A new studio is turning to brands to fully finance TV shows as Hollywood trims budgets

• Amazon's "60 Day Hustle" features young entrepreneurs competing for a $100,000 prize.
• The show is fully financed by brands like BetterHelp, Chime, and Square.
• Sonic Gods Studios, the producer, integrates brands deeply into the production process.

In "60 Day Hustle," a new series on Amazon where young entrepreneurs compete for a $100,000 prize, host Rudy Mawer instructs contestants to grab a Pilot pen and write their business plan on a napkin. When mentors dole out tips, "Teach:able Moment" appears on the screen, a reference to the online learning platform. Later, contestants are offered the use of Vimeo to make promo videos about their companies.

Each company is one of seven sponsors of "60 Day Hustle," the others being BetterHelp, Chime, Square, and Artlist. The six-episode show, which was released on Amazon's Prime Video on August 8, is the product of Sonic Gods Studios, a new production company that sits at the intersection of brands and entertainment.

Sonic Gods is the product of a couple of big trends. Brands increasingly want to be a part of filmed entertainment, while filmmakers are in search of new sources of funding as Hollywood budgets get leaner. In this way, Sonic is making shows that aren't just supported by product placement dollars but are fully financed by them.

"We're very much in a skip-ad era," said Michelle Delamor, one of Sonic's founders. "We saw the writing on the wall. We also saw interesting brands that wanted to get into entertainment but in a way that wasn't as passive as product placement."

Brands getting product placements and sponsoring entertainment is nothing new, of course. "American Idol" famously had 208 product appearances. But as people increasingly shoo away traditional ads, industry operators have seen more brands wanting to do everything from being woven into shows to making high-quality TV shows and films of their own that they can sell to big distributors like Netflix.

"It's another opportunity for brands to get involved in premium storytelling and studios can find alternative financing to tell the stories they want," Julian Jacobs, a partner at UTA who leads its entertainment marketing arm, said of Sonic Gods. "It's rare that a production company is developing something and starting with finding brands to do product placement to finance a show. The risk is, no one really wants it — 'We told everyone we're going to get it on Amazon and now what?'"

In the case of "60 Day Hustle," Sonic had Amazon distribution in place before it approached brands, according to a rep for the studio. "60 Day Hustle" was distributed through Prime Video Direct, Amazon's user-submitted program, which pays publishers based on performance metrics.

Competition-style reality shows lend themselves to having multiple brands involved and can be a good way for a lesser-known company to build awareness, said Jen Cowan, VP of entertainment at Omnicom agency The Marketing Arm.

"The risk is if it's not authentic, but productions are a lot smarter now about how they place things," she said.

Sonic Gods involves brands early on in the production process

Sonic Gods started as an ad agency by Delamor, a singer and finalist on "American Idol," and her husband, Chris Hayman, a music composer. They decided to pivot to entertainment and teamed up with producer Adam Horner to form the studio. After trying to find a single brand to build a show around, they realized they'd have a better chance at success by finding a handful of brands that wanted to reach a similar audience.

Sonic's shows start at around $3 million, and brands pay upward of six figures to participate in them, Delamor said. She and her team start thinking about marketing early in the process, from identifying topics the Gen-Z audience cares about to finding creators to promote the show. Sonic learned entrepreneurship is a popular topic with Gen Z, for example. The studio partnered with 250 influencers to promote the show to their audiences, Delamor said.

"We start projects with marketing in mind from the beginning," she said. "Even the largest production companies think about marketing after the fact. There are a lot of great shows on these platforms and they're not putting any marketing behind it." It's a common lament among Hollywood producers that the big tech platforms, Netflix in particular, don't put enough resources into marketing their shows.

Sonic has more shows in the pipeline

Sonic also involves advertisers early on and deeply in the production process. Brand mentions tend to be overt. Early in the first episode, Mawer invites contestants to help themselves to "some red Pilot pens" to write down their business plans. The pens get a close-up as the contestants are shown scribbling away in notebooks. During the second episode, Mawer tells the contestants they'll be offered therapy from BetterHelp, "the world's largest online therapy program."

Teach:able saw the show as a way to grow its awareness, said Bethany Cantor, its director of brand, content, and creative. Sonic let Teach:able have some of its creator users appear on the show and give contestants access to the platform. Teach:able even provided language to shape Mawer's script.

"I really didn't want us to just be a logo on a screen," Cantor said. "But we were helping aid in the telling of the show. I do feel fairly spoiled because their willingness to be flexible and let us be involved was so wonderful."

BetterHelp saw the show as a way to show a Gen-Z audience how its therapy platform works in real-world situations while protecting patient privacy, said Olivier Sinson, senior director of partnerships development at BetterHelp. While it's too soon to know if the partnership is paying off, contestants have already said they wanted to continue with their BetterHelp therapists after the show, and BetterHelp is talking to Sonic about sponsoring future shows, he said.

Delamor said Sonic Gods has another unscripted show set to come out this year and plans for a dozen or so more to go into production over the next couple of years, ranging from women's lifestyle and pop culture to competition shows. Over time, Sonic hopes to move into scripted shows and become less reliant on brand financing. But for now, Delamor said she feels like Sonic is capturing a moment by using brand dollars to finance its projects.

"There's a huge uptick in brands moving into entertainment, and that's a big part of where we're going," she said.