Real Fresh TV | Social Media Marketing, Social Media Training, Multi-Platform Marketing and Internet TV Specialists » Multi-Platform Content

Real Fresh TV Founder Short Listed for a 4Talent Multi-Platform Award

Chi-chi Ekweozor — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 23:35:08 +0000

Such brilliant news!

I’m really excited to announce that I have been short listed for a 4Talent Award, in the Multi-Platform category.

For those who are unaware, 4Talent acts as a talent spotter for the various arms of Channel 4.

The 4Talent 2008 Awards will be:

shining a spotlight on 20 highly creative individuals under the age of 30, who are tipped for the top across a broad range of genres including a special award for talent in the multiplatform world. Chinwag.com

The list of the 100 that made it this far is on the 4 Talent website:

It’s now over to the illustrious panel of judges to pick 20 winners, whittling the 5 people short listed in each category down to one eventual winner.

Winners will receive a trophy at a black tie awards ceremony in November and a national press push backed by Channel 4.

Winners will be notified by 31st October.

Wish me luck!

I’ll keep you posted!!

Sheffield Melts Creativity – Melt 2008 Inspiration Session – Part 4

Chi-chi Ekweozor — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 14:28:25 +0000

This is part of my write-up on the inspiring Melt 2008 Inspiration Session in Sheffield last Thursday.

Here I cover the presentations by the Melt Awardees.

Earlier posts include a write-up of Adam Gee, head of Factual Interactive Commissioning at Channel 4’s talk about 4IP, Channel 4’s £50 million fund for new media, Paula Le Dieu, director of new media agency Magic Lantern’s talk on new media for social engagement and James Kirkham director of digital agency Holler’s talk about work on E4′s teen drama, Skins.

Still to come is the highlight of the event for me, Tom Savigar of the Future Laboratory’s trend briefing covering. I’ll post that tomorrow.

The obligatory disclaimer: this post is compiled from my notes from the event. It’s a collection of interesting quotes and notable points by each speaker, in their own words. If you were there and remember it different, shout out in the comments!

Having said all that, here come the Melt Awardees!

Tuna Technologies Ltd | Melt Project: Call of the Wild

Presented by Andy Cranshaw of Tuna Technologies.

Tuna Technologies are a 7 staff strong video game company. They have about 4 projects on the go. One of them is the “Call of the Wild” game for which they received a Melt Award.

Call of the Wild is a video game where you make animal noises to interact with the game.

Andy praised the organisers of the Melt programme, the Culture Company for their help in providing useful expert advice at the end of the application process, something that Lucy of the Culture Company also emphasized in her introductory talk.

Melt helped Tuna Technologies partner with bio-acoustic technicians and Andy said that the kudos of the companies involved with Melt (Channel 4, BBC, Orange, Arts Council England, Screen Yorkshire and more) really helped move the project forward.

He was interested in ideas for other applications for the technology – from education to helping people with disabilities. Tuna Technologies will be blogging about Call of the Wild development at tunasnax.com.

DESQ Ltd | Melt Project: Healthy Island

This was presented by David Squire of DESQ Ltd who are an e-learning and games development company.

Healthy Island is an interactive game designed to promote healthy eating amongst children and is played within their classrooms on interactive whiteboards.

The partnership behind Healthy Island, DESQ Ltd and Steve Manthorp, an arts, culture and technology specialist was set up through Melt’s Mating scheme.

I enjoyed the Healthy Island interface demo. Colourful forest backgrounds with unusual cartoon characters and lovely sound effects. Like a cross between Animal Farm and Sonic the Hedgehog!

The idea is that kids are rewarded for healthy eating and that the game is played collectively in class.

Kids’ choices at lunch time, say an apple instead of a chocolate bar, contribute towards actions and points in the game (I think) and the talk points raised encourage discussion.

It is a virtual rewards system, delivered on 3 CD ROMs and a teacher’s guide (classrooms not always wired to the Internet).

They chose interactive whiteboards as the interface as every primary school in the country has an average of 8 after a big government drive to provide them in schools.

Lessons learnt by the team behind Healthy Island:

How to move from an ‘agency’ business model to self-publishing. The opportunity to explore a different business model.
Getting to know a niche market – teachers.
Collaboration.

