Cynopsis: DIGITAL
10/15/12

Good morning. It’s Monday, October 15, 2012, and this is your first early morning digital briefing.

Content & Co. is a branded entertainment studio, which in the past has worked with the likes of Subway and Schick to develop branded series for the web. Most recently, Content & Co. partnered with Subway to launch The 4 to 9ers on Hulu, a six-episode sitcom that follows a high school student as he begins a part-time job as a “Subway sandwich artist” at the local mall. I recently spoke with Stuart McLean, Founder and CEO of the studio, about the sitcom and the topic of branded entertainment.

Describe where the branded entertainment space currently is.

From where we sit, we see a big shift happening. Brands are now getting involved right at the point of inception for creative and really taking advantage of what they can bring to the table, not only in terms of providing their deep knowledge of their consumer, but also with financing and distribution across their channels.

Tell me how The 4 to 9ers came about. How did this idea get developed? When did Hulu get involved?

The 4pm-to-9pm block for Subway is an important part of their customer base. So that’s where we really started. We took in a slew of briefing materials that I won’t bore you with, but that was our jumping-off point. Once we get a brief like that, we try to identify the best talent to work with, which in this case was Jamie Widdoes, who has directed episodes of Two and a Half Men and is undoubtedly one of the best comedy directors around, and Tim O’Donnell, who is a longstanding writer and showrunner who has worked on programs like Growing Pains and Dave’s World. We really feel it’s important to work with great talent who can build a property at a level of quality that is necessary for a major distributor like Hulu. One of the interesting things about Hulu is that it’s in many ways an extension of broadcast. It was one of the reasons why we wanted to do business with the company.

In terms of process, we built a creative package in lockstep with Subway and Jamie and Tim. Then we went through the programming door at Hulu. We took it out and pitched it just like any other piece of programming property. In this case, Hulu loved the concept. We were on their homepage masthead every Tuesday, which is a super premium position.

If you had to describe Content & Co.’s programming model — how you develop brand-centric content — what would it be?

We refer to ourselves as a clubhouse. We invite brands, talent, and distributors to come in and have an open discussion about their business and creative needs. It’s hard to get properties made today. It’s even harder to cultivate an audience. Rather than in the old days when it was kind of an arm-wrestling match between all three, we invite everyone in our clubhouse and put them on the same side of the table, so they can all push forward in the same direction. It works pretty well. We’re coming up on our fifth year. And it’s a very specific business, so as this category gets more sophisticated, it’s important to have a clubhouse or studio environment in which everyone comes in to work together and figure it all out.

What can a brand do in the digital space that it can’t on TV in terms of original entertainment?

I think the first thing brands are starting to realize is that they have all the tools they need. They’ve got the deepest consumer insights. Big brands know more about their consumers than any media company, network, or portal. And that’s not a knock on distributors, but it’s just a place that brands have always been strong. Therein lies the opportunity. It makes sense for brands to now work directly with the talent, to develop properties that aren’t one-offs, but have the potential for becoming annualized series. In fact, one of the goals of Content & Co. is to really develop franchise properties that can turn into multiyear programs; that can really plug into their network.

When we talk about brand network, that really runs the gamut from their Facebook page to their retail presence. This is where the value of these programs starts to come together. The trick is, it’s a complex business. There are some advantages to just going in and sponsoring programming. There’s value there and we help on that front as well. However, our overarching philosophy is that brands should be really creating their own series.

For brands that might consider jumping into the original content game, what are some things they have to/need to know?

Just like any marketing program, you set your goals and objectives. There’s a certain experimentation that goes on when you talk about digital branded entertainment, and that’s important. The landscape is ever evolving. You need to test different waters. We happen to have a process and model that works terrifically well. For a lot of brands, it’s okay to start off small. It’s important to go at your own pace and to build properties up. At the end of the day, you need to build for success, as these programs are not inexpensive.

The great democratization of content that Steve Jobs has given us has not only affected content and distribution, but it has also created great opportunities for brands to come in as creators and financiers of content. It’s more about collaboration. Our philosophy is no one company can do it by themselves. You have to collaborate.

