OTTAWA ? Every content producer can follow unique logic in deciding whether to extend a content brand beyond its original media platform in today?s transmedia landscape ? and if the producer does extend the brand, that move leads to another decision: Which additional digital media should be used and how?
These questions were at the heart of a CMPA Prime Time panel, ?Digital Content ? When is Brand Extension Appropriate?? on Thursday.
Or, as panellist Caitlin O’Donovan noted, ?It’s a question of where does the brand live? Does it start as a toy, a TV show (or something else)? Most (children’s) TV is made to drive toy sales and drive revenue to all platforms.? But, she added, it’s time to enrich the content and improve the audience’s relationship with story and characters. ?Interactive producers need to stop thinking about platforms and focus instead on the property and its goals.?
Alan Sawyer, executive producer and founder of Two Solitudes Consulting, suggested that the colourful socks of panellist Mark Bishop, co-CEO and executive producer at Marblemedia, can serve as a useful metaphor. Squares and rectangles on the socks feature several bright colours, each roughly equal in visual impact. Similarly, some cross-platform properties have equal value on each platform. Others are driven by a main platform and ?property driver,? which is often a TV program or film. Most fall somewhere in between.
O’Donovan added that as plot lines emerge and characters develop depth, the question for interactive producers is ?how to support these bursts of activity flowing from these TV brands?? At the same time, Bishop says, be sure to avoid spreading the property too thin. ?It’s a lot of work for not a lot of reward.?
Independent producer, professor and panellist Victoria Evans said the decision to extend a brand needs to be collaborative, involving the brand owner and the digital media expert. ?You don’t want multi-media branding just because (you can),? she says. It’s imperative to keep up-to-date on which platforms attract your audience and how the audience engages with the brand on each platform. It’s key, Evans added, to use social media to provide new information and avoid repeating what’s available elsewhere, such as mentioning air times, which are available in TV guides or on websites.
Working with broadcaster properties can be tricky, Bishop noted, since various departments have distinct agendas. If marketing wants an app developed to allow audience interaction with the brand, the marketers will want it to be free, while sales might prefer to load it with ads. Meantime, the story department wants to use additional platforms to increase audience engagement with the story and characters, and communications personnel have ideas of their own. Bishop says the trick is to talk to each group separately, in the beginning, to discover everyone’s priorities, and then gather the groups together to streamline the approach to brand extension.
With all the excitement over brand extension and the versatile possibilities provided by Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook and other social media channels, moderator Angela Heck asked if so much focus should be remaining on the role of broadcasters. ?Do we still need them??
?We still need audiences and we need to generate a following,? Bishop said. ?The broadcaster is important,? especially to introduce new content. ?The broadcaster is important for buy-in,? added Evans, and to trigger such funds as the Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund, the Independent Production Fund and the Shaw Rocket Fund.
On the other hand, she added, there are also opportunities ?that allow us to invest in original pilot series of the development of series that have great cross-platform success.? They’re not totally at the mercy of broadcasters and can demonstrate audience building on the strength of the production alone. Moreover, Bishop explained, advertisers have told him interactive content ?is where they have to be. It puts our linear content on another level.?
On the subject of intellectual property rights, panellists agreed that interactive content creators and producers are forming a new guard of rights owners and exploiters, since creators have content rights and can create additional rights by taking properties to new platforms. ?It’s not just about doing the service model,? said O’Donovan. ?We can do that and come up with (our) own IP on the side.?
The current excitement around cross-platform opportunities is infectious, but Bell Fund executive director Andra Sheffer said little has changed over the past few years in the search for a reliable business model for extending TV brands to ancillary digital channels. ?There’s no real business model for most of the digital platforms,? she added, except in cases where apps are created and sell well. Then, it’s a reliable source of revenue with ?significant cash? coming back to the producer.?
Although the panellists argued kids’ shows and reality shows succeed best at interactive brand extension, Bell Fund Program Manager Marcia Douglas said some dramas have also found a digital platform that makes money.?Murdoch Mysteries, Curse of the Lost Pharaoh, was a website and a separate linear extension of the show where they took the characters from the show, satirized them a little bit and created a separate narrative. It was nominated for an International Digital Emmy Award last year. Shaftesbury (Films, the production house) has found some success in taking that linear online content and licensing it as additional TV content in the U.K., for example, and maybe other territories…where the broadcast hours are slightly different than North American broadcast hours,? she explained.
?The web series,? Sheffer adds, ?is 10 or 13 five- or six-minute episodes. They package them altogether and it becomes a 14th episode and they sell it internationally. They can put it on the web and sometimes they’ll make money or not make money, but they can also package it together so it’s a 60-minute episode.?
Added Douglas: ?The Motive TV series that’s on CTV, (which has) recently premiered ? the web series will be premiering probably end of March. It’s the same thing. It’s the back story of one of the characters of the show. (The web series is) the opportunity for the audience to interact with the characters they already know and like in a new way.?
?Typical viewership online,? Sheffer added, ?is about five or 10% of the TV audience. That’s typical, for a successful show. With kids it’s higher, much higher. With some really successful (adult) shows ? like Big Brother, for instance ? it’s getting something like 80% or something. Big difference.?
