruk, SVP, format sales & production at NBCUniversal Formats, which is part of the Universal Studios Group, is leading that charge. “The big business competition reality formats like Shark Tank and The Apprentice have been around for a very long time, and we’re often discussing with buyers how they would love to find the next show in that space,” she says.
Internationally, the show will be marketed as On Brand and pitched as a series for buyers’ peak timeslots. “That’s our ambition for it, it’s a primetime competition-reality format, that’s what the brands who are in it would want it to be,” says Mabruk.
Mabruk’s team knows Bozoma Saint John, who co-hosts On Brand with Jimmy Fallon and stars in The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, because they sell the Real Housewives format, which has been remade in dozens of territories — resulting in The Real Housewives of Lagos and The Real Housewives of Amsterdam among others.
They also sell the SNL format and Fallon’s That’s My Jam. At MIPCOM, NBCU Formats will be getting behind On Brand, which is a warm and supportive business show, rather than mean and cutthroat, says Mabruk. “Everybody’s working together. It feels a bit like some of the workplace comedies that you would see on NBC, like The Office and Parks and Recreation, with that kind of warm-hearted tone.”
Mabruk reports that international branding and marketing agencies, as well as producers with a background in commercials, have been in touch about the show.
“It is speaking to a lot of people and offering a lot of solutions,” she says. “For broadcasters, it is content that they can co-invest in with advertisers, because we know for advertisers, the 30-second ad might not be enough anymore. Advertisers want to be inside of the entertainment as much as possible and this show does that organically.”
One challenge in terms of setting up local versions is that the rules governing how brands and advertisers can work with broadcasters differ from one country to the next. Each international version will need to be calibrated accordingly.
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