David was full of praise for Melt for bringing ideas, artists and business together.

Jim Prevett | Melt Project: Lost Angels

Lost Angels is a networked game using mobile technologies. A cross between a Tamagotchi and a Nabaztag, the ‘smart’ rabbit toy that can read you news from the internet, it is a cross platform game pitching human kindness against bad news.

In essence you have a ‘Lost Angel’ creature on a mobile phone that you interact with to cheer up as they are drained by negative stories from the global media. It uses real-life data; how the creature lives depends on playing the game and on real-life events.

Their design partner on the project was the highly respected TADO, graphic designers behind Vodafone’s Spill the beans posters.

Their mobile development partner is Tuna Technologies.

According to Jim, Melt enabled:

Tech research and development. Expert advice and guidance from around the world, conference trips to see experts. A wedding! Jim met his wife at such a conference.

The team are now developing Lost Angels for the Google Android mobile phone platform. Jim demoed a working prototype which saw a cute Lost Angel devouring words from a news article and jumping for joy because Jim achieved a set objective.

There’s more info about Lost Angels at lost-angels.net.

Jay Cousins (andymayer.net) | Melt Project: BlueFace

Jay Cousins, a fellow b.TWEEN08 Branding Talent finalist talked about PieFighter, a game developed out of BlueFace.

The idea is to mash up social data in a location aware environment, allowing people to play games with their mobile phones using Bluetooth based on proximity to people they are friends with on social networks like Facebook.

A big element of the experience was the opportunity to reward passive loyalty by rewarding players who participate in the game in venues they already frequent.

Red Star Studio | Melt Project: Wizard Academy

This was presented by Ben Smith of Red Star Studio, a 3D animation studio that specializes in creating 3D animation for commercials, corporate videos, online, TV and film productions.

The ‘Wizard Academy’ idea was centred around creating an out of home entertainment experience in ‘4D’.

4D is the addition of stimuli like smoke or showers of water to a 3D experience. Often gimmicky, an example is some of the rides at visitor attractions like amusement parks.

Red Star Studio’s film The Curse of Skull Rock which won Best Children’s Film award at the Stuttgart Animation Festival is one such example.

Some of the goals the Red Star team set themselves with Wizard Academy:

an interactive film experience, like a regular film with additional content for audience interaction. The idea was to enable at least a hundred to watch at the same time but to get the same result.
Multi-user interaction
Must be produced as a working prototype.

Idea behind Wizard Academy:

Introduce audience interaction at a cinema or visitor attraction with an on-screen Wizard character who teaches a watching crowd how to cast a spell.

Each audience member is provided a Perspex wand and follows instructions provided by the Wizard character.

The audience collectively wave their wands and the system interprets how well they did.

Another approach was to use a sound sensor, the audience could chant a magic word and if they were all in sync the system would respond accordingly…

Red Star have since partnered with Sale, Manchester-based 3D system developers Virtalis who initially proposed an optical-flow based motion detection system for capturing audience behaviour.

They have now developed a motion tracking system.

Outcomes for the Red Star Studio team:

Interest from leading 3D/4D vendors; attractions operators
Raised Red Star’s profile within the industry
In kind support from Virtalis
Added to Red Star’s animation show reel.

Red Star provided some 3D glasses for their demo and they worked! I’m normally sceptical of 3D glasses but this time I actually saw the difference they made. Apparently the Curse of Skull Rock film requires no 3D glasses and is still ultra-realistic.

That’s it! I’ll post Tom Savigar of the Future Laboratory’s fantastic trend briefing tomorrow.

Sheffield Melts Creativity – Melt 2008 Inspiration Session – Part 3

Chi-chi Ekweozor — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 03:09:38 +0000

Here is the rest of my write-up on the splendid Melt 2008 Inspiration Session in Sheffield last Thursday.

I made lots of notes and they are making their way onto the web as a 5 part blog series!

Part 1 is what I learnt from Adam Gee, head of Factual Interactive Commissioning at Channel 4’s talk about 4IP, Channel 4’s £50 million fund for innovative multi-platform content.

