Stream It Or Skip It?

In On Brand With Jimmy Fallon, the Tonight Show host has set up a marketing agency — called On Brand, of course — where he’s the CEO, and Bozoma Saint John, a Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills cast member who has been a marketing executive for Uber, Netflix, and other huge companies, is the chief marketing officer. Ten creatives from all walks of life, whether they’re influencers or real estate agents or, as in one case, a honkytonk emcee, have been selected to join the agency.

Opening Shot: We see Jimmy Fallon in Times Square. “Take a look around,” he says. “Businesses are fighting for your attention.” He goes on to say, “But now, marking is part of pop culture… One brilliant campaign can affect millions of people.”

The Gist: In each week’s challenge on On Brand With Jimmy Fallon, reps from a big corporation will come in with a particular marketing need. The contestants have an hour to come up with their pitches. After presenting them, the company reps will pick the two that will go head to head. The winning campaign will actually be used by the company. There will be eliminations, and the ultimate “Innovator of the Year” will get a feature in Adweek and $100,000.

The first company that comes into the agency is Dunkin’, who is looking for a campaign that promotes their breakfast meal packages, where you can get a breakfast sandwich, hash browns and coffee for $6. The pitches are heard by Dunkin’ Americas president Scott Murphy and CMO Jill McVicar Nelson, and they give feedback to all of them. The two that are selected are given a chance to market test the campaigns at a Dunkin’ franchise in New Jersey, with the contestants whose pitches are selected becoming team leads.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? On Brand With Jimmy Fallon doesn’t feel a whole lot different than The Apprentice, except the host is a whole lot more encouraging and supportive than the host of The Apprentice was. Whatever happened to that guy?

Our Take: We see the same issue with On Brand With Jimmy Fallon that we saw with The Apprentice, in both its civilian and celebrity versions. The idea is to give these contestants real exposure to what things are like in a real 2020s-era marketing agency, but the constraints of the reality competition format makes the environment unrealistic, and leads to half-baked results.

In the first episode, the contestants were given an hour to come up with pitches, then the selected campaigns were given a day to incorporate the client’s notes and incorporate a requested merch extension to the campaign. If we were to believe those timelines, then that means — at least in the case of Dunkin’ — that probably at least 100 or so boxes were printed and plastic tchotchkes manufactured in that short timeframe.

In both cases, it feels like some things weren’t thought out well, with almost none of the pitched campaigns feeling like they were cohesive with the very well-known Dunkin’ brand. We were not only surprised with which campaign resonated with the test crowd during the head-to-head, but that Dunkin’s execs picked the less on-brand of the two campaigns. Given the idea that they’re supposed to be rolling out the winning campaign to over 10,000 locations after the episode airs, it feels like something they’ll do for a few weeks than quickly forget about, whereas the losing campaign was one that could have had legs.

The episodes are a network-standard 42 minutes long, and with ten contestants, there is little time in the first episode to see the contestants work out their pitches or even interact with each other. In NBC’s press photos, we see Fallon and Saint John visit contestants to gauge progress, a la Project Runway or Top Chef, but that never shows up in the cut of the episode we saw. So what we see are some side interviews, people scribbling, then we see the printed out boxes and a video presentation that likely was added in post-production. Perhaps as the number of contestants narrows, we’ll get more insight into the creative process of those who are left.

The contestants themselves are personable enough, with a couple of people, like the aforementioned honkytonk emcee, BT Hale, and real estate agent Sabrina Burke, really standing out in the first episode. Again, with ten of them it’s hard to get an idea how they’ll be under pressure, though when the two contestants state their case for the execs after the head-to-head, we see some mild competitiveness and criticism of the other campaign filter through. How much of that will be taken personally is yet to be seen.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Months after the challenge was shot, the winner sees their campaign come to life, with the marketing folks at Dunkin’ making a few additions and tweaks.

Sleeper Star: Fallon is Fallon, offering insights that are about as deep as the interviews he does on The Tonight Show. We’re curious if Bozoma Saint John is going to actually guide these contestants or just give them insights like “We’re going to be sending people home if the ideas and thinking aren’t big enough.”

Most Pilot-y Line: We want to know the location of the Dunkin’ where the test marketing was done. It looks like it’s in the middle of an industrial area, not a strip mall or other shopping district.

Our Call: SKIP IT. We don’t think many effective campaigns are going to come out of On Brand With Jimmy Fallon, and it doesn’t help that Fallon adds little to the proceedings beyond being his usual goofy self.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.