Posts Tagged ‘future of storytelling’
Monetising video: commercialising content in a world of video overload
Retired content delivery devices find a new purpose as street art in Melbourne
By Kaye Blum
Held at the KPMG Auditorium (Sydney) in August, this panel session from the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association (AIMIA) proposed to address the issue of how to make money from video and whether people will actually pay for content.
Presenting industry insights were Matt Moran from the Platform, Nick Love from Shine 360°, Angus Stevens from Southern Cross Austereo, Georgie Powell from YouTube, Sue Carter from Tigerspike, Will McKinnon from SBS, and event chair Scott Bradley Pearce from ArgentDigital. Following are my key highlights from the session.
Adapting to storytelling across platforms
Shine 360° Managing Director Nick Love started out making content for TV but now focuses on storytelling for multiple screens. He presented a case study for The Voice, for which they managed the social media in-house last season. “We used it to tell stories, not just cross-sell,” he explained.
They scripted for three platforms: TV, Facebook and Twitter. Plotting story across the three screens, they used the right channel choices with the right voices. “It takes design,” he said, adding that they worked on it for six months before going to air to ensure it was an integrated part of production.
They had to re-design the production supply chain and publishing workflow. “Without metadata you are lost… We couldn’t find any tools so we built our own,” he claimed, “MDM, adding, adapting and building metadata from content creation to distribution.”
In terms of monetizing, Shine 360° are not in the ad selling business, so they partnered with M9. On top of pre-roll and mid-roll ads, they made money through sponsored integration, with Ford sponsoring the live stream. They also integrated e-commerce with music sales and episodes on iTunes.
Love emphasised the importance of social media and data, and noted that Season 1 had 67% desktop traffic, while Season 2 saw an increase in mobile traffic. “It’s just the beginning – our storytelling hasn’t changed, it’s just introducing different screens.”
Monetising with YouTube
Georgie Powell, Content Partner Manager at YouTube, highlighted some vital company stats:
- Youtube is the world’s largest video platform and the second biggest search engine in world.
- Content owners can take 100% if they sell above the rate card.
- 90% of views of Australian content is from outside Australia, impacting import/export and rights.
- One in three YouTube views are on mobile devices.
YouTube’s demographic is Gen C – the curators, creators, connectors and communities of content. They like to upload and share, 91% sleep with their smartphone by the bed, they have an active social media presence.
“We need to think differently about how we program and create content for this type of audience”, Powell said. “We need to engage WITH, rather than program AT them.”
She explained one of the ways for content creators to make money from YouTube content is with Content ID. This enables rights owners to upload content and turn it into a reference file that shows who has ripped your content by scanning for matching videos, which you can monetise. Freemantle Media have Content ID and saw 20x growth in monetisation.
She covered the YouTube business models: ad supported, paid channels and transactional. Paid channels are already available in Australia.
Multi channel networks (MCNs), she claimed, are the next generation of broadcasters. There has been a huge investment in this field in the last six months overseas, but we are behind here in Australia (about three years).
A new model for production houses
Angus Stevens, Creative Director at Southern Cross Austereo, was previously a film/TV director and provided some great insights to the changing industry for production houses.
“There’s still money to be made, but you have to use a different model than what you’d use for TV,” he said. Crews and producers need to think this way as well. It’s not about making pretty pictures, it’s about how it will reach the audience. And this means different budgets.
“You have to put the old [production] model away”, he claimed, “You’re judged on distribution and scale.” He talked about innovation in execution and the need to be nimble to be profitable. Consider how can you use the medium to engage. “You can’t shoe-horn TVC values into a small platform.”
Co-incidentally I had recently done some initial consulting for a start-up run by traditional TVC directors and producers and had made the recommendation that a different model was needed for their purely digital product, but they insisted on maintaining a traditional TVC production house model. I chose not to proceed with these clients. Hearing Stevens dispelled any doubts I may have had about my decision.
Stevens also discussed client needs versus audience wants, describing content marketing as those who want to hang out around the campfire. With branded content, those guys bring their own guitar, music, etc. to control the environment. The client wants their music to be played at the campfire. Be clear about the difference between the two, he advised.