Part 2 is full of interesting demonstrations of the web as a medium for social change, as shared by Paula Le Dieu, director of Magic Lantern.

This, part 3, is all about creating new multi-platform entertainment content as demonstrated by James Kirkham, director of Holler, the digital agency that delivered the BAFTA-winning teen drama Skins on E4, in partnership with Channel 4.

Part 4 will be an overview of each of the Melt Awardees’ presentations. I’ll post this early tomorrow.

Part 5, still to be written is Tom Savigar of The Future Laboratory’s fantastic trend briefing covering such consumer insights as the ‘Slash/Slash generation’ who would rather spend 15 minutes on their favourite social network to watching TV, reading, playing.

As before, these posts are written up from my (hastily scrawled) notes and are an archive of my favourite quotes and notable points by each speaker, in their own words. If you were there and remember it differently please speak up in the comments and I’ll amend as necessary.

James Kirkham on creating multi-platform content

James had lots of cool slides and not a great deal of time to show them so what follows might be a little scattergun.

He began by sharing that the ethos at Holler is about engagement and interaction.

“Technology facilitates. The audience creates.”

It’s about providing a platform that allows people to share, talk and trade.

He showed a short broadcast strategy video that Holler presented to Channel 4 to demonstrate this. Considering it was made before the Skins commission (I think), it was quite prescient, with lots of references to young people using the web as an entertainment channel.

Channel 4’s brief for Skins was to:

Turn the launch into an entertainment event for an audience increasingly spending time away from the TV.

How to reach a jaded audience

James had some fantastic facts about creating content for the 16-24 demographic:

There are about 7 million 16-24 year olds in the UK. So-called Digital Natives, they have grown up with phones, games and the internet.

They manage to pack 31 hours of activity into every day and 26% of their time is spent on multiple media.

How do you reach them?

Create advocates, not adverts.

Blur the distinction between TV spots (?) and marketing.

Build community via advocacy and events.

James compared Skins as a new [TV] property to music. When you hear a new band you like you become an advocate of the band. It was about getting viewers to become advocates.

Did it work?

Some stats on how effective this was:

Note: this bit was scribbled really quickly as he had lots of text on the slides and then showed a Skins trailer video at the same time(!). Numbers may well be erroneous.

350,000 users on the website(?). Some Skins trailer videos were used to invite the community submit video content, design a new logo etc.

Friends of the Skins page on MySpace were invited to volunteer as extras. Over 20,000 signed up prior to the show. The infamous 3 minute edit of the party scene that was used as a trailer received over 250,000 unique views.

And the success?

As far as raising awareness, the online-only activity for Skins beat the previous record set by Ugly Betty, with 70% of the group surveyed expressing awareness. Pretty amazing as there was no above the line (TV, press, radio) promotional activity for Skins’ launch.

Ugly Betty, on the other hand, had full London underground station takeovers (i.e. Tube stations were covered with posters and other signage for the show before it launched).

The challenge is how to keep talking to the audience.

What next?

Other multi-platform shows Holler has worked on:

The Insiders – careers advice. Partner education with digital.

The ‘target audience’ understand the grammar of gaming, they understand tasks in the context of games, missions, level-ups.

So, The Insiders uses a game-like world for content to be found in. Islands of content.

It’s about 6 ‘insiders’ who blogged for 10 weeks about their jobs. This was then written into a story by one of the writers of popular BBC sitcom, Mighty Boosh.

James showed a couple of trailers for The Insiders, ending with one by the ‘musician’ who is actually in a charting band. I enjoyed it. I’d like to see more of that particular series.

Next up: presentations by the Melt Awardees. Probably live early Tuesday. I underestimated how long it would take to blog these…

Sheffield Melts Creativity – Melt 2008 Inspiration Session – Part 2

Chi-chi Ekweozor — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 01:30:03 +0000

This is a brief write-up of my notes from the rather inspiring Melt 2008 Inspiration Session, Part 2. Here’s Part 1.

Here I serve up scribbles from Paula Le Dieu, director of Magic Lantern‘s talk. Like Adam Gee, Paula has been on the Melt panel for a period of time, two years to be precise.

