This Future of Marketing Briefing covers the latest in marketing for Digiday+ members and is distributed over email every Friday at 10 a.m. ET. More from the series →Chris Hassell launched Ralph in 2010 wanting to make cool things and get paid for it. Fifteen years of running an independent shop in advertising made that harder than it sounds. Now he thinks he’s found a way through.The way Hassell sees it, entertainment is the one part of the creative business that can’t be procured, optimized or automated. You can’t put a kids’ TV show through a procurement process the way you can a display campaign. You can’t performance-market your way to a hit. And whatever AI does to production costs, it can’t generate the rights, the talent relationships or the distribution that a genuine entertainment property requires.
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So that’s what Ralph is building.
There’s a magazine, a podcast with Time Out, a TV channel and a labs division in development. Across comedy, music and food and drink, it’s developing IP with licensing, merchandising and distribution in mind. It’s also in production on a cartoon for a TV network and closing on a deal to revive one of the most recognizable kids’ brands around. He won’t say much else. Something about lawyers.
