Banff Fest 2016: Audience isn’t just everything, it’s the only thing

By Bill Roberts

BANFF – Haven't we always been told that "content is King"?Well, Jay Bennett, senior vice-president at Shaftesbury/Smokebomb, doesn't buy it. "Audience is not only king, but queen and knight too", he says.Furthermore, in the online digital world, "if you (just) build it, they will not come".To be successful, producers and creators need to identify groups and audiences – and study their interests, beliefs, and identities. Then, they must pick 3 or 4 of those researched groups which work within a Venn Diagram analysis, pick the overlapping sweet spot of that pictorial approach, and design content exactly for that happy intersection.In...