She has worked with the BBC, Guardian, Ofcom, Creative Commons and the international documentary community. Amongst other things, she sits on the executive board of Sheffield Doc/Fest, the leading European documentary festival.

Paula’s talk included several interesting demonstrations on the capacity of media to engage people and effect change. As is usual with my event write-ups, I’ve typed up my notes to share my favourite quotes and notable points, in Paula’s own words.

She started off by defining Web 2.0 as making content flow around the web easier.

She illustrated her point by way of examples:

WeTellStories.co.uk, a partnership between book publisher, Penguin and Six to Start, in which a thriller is literally mapped on the web – web technology helping tell stories. Apparently, alternate reality game developers, Six to Start, also developed the Spooks Code Nine website.

WeFeelFine.org looks for statements like ‘I feel’, ‘We feel’ on the web and magically morphs them into a rather trippy visualisation that bubbles up pictures and statements people have made with those words. Worth a few minutes of play.

TheyWorkForYou.com, social entrepreneurship, social engagement. mySociety’s aim in life is to be as disruptive as possible. Provide as many ways for us to engage with politics with a capital P.

Hansard, the record of Parliament was not provided so mySociety scraped it off the web to make TheyWorkForYou.com.

Worked on the basis of seek forgiveness rather than ask permission. Number 10, after while agreed and let the public see Parliament’s records.

TheyWorkForYou.com lets you see your MP’s voting record, send him/her a message, view his/her expenses and more. Web 2.0 empowers social good and social engagement – use the web to broadcast small social entrepreneurship to the wider world.

Dopplr, founded in 2006 by her friends Matt Biddulph, Matt Jones and Dan Gilmour. They were constantly going to conferences and developed a website that let them see when their friends were in the same city.

They felt a considerable guilt about the impact they were having on the environment with all this travel. Now, you can get a carbon footprint record for your travels on the Dopplr website!

Starting to see that it’s becoming difficult to separate making products with social awareness. The web allows us to connect people to issues and stories.

Paula’s last example was the exhilarating breathingearth.net, a luscious visualisation of carbon dioxide emissions and births and deaths of every nation on planet Earth. In real-time. Spellbinding.

Adrian Friedli from Arts Council England then spoke briefly about being involved in the Melt project.

The 3 year plan for Arts Council England, whose motto is ‘Great Art for Everyone’, is maximising digital opportunities, building on the work done in broadcasting.

It has recently signed a three year partnership with Channel 4. A specific art strand is being developed with 4IP and launches later on in the year.

They saw the potential in Melt in 2005, the value of innovation, artists firmly in the mix. According to Adrian, the Melt approach to programming is every bit as inspiring as the awardees themselves.

This was a sentiment echoed by many of the awardees, more on that later.

I’ll stop here and will continue in another post with an overview of James Kirkham from Holler‘s presentation and a brief look at each of the Melt Awardees presentations.

Sheffield Melts Creativity – Melt 2008 Inspiration Session – Part 1

Chi-chi Ekweozor — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 00:18:34 +0000

I was in Sheffield for much of Thursday attending the rather excellent Melt 2008 Inspiration Session which celebrated the success of the Melt pilot programme.

Melt is a three year, digital content development programme for South Yorkshire which was launched in 2005.

Melt gives annual research and development (R&D) awards of up to £50,000 to leading artistic, media and technical talent to explore the creative and economic possibilities of innovative content for new and emerging media platforms.

Lots of great talks

A busy afternoon, it was a whirlwind of talks and presentations from speakers like Adam Gee, head of Factual Interactive Commissioning at Channel 4, Paula Le Dieu, director of Magic Lantern, James Kirkham, co-founder and director of digital agency Holler, Tom Savigar, strategy and insight director at The Future Laboratory, and of course, all the Melt awardees who ranged from games developers to animation and CGI effects studios.

The presentations were great and I briefly outline my takeaways from each speakers talk below. As I’ve done with previous events, I will be referring to key insights and quotes by each speaker, as hastily scrawled by me. Feel free to add to anything I’ve missed in the comments.

The highlight of the day for me was Tom Savigar of The Future Laboratory’s trend briefing which covered consumer trends for a variety of different industries and included lots of really interesting observations. It’s so good I’ve decided to blog my entire notes… in a subsequent blog post.

