Inside ‘On Brand’ with the show’s very first winner

Bianca Fernandez, a former pre-law student turned digital marketer, never thought she’d be on a reality TV show—let alone win one.

Fernandez is the inaugural champion of On Brand with Jimmy Fallon, a competition reality series on NBC that pits 10 contestants against each other to pitch creative campaigns to national brands like Dunkin’, Southwest Airlines, and KitchenAid. In each episode, the group was presented with a brand client looking for bold campaign ideas, and after ideating and pitching everything from jingles and commercials to merchandise, one contestant won the account—while, often, another was sent home. The eight-episode season led to one final pitch with Therabody that named Fernandez the winner of a $100,000 cash prize, a feature in Adweek, a trip to Cannes Lions, and the title of Innovator of the Year.

The show cast an ensemble of characters with various backgrounds in marketing, ranging from graphic design and screenwriting experience to content creation and owning their own agencies. Fernandez came in with several years of experience in social marketing, including stints at TikTok and beauty brands Tarte and Personal Day. That experience, she said, is what made her feel like On Brand could be the reality TV show for her.

“It was like my daytime job was turned into a prime-time television show,” Fernandez told Marketing Brew. “So it’s kind of like, why not? Let’s do something different.”

TV-like ads? Nah, ad-like TV

As a cast member on the show’s first season, Fernandez didn’t have a benchmark to set her expectations up against, so she placed her faith in Fallon and his cohost Bozoma Saint John, a former executive at companies like Netflix, Uber, and PepsiCo and a current Real Housewife of Beverly Hills.

“I was like, they will not steer me in the wrong direction. If they’re part of this, this has to be good,” she said.

On Brand isn’t Fallon’s first romp with the advertising industry. The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon is rather friendly to ad placements, and Fallon said in previous interviews that it was through working on his late-night show’s ad integrations that On Brand was born.

“I was trying to think of bits for the show. I think of them all the time for different companies, and I go, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun if everyone could do this?’” Fallon said in Adweek around the time of the series premiere. “And I think these brands will be psyched that they’re getting a 45-minute commercial.”

While On Brand held obvious appeal for brands to get involved, Fernandez thought it also appealed to evolving audience tastes.

“People have such a draw to understanding behind the brand and behind the scenes of marketing,” she said. “I feel like we’ve seen that so much on TikTok, with people giving their marketing takes and really diving into the campaigns of brands.”

The life of a show marketer

Throughout the season, Fernandez won accounts and impressed executives at brands like Sonic and KitchenAid before clinching the win with Therabody. She credited her successes throughout the season to her real-world marketing experience, but other times, her more research-based and methodical approach didn’t always mesh with the marketing-meets-TV setting.

“Some things that would have worked in the marketing real-life world maybe were heightened or just played differently in the context of On Brand,” she said, referencing other contestants’ inclination to lean into emotion as one method to appeal to the judges, who were brand execs themselves.

Other aspects of the show deviated from the reality of working with clients for the drama of TV, she told us, including a lack of a back-and-forth with brand executives at the goal-setting stage and the extremely limited one-hour ideation timeline. Other more practical elements—which included longer feedback sessions from Fallon, Saint John, and the execs—did happen, but weren’t always displayed in the final episode edit.

Fernandez said she felt that the show served two purposes: helping to shape her and her fellow contestants’ marketing skills, while also serving as marketing for the brands themselves—something that she thinks is one of the more clever elements of the production.

“I saw someone, when [On Brand] first got announced, who was like, ‘Oh, this is late-stage capitalism,’ but really, this concept of brands being at the forefront of entertainment has been around forever,” she said. “That full-circle entertainment-advertising connection has existed for a long time.”

With her winnings in hand, Fernandez said this is the first time in a long time that she doesn’t have an exact five-year plan ahead of her. Her stint as a commercial director on the show has whet her appetite for more producing and directing work, and for now, she’s set to be Therabody’s creative-in-residence to collaborate on campaigns moving forward, an opportunity made possible through her participation in the show, though not officially part of the prize package.

As for On Brand’s marketing team, she has one suggestion for them.

“I think they’ve been doing a great job on the socials and recapping it, but I would like them to hire me for next season,” she said.