LOOKING BACK ON THE recent Banff World Media Festival, there are any number of valuable signposts for the future of our moving image industry.
One which rattled my analog cage (in a good way) was the apparent devaluation of the concept of audience in favour of "fan-dom". Ten years ago when many of us attended Banff, we had an informed inkling, maybe even a giggly-tingling anticipation, for the creative potential of the internet. It was a vague notion – we didn't really know what was going to become of this new digital frontier.
But this year at Banff, one can't miss the evolutionary implications of that webi-sphere journey. Now the only question is "what's next?" Hell, maybe aliens really will posses our teenagers?
The online work of people like Jay Bennett, SVP Creative & Innovation at Shaftesbury, may provide some road map to that Tomorrowland. Bennett works in a universe of web sites and digital stand-alone series, mashed with linear TV & live events.
The story-world of fan-dom is apparently replacing mass audiences in the conventional sense. In fact, the latter may depend on the former more than ever with millennials.
Six playful, live events across Canada for Murdoch Mysteries – now in season 10 – along with supporting live social events with fans arriving in costume to solve crime. It all sounds like good fun and seemingly, it is the spreading magic sauce of brand recognition for millennials.
David Cormican, Don Carmody Productions, works with folks like Netflix and Rogers/City on shows like Between – the Canadian science fiction drama which debuted in May, 2015. In the digital zone he can tap into 80 million eyeballs by working with established web super-fans that already have a large following of their own. There, tools like Twitter and offshoot Periscope are the stock in trade.
Coming back to teenage abduction by aliens, Periscope says of its live video streaming, "it may sound crazy, but we wanted to build the closest thing to teleportation".
Deb Day, Innovate By Day, works with The Bachelorette using polling and conversations with fans. Indeed, format ideas even originate from the fan base – especially from live "after show" chats with super-fans who may then move on to co-host the actual show. Day includes employees and co-workers in this fan base.
Bennett, who claims "fan-dom is a living, breathing monster", shares another real world example. The Kimberly-Clark-owned brand Kotex had no hesitation about sinking its teeth into a vampire web series. Called Carmilla, the YouTube series launched two years ago (now into series three), and follows a modern university co-ed and her vampire pal Carmilla – all based on the 1872 story by Bram Stoker.
Blunt talk about blood and periods works wonderfully we were told.
The first episode alone garnered 200,000-plus views predominantly (91%) in the 18-34 female crowd, which Kotex would have struggled to lure even in the female-skewing lifestyle channels of linear TV, they said. Moreover, fans and super-fans have versioned an d produced their own takes on Carmilla in several languages around the world now.
Pop-up shops for Carmilla in New York City have had three hour line ups!
However, there are interactive negatives from time to time. For example: "Fans have high expectations. Some have even broken into our servers and stolen content", says Bennett.
Plus, Day warns of predator e-trolls that make life tough (and inappropriate) for creators of children's fare, but there's real money in them fan-dom hills.
Catherine Warren, president of FanTrust Entertainment Strategies, claims that online super-fans can earn millions of dollars – and the Bell Fund now has new awards for digital documentaries. For broadcasters, the message is clear – working with social talent influencers has to be a real and strategic focus going forward.
Those partnership arrangements lead to valuable alignment with millennials, and develop new talent with impressive and pre-existing fan followings on Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook and other platforms.
Growing out new touchpoints for that demographic has the added, developmental attributes of identifying new voices and fresh points of view.
In sum, for more and more distributors, creators and consumers, targeted web interaction with fans is increasingly responsible for content success. There is a new, exciting, immediate and personal prototype of television actively taking shape.
