Honeyshed

Businessweek just published an article today regarding the launch of a new website, Honeyshed, aimed specifically at providing only branded content. It was announced by Maurice Lévy, chairman and chief executive of Publicis Groupe (PUB) ; David Droga, creative chairman of New York City-based creative shop Droga5 ; and David Kenny, CEO of Digitas .

This dramatically changes the landscape of branded content. The hard sell is gone. No more "here's a piece of content if you watch my little 30 second spot first."

As we move towards a world of engagement versus attraction, this represents a seismic shift in the way we think of the way brands interact with consumers. If for the longest time we presumed that consumers weren't interested in brands and therefore we needed to be disruptive to get their attention, then now is the time to rethink that notion and consider that there is a possibility for brands to be engaging, interesting, and useful - i.e. like real people who we interact with on a daily basis.

Andrew Essex, CEO of Droga5 said, "this is totally transparent and completely entertaining. It's overt advertising based on the idea that people love brands. They just don't necessarily love it when brands interrupt or deceive them. This will make brands the life of the party rather than the uninvited guest."

I am currently working on a project for Yahoo! right now and we keep coming back to the notion of giving up some control and to develop greater transparency. If done right, this creates a symbiotic relationship where both brand and consumer can co-exist in a mutually beneficial way.

Publicis, Droga5, and Digitas have invested between $5 million and $10 million to develop this project and it will be interesting to see how it evolves and how it can potentially rock the way we think about online advertising, and even branding in general.