Taking Risks in leading with Story: Lessons from the LA Times Brand Studios with Kristen Berke

In this episode of Audience Connection, Lydia Chan sits down with Kristen Berke, VP of Entertainment and Branded Content Partnerships at LA Times Studio, to unpack a campaign that on paper shouldn't have worked, and absolutely did. The campaign, Diaries of Transformation, was produced for enterprise AI company Publicis Sapient, a brand whose website talks about agents, production-grade software, and IT automation. Instead of a product tutorial, Kristen's team put out an open call for filmmakers, received over 100 submissions, and selected five short documentaries (a wildlife photographer, the last of the lighthouse keepers, an environmentalist) where the brand appeared only in the title card as a co-executive producer. No product placement, no features, no paid media. Kristen traces how branded content has shifted from "presented by" to genuine EP credit, why she leaned on editorial's passion-point data as a "guiding light," and how the films' earned reach came almost entirely from a fiercely supportive filmmaker community resharing each other's work. She's candid that it was partly "lightning in a bottle," but the framework is turnkey: start with the brand's four-to-seven-word mission, then find the human story that ties back to it. With a 147-year-old newsroom that has 45 Pulitzer Prizes behind it, Berke makes the case that most teams over-invest in impressions while starving the work itself, and that trust, not scale, is the real product. Her closing takeaway: bigger risks tend to bring greater rewards. https://www.latimes.com/diaries-of-transformation Follow Audience Connection Podcast: Website: https://www.casualfilms.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/casualglobal/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/casual-films-international BlueSky: @casualglobal.bsky.social Subscribe now and join the conversation about creating content that truly resonates and storytelling backed by behaviour science.