What happens when you bring together representatives from the fields of mobile, marketing, gaming, publishing, and motion? A unique evening called Cross Media TO.
Held recently at the MaRS Discovery District in downtown Toronto, the inaugural Canadian event examined various cross media practices, and debated how best to foster integration and partnerships in order to bridge the gaps between media sectors.
“At the moment, in cross media worlds, there aren’t that many examples of people who are actually doing cross media”, conference founder and Jumpwire Media president Gavin McGarry told the sold out crowd. “What we thought we would do with Cross Media is bring together the silos and talk to determine how we could possibly work together across those silos.”
The centrepiece of the evening was a spirited panel discussion aptly named “Melting the Silos: The Reality of Cross Media Integration”. Moderated by McGarry, executives from Google, Research In Motion, Random House, Akamai, and gaming company Digital Extremes shared some of their companies’ current cross media initiatives, plus offered their thoughts on how media will be produced, distributed, and consumed in a cross media environment.
Lisa Charters, SVP director of digital for Random House of Canada credited the Amazon Kindle e-reader with bringing the world of publishing into the multi-media world. Describing the number of cross media opportunities at her company in the last six months as “explosive”, Charters said that her customers now expect to interact with content beyond “just a standard website”.
“We’ve been re-purposing our content and optimizing it for the mobile space”, she said, as part of a discussion about a new application called ‘Conversation Starters’. “We take chunks from our books and leverage them into this app and you can read it and have a conversation starter when you sit down to have a coffee or a glass of wine with your friends.”
Google Canada’s head of agency relations, Sabrina Geremia, said that not only is her company well versed in cross media, it harnesses Google’s powerful search capabilities to help clients build and measure what she calls “smart cross media campaigns”.
“Cross media, from a marketing perspective, is just integrated communications”, she said. “I don’t think I’ve seen a campaign in the last seven years that doesn’t have that element and aspect to it.”
Pete Watson, RIM’s senior business development manger for consumer partners, said that clients like major labels and studios approach his company for cross media opportunities that will “take their content to the next level”. He detailed the launch of the BlackBerry ‘super applications’ – that offer features such as push notifications, which he described as “much more dynamically tied to the device experience”.
Representing the ‘gaming’ silo, Michael Schmalz, president of Digital Extremes, said that his industry in particular stands to gain from incorporating cross media practices.
“I think we have a tremendous opportunity to start working with other companies… and start to get a larger share of the profit of the value that we create”, he said. “Our job at the end of the day was to deliver a disc to a publisher and then move on to the next project. Now, with Xbox Live and PlayStation Network, we can take control over the distribution channels as developers, whereas that was something that was never possible for us.”
But cross media integration is not always that simple, added Chris Van Noy, chief strategist for Akamai, a global content distribution network which was the ‘motion’ sector representative on the panel.
“One of the challenges that we’re seeing right now, is that with consumers having more devices to watch all this content on, and, with more distribution points like Hulu to watch this content, there can be blockages in getting all this great content out there. There is a blockage of the work flow to be able to get all the content up”, he said.
Most of the panelists agreed that leveraging the functionality and audience reach of digital media channels such as social and mobile often requires additional expertise be brought to the conference room table.
“It is completely normal to be briefing different players and even your competitors at the same time (on a new campaign), said Google Canada’s Geremia, counting off YouTube, FaceBook, PR and ad agencies as examples. “It’s about getting the right idea, and the right idea is never one thing. It’s everything layered together at the right place and at the right time.”
Charters echoed Geremia’s sentiments. “We now have teams of people who have ‘digital’ in their titles”, she added. “Every time we talk about a book or a project or a signing, everyone has it on their radar now what that project might look like – what video could be produced to be put into it, how it would it fit on the Kindle – so the creativity is distributed throughout the entire company now.”
RIM’s Watson noted that while incorporating cross media can ad “a layer of complexity” (not to mention expense) to the process, his company faces competitive pressure to do so.
Geremia agreed. “You have to be fluid across all media”, she rejoined.
While optimistic about cross media opportunities, Schmalz cautioned that the transition to digital media could be “a difficult time”, and not just for the gaming industry.
“Business models are changing, the distribution methods are changing, and no one has the right answer”, he said. “No one knows how we’ll be consuming content in five years. If someone says they know, they’re wrong, because it could go anywhere.”
The event also included demonstrations of new cross media technologies such as interactive television applications from ES3, and an iPad app that creates a secure virtual portal for clients of Shark Teeth Films. A debate on the future of the advertising agency plus case studies of cross content strategy rounded out the evening.