For content marketing, fish where the fish are, he said. Find where your audience is and go to them. Be honest (“Gen Y can smell bullshit a mile away so don’t bullshit”, he later added). Consumers don’t have loyalty.
“Creativity is hard to make and hard to sell and hard to measure, so you need to be in it for the long haul,” Stevens claimed. The online environment is quick, fast. “Do you want high impact, fast turn-around or a genuine engagement with the content?”
He showed a quote from an ADMA Report June 2013 to emphasise the point: “Creative brand campaigns take longer to deliver business success – after 6 months – compared to short term… but ultimately creativity wins out.”
Stephens took us through some great case studies, including The Friskies awards for best cat video of 2013; Vice (“the content is so good on Vice that brands want to be associated with it); and TAC Victoria’s roadtripforever.com campaign integrating social media.
Great stuff.
X Media Lab & KR8V masterclasses – Sydney, June 2013
By Kaye Blum
View from the Harbourview Terrace, MCA
For the past five years I’ve been trying to attend a X Media Lab (the “X” in X Media Lab stands for cross-platform, cross-disciplinary, and cross-cultural) conference, but for various reasons, missed out. This year it was back on home turf to celebrate its tenth anniversary after holding events in over a dozen countries.
Founded by Brendan Harken, X Media Lab events have covered as much ground in digital topics as it has geographical locations. Themes have included global media cultures and ideas; the future of journalism; animation and games; location based services; storytelling in the digital age; digital music; cross-platform and immersive media; and, in Switzerland this month, transmedia (wish I could be there).
This year’s event comprised a highlights day conference designed for “time-poor” creative industries executives, held at the stunning Museum of Contemporary Art’s (MCA’s) Harbourview Terrace; plus two days of KR8V masterclasses, held at the University of NSW College of Fine Arts (COFA).
The highlights day featured over a dozen national and international academics, digital professionals and artists; each limited to a snappy 20 minute presentation (the full list of keynote speakers can be found here). Here are my picks:
Kristen Taylor, Digital Community Strategist for Al Jazeera (previously at The Huffington Post, FourSquare and the BBC New York) shared some poignant insights to why a digital community needs narratives. She talked about context and curating an archive that accrues value over time, such as tumblrs by The New York Times and National Geographic’s ‘Found’. Tumblr and Instagram are her preferred social media channels.
Key take-out from Kristen: “The internet continues to run on kindness… networks have self-healing properties – they heal themselves through kindness.”
Kate McQuillen from Mememe Productions had just won an interactive Emmy award for dirtgirlworld, an “organically designed transmedia project” including an animated kids TV series, merchandise, website, live events, garbage trucks, seeds, and more. There are only eight Emmys in Australia so it’s a fantastic achievement. It was fascinating to hear her journey from having the seed of an idea based on core values such as love and sustainability, and meeting future colleagues in the loo at X Media Lab ten years ago.
Key take-out from Kate: “We wear our hearts on our sleeves and don’t apologise for being ‘out there’.”
Author and presenter Dominic Knight talked about story and structure; the hero’s journey (Robert McKee, Joseph Conran) and the importance of knowing the rules, but where you can innovate.
Key take-out from Dom: “Stories are the conceptual framework that help us understand the world.”
Alvin Wang Graylin, CEO of minfo (China’s leading mobile search service), and founder of Guanxi Inc (a location-based social discovery platform), provided an overview of what it takes to be a tech entrepreneur. And judging by the long list of criteria he shared, there’s obviously a lot more required than just having the idea.
Executing the idea is only the beginning, he explained. A strong work ethic is critical, and being prepared to do the stuff that no one wants to do. Self-esteem, focus, creativity, patience, selling acumen, passion, in-depth industry knowledge, and having a strong team around you were just some of the points he covered. Having savings in the bank and being in a position to take risks were other crucial points – ones that often get ignored, usually to the detriment of the start-up.
To help get investors on board, Alvin provided a list of critical questions that need to be clearly and confidently answerable.
Key take-out from Alvin: “Be healthy – it gets tiring.”
I attended Alvin’s Masterclass on Saturday to hear him share a generous amount of detail on creating integrated mobile marketing campaigns. He also provided some terrific insights to the mobile market in China.