First, Adam Gee’s talk.

Adam has been involved in the Melt programme for 3 years, having been there since its inception. Producer of such popular Channel 4 programmes as The Big Art project and Embarrassing Bodies, he was there to talk about 4IP, Channel 4’s £50m fund for innovative multi-platform content.

Adam Gee on 4IP

Channel 4, now in its 25th year is in a process of transforming from a public service broadcaster to a public sector network: across TV, digital TV, mobile and the web.

~~4IP~~* Channel 4 is public ~~sector~~* service in a commercial framework. It (4IP?) explores what public service means in a networked world.

A good example is the recently launched 4mations, part funded by 4IP. A new hub for UK animation, it is a partnership between Channel 4, Aardman Animations and Lucas Films.

What does the IP stand for?

Innovation for the Public – though it although also alludes to Internet Protocol and Intellectual Property.

Basically an investment fund for innovation for digital platforms, to the tune of £50 million pounds. Over ~~four~~* two years, Channel 4 and other companies invest in new companies creating content. The submission system will be launched on the 4IP site later on in the year.

*Corrections by Adam Gee in the comments.

The 4IP Team

The team is headed by Tom Loosemore, starting end of September and includes Ewan McIntosh ‘Mr Scotland Web 2.0’ and a number of digital commissioning managers.

What is 4IP looking for?

Production companies, digital agencies, platform developers, consortia.

Partnership ethos, a strong selection of partners is good. It’s not TV.

Network and interactive media propositions that deliver public sector and public services beyond TV.

Next on 4 blueprint, the next 25 years for Channel 4. Help people make positive changes in their lives. Equity investment, project commissioning, seed funding, helping build scale. Their partners in the South Yorkshire region: Screen Yorkshire, Yorkshire Forward.

On to Paula Le Dieu, director of Magic Lantern’s talk. I’ve decided to stop now and continue in a new post! This is getting too long…

Real Fresh TV Featured In eMarketer Web Television In Europe Report

Chi-chi Ekweozor — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 14:48:07 +0000

Research firm eMarketer have included a feature on Real Fresh TV in their ‘Web Television in Europe: An Expanding Scene’ report.

The highly readable report, available as a paid subscription from eMarketer, provides an excellent overview on the web television landscape in the UK and Europe.

Amongst other things, it covers information about terrestrial broadcasters BBC, ITV and Channel 4‘s web television initiatives and the forthcoming SeeSaw joint venture between the BBC, Channel 4 and ITV (formerly known as Project Kangaroo).

Stats and charts on web television trends in the UK and Europe abound and in an additional report covering the key players and market makers in web television in the UK, other providers including Sky, Zattoo, Veoh and blinkx are profiled.

According to the latter report, forthcoming improvements to the BBC’s iPlayer will include a recommendation engine which will use a viewer’s past choices to suggest new content.

I’ve asked eMarketer for a link to a paid download for both reports and will update this post once they are available.

Image credit: iMediaConnection

Next speaking engagement: Bite The Mango Festival Film Festival, Bradford

Chi-chi Ekweozor — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 18:59:30 +0000

One of the best things about having a background in creating original video for the web is the versatility of perspectives it provides.

I’m thrilled to have been asked to speak at a panel discussing alternative methods for film distribution at the Bite The Mango Film Festival, taking place at the National Media Museum in Bradford.

My seminar is on Saturday 20th September and I will be providing an overview of some of the digital distribution opportunities now available to film makers, with a big focus on social media. If you happen to be going to Bite The Mango and want a specific question answered, let me know in the comments.

There is much interest in creating digital content for multi-platforms at the moment. Just last month, quadruple play internet service provider Virgin Media announced that they will be showing US web drama Prom Queen online at Livingtv.co.uk, on cable TV at Living1, on Virgin Mobile as short ‘mobisodes’ and on Virgin Media’s Video On Demand service.

Each 90 second episode of Prom Queen (there are 80 altogether) is part of an experiment in delivering multi-platform content on the Virgin Media network. The aim is to attract younger viewers to Livingtv.co.uk and build some community around the website.