Moreover, it’s exciting for talent to work directly work with brands. In that past it has been a bad game of telephone. A CMO might make a call and say, “Hey, we are involved in this program, can you take it in this direction?” That gets filtered through five of six different people before it even reaches the producers. If CMOs and producers were able to talk directly, it’d be much easier to come up with a terrific creative solution. That’s what we’re doing on the original content development front. There is no reason why brands shouldn’t be talking directly with talent.

What’s critical is to allow all of the different players to do their jobs. Brands are the best marketers. They understand brand building and have all sorts of unmatched consumer insights. The talent knows how to make a terrific sitcom that has all of the entertainment values that make it a legitimate entertainment property. Hulu has a tremendous audience base. If everyone plays their position, these things can have a really nice shelf life. When brands are smart enough to allow the best talent in the world to do their jobs, that’s how you land a product like The 4 to 9ers.

It seems like — and correct me if I’m wrong here — that Content & Co. can function as a competitor of sorts to ad agencies. You’re bringing the brands, the talent, and the media company to the table, so how much of a role do agencies play in these types of partnerships and campaigns?

I would say it’s very collaborative. As I said earlier, the brand financed content model is complex. That’s our sole focus. We are able to lead in that specific area. However in order for a branded entertainment series to be effective, it needs to be cross-pollinated across their channels. We sit down with their agencies and collaborate with them to determine how best to market the program.

It’s really important for agencies to collaborate with us and sit at the same table as the brands, talent, and distributors. We function as a content studio. We have a corollary of expertise that is becoming part of the mix. We sit at the table alongside other agencies, so we don’t view it as us being competitive at all. It’s not taking business away from someone else, it just happens to be another area in which brands are starting to play.

Back to show. How did it do? You mentioned Content & Co. likes to develop programs that have a multiyear shelf life. Any plans for that here?

We certainly hope so. We designed the production team with a long-term objective in mind. If you look at the resumes of Jamie and Tim, you can see where we’d like to take this.

The 4 to 9ers is relatable. The show is about your first job. We have all been there. And it has been a tremendous success. While I can’t share the numbers, I can say that it has succeeded all of our goals in terms of viewership and other metrics.

Netflix has released a new app for the Windows 8 operating system, which is scheduled to come out on October 26. The free app, which allows Netflix subscribers to instantly stream films and TV shows, appeared in the Windows Store on Friday. The company says the app is easier on the CPU and cuts down on battery usage, while also adding that it plans to release more updates later this fall.

Food Network has launched a new web-only show, tied to its TV series Next Iron Chef, called Road to Redemption. Spanning three episodes, the show pits participants against each other as they vie to become the 10th competitor on Next Iron Chef. The first episode premiered this past Friday, with the next one, featuring two new competitors, slated to arrive this coming Friday, October 19. The winners from each episode will meet in the finale on October 26. The newest season of Next Iron Chef premieres Sunday, November 4, at 9pm ET/PT. Food Network has other complementary digital components planned for when Next Iron Chef premieres. These include behind-the-scenes videos, weekly fan polls, and cast journals, among other things, on FoodNetwork.com

The Gregory Brothers are a musical comedy group best known for their videos on their YouTube channel, Schmoyoho, which has over 1.3 million subscribers and 454+ million views to date. You’d most likely recognize them as the people behind the ever-popular Auto-Tune the News series, which was recently rebranded as Songify the News (their most famous piece of content, “The Bed Intruder Song,” crossed over and broke into the Billboard 100). They have also worked with/appeared on The 83rd Annual Academy Awards, Comedy Central’s Tosh.0, and FX’s Wilfred, among others. The group recently signed with Maker Studios, a talent company that represents a number of other popular web celebrities. This month, the group plans to release a series of “Songified renditions” of important election moments and events, the most recent of which was the vice presidential debate. These will be available on their YouTube channel.

A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE

YouTube has made several updates to its platform that continues the site’s move away from clicks and toward time-spent viewing. The video site updated its search algorithm to “reward engaging videos that keep viewers watching.” In other words, rankings won’t be entirely based on the number of views a piece of content has, but will instead first spotlight those videos that users spend more time watching. This echoes the site’s announcement late last week that it has added “Time Watched” reports to YouTube Analytics, so content owners and channel operators can see how long on average users watched each video. Other updates to YouTube Analytics include the beta version of Annotation reports, which give insights on viewer click and close rates, and a Date Slider to let channel operators adjust the date range to see how videos performed during different time periods.