As a digital producer, Galvin Scott Davis has developed top lifestyle apps, business apps and kids games. He is the founder of Protein One, a boutique digital design and development agency in Sydney. His presentation opened with the question: are you a “why” or a “why not”? Creatives realise early on that they are “whys” – they’re always asking questions even as young children, he explained, then they realise it’s more fun to be a “why not”.
It was asking “why not” that pushed him through the challenges of creating a children’s app that required a technology that hadn’t yet been developed. (This process was explained in his masterclass.)
Key take-out from Galvin: “Creatives have imagination, innovation, and talent. We forget to have bravery, stubbornness, and persistence. We need all of the above.”
And one more: “if you’ve got stories, don’t let other people saying ‘no’ get in the way…. Embrace your hurdles – it can be dangerous but rewarding.”
Galvin also delivered an information-packed Masterclass on Saturday, called Reversing The Publishing Model – How To Reinvent Your Story Across Digital Media To Getting A Book Deal. Using the creation of his Dandelion e-book app as a case study, he generously shared the process from concept development through to reaching the Number 1 downloaded app in the Australian AppStore, then scoring a 3-book print publishing deal with Random House. It was fascinating, informative and inspiring stuff.
Adam Good, director of digital media and content at Telstra Media, also had plenty to share in his presentation. He explained his concern with creative leadership in business and the two areas where he believes more training is needed. Strong leadership is one mandatory skillset; creativity is the other. “You need to flex both of those muscles to succeed” he said, naming Steve Jobs as an example.
Adam believes there are not enough CEOs in Australia that have both of these attributes, with many coming up through financial management but lacking the sales/marketing/artistic side. He said he sees a lot of businesses failing due to this; there are not enough of these type of leaders here. I wanted to ask him why – is it because our culture places less value on creativity? If you’ve grown up enduring more than an occasional ribbing for being creative like I have, then it’s easy to assume so. But that’s a debate for another time…
The MCA illuminated for Vivid Festival
Back to Adam’s presentation, which moved on to Telstra’s future vision. There were many informative stats but 20 minutes wasn’t nearly enough time and the presentation ended prematurely, with the promise of providing the rest via a Twitter link (which I followed up on).
Key take-out from Adam: “We need to change the mindset of people who don’t pay for content.”
Michael Naimark, media artist and part of the original design team for the MIT Media Laboratory; and Horst Hörtner, founding member and Director of the Ars Electronica Futurelab, a world leading interdisciplinary research project uniting art, technology and society in Austria, both shared some valuable insights in their presentations.
Key take-out from Michael: “Wearable tech is inevitable.”
Key take-out from Horst: “The next revolution: key technology that has the potential to change fundamental paradigms of our society…. 3D printing, we believe, is the next revolution.”
Vivid Festival and the International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA) were held in Sydney at the same time as X Media Lab and the city was literally bursting with creative energy. By night, Vivid’s stunning light projections transformed the Opera House, the MCA and other city buildings into dazzling palettes of colour and light. The post-conference networking event on the MCA’s balcony provided a spectacular view and an impressive end to an information-intense day.
Bookcamp: the story of the future @ MWF2011
By Kaye Blum
Retired content delivery devices find a new purpose.
Describing itself as an ‘unconference’ with a mission to explore the future of new book technologies, this day-long session on Friday 2nd September was the highlight of the MWF program for me in terms of e-writing and e-books. Presented in partnership with if:book Australia, speakers included Kate Pullinger (author and co-creator of Inanimate Alice) from the UK, Kassia Krozser (booksquare.com) from the US, and Hugh McGuire (LibriVox, PressBooks) from Canada.
Facilitated by if:book’s Simon Groth, the ‘unconference’ format enabled participants to help decide the topics for discussion and set the agenda for the day. With three rooms available at the Wheeler Centre, sessions were divided by topics and designated a room.
For the first session, I decided to attend non-linear narratives, a topic set by participant Jeni Mawter, a writer and teacher. It was a lively discussion with participants providing some interesting examples of existing interactive and non-linear narratives. I’ve since connected with Jeni on Digital Book World’s forum via LinkedIn, where I found a robust discussion from a range of writers interested in this field, whether it be transmedia, multimedia, or interactive.