I wonder how effective this will be as one minute clips on the web rarely translate well on the ol’ google box. We’ll have to wait and see. If you are after a precedent, Five have been showing Bebo’s Sofia’s Diary after episodes of popular Australian soap Home & Away.

You can listen to more about Virgin Media’s multi-platform efforts on the New Media Age podcast.

I will be asking Channel 4’s Head of Factual Interactive Commissioning, Adam Gee, what he thinks about Virgin Media’s multi-platform push at the Culture Company’s Melt 2008 Inspiration Session in Sheffield on Thursday.

I’m quite pleased to have bagged a ticket to this as it should be a good opportunity to learn more about 4IP, Channel 4’s £50M commissioning scheme for new platforms.

On to Real Fresh TV business.

As you know, we are putting together a Social Media Starter course, to start next month and a couple of days ago I came across an article about topics for a proposed social media course for PR students that was incredibly timely.

Apparently, the first question to be included in a social media course for first year PR students is the blindingly obvious: “What is social media?”.

Not so obvious to us practicationers… Needless to say some of the tips recommended in that article have made their way into our course!

Ironically, according to a recent US report, only 5% of marketers cited PR as a resource for social media programs. Here’s the full report for download. This is fascinating because many of the best practitioners of social media in the UK are PR professionals.

More news on the Social Media Starter course very soon. We’d love to know your thoughts. Please vote in the poll below.

Which of these would you want covered at a social media starter course?

Image Credit: Bite The Mango Festival

b.TWEEN08 Conference Highlights – Day 2 – 20th June – Part 2

Chi-chi Ekweozor — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 13:18:52 +0000

As promised, here’s the follow up to my Day 2 highlights of the recently concluded b.TWEEN08 conference in Manchester. Here’s what happened on Day 1.

There have been a couple of neat write ups of the conference around the web not least Kaiser Kuo of Ogilvy China’s follow up post about his much discussed ‘Censorship, Culture and Chinese Netizens’ talk.

Kaiser’s talk appears to be everyone’s favourite from the conference: it’s even garnered a mention on Matt Locke, Commissioning Editor for Education & New Media at Channel 4‘s blog.

It’s interesting to contrast all this talk about internet censorship in China with the digital politics now playing itself out in the upcoming United States presidential elections.

For those who are waiting(!), here are the slides from my presentation at the Quick Fire networking event on Thursday evening.

If you’d rather watch than read then you’ll be pleased to know videos from b.TWEEN08 are now up on the b.TWEEN website. Navigate through using the Session titles on the b.TWEEN08 Programme page.

Here’s a one stop link to recommended videos from b.TWEEN08. You can also track comments and post-conference chatter on Twitter at the btween page at Hashtags.org.

As before, this highlight post features my favourite quotes and notable points. It’s my take on the conference, in a speaker’s own words.

I’m picking up where I left off in the fascinating Aggregators & Integrators session. If you’ve got 61:29 minutes you can watch the entire session at the link below.

Session: Aggregators & Integrators – Kevin Bacon, Artists Without A Label, Carolyn Maze, MD, Fluorescent Media. Panel moderated by Richard Adams, Digital Strategy Director, Chemistry Communications Group.

Rather than separating out each of the panelists answers to questions posed by the moderator as before, I have collected all their responses in one fell swoop as more often than not their responses were spread over a number of questions.

Kevin Bacon, Artists Without A Label:
Artists Without A Label (aka AWAL.com) is more of a client portal. Show sales info and geomap information of social networking activity.

Offer a ‘Digital Management’ service not a ‘Digital Marketing’ service.

Use this info to plan tours etc.

Richard Adams, moderator asks: What is success?

Biggest success is “All I Want For Christmas Is A Hippopotamus”
Over 7,000 downloads. £30,000 earned by artist (whose name I didn’t catch) Google search unearths Gayla Peevey. Anyone care to confirm/refute?

Record labels have lost the ability to monetize music. Their market is disappearing. So they spread rumours about the music industry dying. The industry is moving though, led by brands, Coke Music etc. It will be monetized a different way. Subscription model revenues really low.