According to a new report form Markets and Markets, the global social TV market will grow from $151.14 billion in 2012 to $256.44 billion by 2017, at an estimated compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.2%. Europe is leading the social TV market right now, as it’s set to capture the largest share of social TV-related revenue in 2012, at $55.48 billion, and is expected to reach $77.74 billion by 2017. “Social is truly emerging as a coalition of television and social media, wherein newer formats are being developed to enhance viewer engagement and encourage paid transactions. Many media and tech companies such as Hearst, Time Warner, BSkyB, and Google are backing several social TV start-ups, with huge investments,” said the report. Attempting to capture the entire social TV ecosystem, Markets and Markets says it analyzed the market based on hardware/connected TVs; technology & platforms for video discovery, ad production, ad serving, social analytics, and content recognition, among others; and “end users technologies” such as social rewards, check-in services, social gaming, and more.

A September survey of 4,270 North American consumers, conducted by ChangeWave Research, asked the respondents how likely they were to buy an iPhone 5 in the future. 19% of respondents said they are “very likely” to buy the iPhone 5 in the future, with an additional 13% answering that they’re “somewhat likely.” For comparison’s sake, ChangeWave pulled up a survey it conducted when the iPhone 4S came out, in which only 10% of respondents said they were “very likely” to buy that device (11.5% at that time said they were “somewhat likely”). This is apparently despite the much-ballyhooed issue with Apple Maps. According to ChangeWave, 90% of iOS 6 users it surveyed, when asked if they had experienced any problem with Apple Maps, answered that they had “no problem at all” or “haven’t experienced any problem.”

Here’s some more iPhone 5-related data: To compare the iPhone 5 and the Samsung Galaxy S III, which Chitika Insights recognizes as two of the top devices in the smartphone market, the mobile advertising network conducted a “user agent analysis on millions of mobile ad impressions” from October 3 through October 9. Focusing solely on the impressions coming from each device, Chitika found that the iPhone 5 accounted for 56% of impressions, versus 44% for the Galaxy S III. This means, according to Chitika, the iPhone 5, which has been out for about three weeks, has overtaken the Galaxy S III, which was released four months ago, in terms of web traffic volume. “While optimizing online content for both devices is still the smart move for businesses targeting mobile consumers, this comparison emphasizes iPhone users still being the most active — and hence marketable — users of the mobile web,” said Chitika in its blog post.

Join us on November 14, 2012 at the Cynopsis Digital Video Measurement Summit in NYC. REGISTER NOW.

AllThingsD reports that Apple plans to hold an invitation-only event on October 23 at which it will unveil an “iPad mini,” a smaller and cheaper version of the company’s market-dominating tablet device. As the report notes, this would be a mere three days before Microsoft’s Surface tablet arrives in stores.

Vyclone is a mobile video iPhone app that lets multiple users essentially become a camera crew for filming one event. The app stitches together multiple clips in order to create one film with multiple camera angles. The user can then remix and re-edit the clip and share it on the app and on other social media platforms. This past weekend the app partnered with British artist Ed Sheeran to create one crowdsourced “lyric video,” for which fans attending five back-to-back concerts in London, as well as those at home, were encouraged to record a clip of Sheeran’s live performance of “Give Me Love,” or of them writing, drawing, or singing a lyric from the song. To support this endeavor, Vyclone released a series of updates to the app, including allowing an unlimited number of users to record one event, extending the recording time from 60 seconds to the length of a song, and the ability to shoot in HD.

A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE

The new Disney site, which Disney Interactive recently redesigned and re-launched, is a visual wonder. The video section offers a particularly engrossing, high-quality experience.

Here’s my current favorite video on the site. Disney & Pixar’s Toy Story franchise is one of the greatest film series, animated or not, of all time (this is not open for debate). Pixar recently released a six-minute short, titled Partysaurus Rex, which follows Rex as he tries to shed a particularly unflattering nickname given to him by the regular crew of toys when he meets a new group that resides in their owner’s bathtub. It’s great. You will laugh.

Later – Sahil
Sahil Patel, Associate Editor for Cynopsis Digital
10.15.12

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