There was a 15 minute break allowing participants to choose their next session and make their way across three levels to the appropriate room. I chose a session hosted by Hugh McGuire, titled Why the internet and books will merge. McGuire has been researching and working in publishing and digital media for many years. He’d had a profound epiphany and once tweeted “the distinction between books and the internet is going to disappear” which created a tweeting backlash. He informed us that around 20% of the book market in the US is now e-books; in Australia it’s still only about 4%. While he acknowledged there is a different perceived value between a printed book and an e-book, “e-books are just html shrunk-wrapped into a different format,” he said.
An interesting statement, but I’m not sure I agree with it. I again mentioned the concept of ‘lean back’ and ‘lean forward’ technologies, which I believe is a major point of differentiation between e-books on tablets, compared to the web as viewed on a static desktop computer. Like smartphones, tablets have mobility and portability. They also have the ability to utilise GPS – locative media. This is one of the core aspects of the creative project for my Masters/PhD candidature. But more about that in upcoming blog posts.
The next session was titled Why do we read and what do new technologies offer stories, hosted by Kate Pullinger, co-creator of Inanimate Alice and Flight Paths. As an author of several printed books, she has been looking at new forms of narratives online for some time. Researching new technology has motivated her to ask: why do I read?
“I want a good story, good writing, to be taken away from myself – to be connected to the writing in a personal way,” she said. “It is something intangible, profound… This is the space I want to take you as a writer and where I want to go as a reader.”
She described a p-book (printed) as a content delivery system. I think that’s an entirely appropriate term for the printed book format; but I consider an e-book to be content and the e-reader or tablet as the delivery device. (Incidentally, I find it a little absurd that there isn’t yet a consistent way of spelling ebook, Ebook or e-book.)
Pullinger suggested asking: “When you move beyond the p-book, what are the elements that make it work?”
The discussion opened up to questions, with various threads on multimedia, non-linear narratives and aspects of gaming being raised.
“I am not a gamer,” Pullinger said. “I don’t want to make choices when reading, I want to be told a story.” This seems to be a significant point of differentiation between adult readers and the children’s book market. Children love the gaming element of interactive. Many adult readers want the immersive experience of reading a book without any distractions.
She explained that Inanimate Alice and Flight Paths were both collaborative processes. As she’s also an author of several p-book novels (her last one took her 12 years to write), she likes the contrast of collaboration when working on digital projects. But the creative process is different: “you have to get the script right first before you start making it,” she said.
Pullinger stresses the most important issues to consider are:
- How do you connect with your readers?
- How do you find your readers?
In retrospect (and because I’m writing this up over a week after the event and my hand-written notes are sometimes crap), I’m assuming this applies to writers, self-publishers, and publishers grappling with the new digital realms.
I found this session to be the most insightful, with valuable knowledge generously shared by a writer who has a wealth of experience both in print and digital media.
It was difficult to choose which room to venture into for the fourth session. Out of sheer complacency I stayed on in the same room for The value of interactive/ personalisation of stories. It was a reasonably interesting discussion which digressed in many directions, but my notes are sparse. I think I did more talking than writing in this one.
The final session for the day re-united all participants to discuss their findings. A valuable point was raised about education institutions and creative writing programs lagging behind in terms of new media. Actually I think the description was “they’ve got their heads stuck in the sand”. Given that I’m researching in this field at a university that’s supposedly pro-technology, my opinion of this is, well, varied. While it’s certainly not the case for journalism and communication courses, I think in terms of creative writing, it’s probably not far off the mark.
Another issue raised was the lack of enthusiasm or interest in digital/new media from mainstream publishers. There were no representatives from the majors at this conference. No surprises there.
IfBook is doing a great job of facilitating further conversations on the future of storytelling. They did a great job of organizing the day’s ‘unconference’, too. While I am still left with some of my core questions unanswered, I’ve realized over the past week that I’m not the only one. On that note, I’ll finish with a quote from another conference participant: “Every person in this room is the future of digital publishing.”
(c) 2011 Kaye Blum.
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