[Breaking News – Recording Industry calls Radio ‘A form of piracy’]

Carolyn Maze, MD, Fluorescent Media:
Fluorescent Media’s technology enables tailored, data mining of activity from multiple sources. A robust database that manages website transactions? (question mark mine)

Richard Adams, moderator asks: What do you define as engagement?

Carolyn Maze, MD, Fluorescent Media:
Point of Entry by consumer into platform.

Register Unique CLI for each session… This is tracked. This profile would automatically be presented to the (show) producer.

Other things that can be tracked:
Participation.
Look and feel of site. Unique CLI affects profile page, changes graphics presented to user etc.
How it works – ask key questions during trial(?) and use this to feed into the database.

Richard Adams, moderator asks: What is success?

Ensure that partners have access to cutting edge platform and ideas for brand engagement.

Campaigns all run at an entertainment destination (aka website – paranthesis mine)

Tangible user feedback information captured by the technology.

The following points are in response to questions asked by users of the b.TWEEN Online Chat system.

Conversations between online participants and delegates physically present at Manchester’s Museum of Science and Industry were relayed on the big screen on the stage throughout the conference.

Some points on the PHOENIX technology:

To be open sourced.
Will be platform neutral
Design of engaging experiences and, either via registration or other, track responses and feed into the PHOENIX system.
Collate reports, data mine etc.

I missed Bill Tidy’s popular talk because I was in a One2One session.

I came in as James (Holler) and Ana (Twenty Twenty TV) were talking about Channel 4’s forthcoming cross platform project, The Insiders.

Session: Channel 4 Cross Platform Innovation – Ana DeMoraes, Twenty Twenty TV, James Kirkham, MD, Holler. Panel moderated by Matt Locke, Commissioning Editor, Education & New Media, Channel 4.

The process: Channel 4 commissioned Twenty Twenty and they hired Holler.

The Insiders was filmed by Twenty Twenty, animated by Holler.

The majority of The Insiders is housed on MySpace which is the main Hub site. There are other hub sites planned. Partnerships, comedy highlights with different partners.

Give people the opportunities to find it on their own terms.

Matt Locke, Commissioning Editor, Channel 4:
Teens have a fragile web experience. They don’t bookmark. They Google search terms. Remember links sent by friends. Just because you’ve got their attention doesn’t mean they’ll give it again.

Ana DeMoraes, Twenty Twenty TV:
(In response to a question about measuring success I think? Check via webcast.)
“Haven’t done [it] before so don’t know how to measure.”

Matt Locke, Commissioning Editor, Channel 4:
New sign off process.
Lots of meetings because there are so many elements involved.
Hardest thing – content, little bits of content, video, skins, scripts etc etc.
Very hard to hear the overall story for the project. Is it all going to work?
How do we sign off projects like this in future?
How do they communicate this to the agency?

Matt Locke, Commissioning Editor, Channel 4 asks:
How is it going to progress?

James Kirkham, MD, Holler:
Getting audience to know. Acquiring fans.
Mid-July audience would be able to watch it and can follow it for 6 weeks.

Placed over lots of different places.

The Insiders gives teenagers information about jobs they might not have access to information for.

Blog asks audience to tell their stories/experiences.

Launch with 100 local teens.

Year Dot – another collaboration with Holler. 30 half-hour programmes with teens, gives them an opportunity to talk about the rest of their lives (I think that’s what he said!).

Competitions – have a conversation with your audience. Get them to think about the project.

Try to become a part of what your audience actually wants to be involved in.

Advice from Ana DeMoraes, Twenty Twenty TV to people embarking on similar projects:
Digital agencies – get in touch with a number of these. It helps you think in a different way.

When you talk to commissioning editors telling them you have a digital agency helps.

Advice from James Kirkham, MD, Holler:
Don’t be afraid to say No
These are projects that teens discover in their own time.
You do have big audiences out there looking for this online.
[It’s about] getting projects to users and finding out how they ant to use it.

As always, I welcome discussion on any of the above. Dispute or contest anything I’ve written? Say so in the comments…

Next up? A blog post covering interesting breakout session by Kaiser Kuo (Ogilvy China) and Matt Hanson (A Swarm of Angels) at the conference.

Image credit: Eventful on Flickr

PC The Next TV

Chi-chi Ekweozor — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 12:00:03 +0000

Earlier this week, I came across a fascinating report by Simply Media TV and media boutique, Work Research which claims that the PC has become the second TV in many homes.

Apparently, “men in particular are using internet video as a way of indulging their interests and escaping into a ‘virtual shed’.”

The well written report puts paid to the notion that online video is only for techie early adopters, with key findings including:

The PC is taking over as the ‘second TV’ in the home.
Online video viewers are thoroughly mainstream with no evidence of users being overly ‘techie’ or interested in very niche interests.
There is more to online video than comedy snippets and TV catch up.
There is an ‘Apex of Attention’ where needs based viewing meets relevant advertising.
Viewers accept advertising in exchange for ‘free’ content as in traditional TV

It also sheds light on the three distinct categories of online content:

Snippets are short, quick to watch and whilst focused on the screen, people are often also multi-tasking – talking on an internet phone or emailing links to friends for example. (YouTube)

Boutique is about task-based viewing where content is instructional or helps with information gathering around keen interests. People who are in this mode have high attention levels because of their interest in the subject matter (Baby Channel, GolfBug.tv).

Catch-up online is longer form in broadcast programme lengths and tends to be viewed in a more relaxed mode. This activity is really where the computer takes on the role of the second TV. (4oD, BBC iPlayer)

YouTube’s recent launch of YouTube Insight, a free tool that enables anyone with a YouTube account to view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload to the site is curiously pertinent.

YouTube Insight provides video analytics including geographical information on who is watching your videos and when.

Exciting times indeed. I get the impression that TV is already having to play catch up to PC.

For regular readers, the Social Media Usage in the FTSE 100 study has had to take a back seat as we concentrate on preparing for an important conference next week. If you are attending the MarketingTech: TailorMade conference at Grange City Hotel, London, come over and say hello!

The Social Media Usage in the FTSE 100 study will return in early April.

Image Credit: howstuffworks.com

Exploring Some Tips for Great Branded Video in 2008

Chi-chi Ekweozor — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 00:13:18 +0000

I recently come across a neat article by Julie Ruvolo of DivX’s Stage6 in which she analysed a selection of branded content campaigns by brands as varied as Apple, Toyota and Ecko.

The article seems to suggest that the key to great branded online video lies in blending the unconventional with the practical: a few of her examples involved collections of themed videos; she offered up Apple’s Mac vs PC TV ads which have translated very well online and Ecko’s maverick ‘stillfree.com’ video series.

Other examples include American Express’ six short informational business videos and Holiday Inn Express’ footage of a nine week road trip across the US.

I think the emphasis on episodic content is a good one: branded episodic content allows that ‘one brick at a time’ brand building experience that accrues much brand value over time, partly because it now possible to deliver fully branded interactive TV style experiences online.

To be truly effective, however, branded video content will need to be integrated with a wider marketing campaign. It’s still all about getting the media mix right; across TV, print, mobile and online.

I expect Euro 2008 to be a great barometer of consumer acceptance of branded content video outside the US. The 2006 World Cup saw the introduction of highly targeted social networking campaigns by the major sports brands with Adidas’ “+10″ campaign on MySpace a memorable example.

This year’s major football tournament should be no different. There’s probably going to be a lot more ‘disposable video content’ this time round, however. And a lot more ‘made-exclusively-for-the-web’ viral video that lives across social networks and video sharing sites and is watched on iPhones and iMacs alike. This appears to be a view echoed by iMedia UK’s Gavin Sutcliffe:

“Digital will encompass everything — it’s no longer a speciality!
The term ‘digital agency’ will become more and more irrelevant as all types of agency (including public relations, direct marketing and design) become fluent in all things ‘digital’. Agencies from all walks of marketing communication will simply have to ensure fluency in digital, or face extinction. Being able to execute any campaign in 2008 will require a significant degree of competence in the digital arena. “

As marketing executives draw out their campaigns for 2008, it will be interesting to see how branded digital content plays out over the various screens the average UK consumer will be watching this year: TV, online and mobile/portable.

Here’s to a more personalised TV experience.

What say you?

Be a good sport and share your thoughts in the comments.