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 2015, Bennett had 97 such content ideas on the go, this year there are about 100 program projects in the works.
These projects range from a Royal Bank of Canada sponsored psycho-thriller conceived to attract millennials to that financial institution, to titles like The Slutty Book Club which had over 25,000 organic views and 350,000 impressions for its feminist book critiques in just a couple of weeks across Twitter and YouTube.
The web series Boytoyz is another example. It mashes a Frankenstein-like theme with the Manga qualities of Japanese comic books, and refines that mix with Shoujo – a Japanese romantic comedy genre aimed at teenage females' "fan-dom.”
The reason? Well, research showed that Asian-Canadians represented about 15% of the potential audience. Within that distinct universe, three specific group identities made the Venn cut: young teenage women, mad scientist fans, and comedy seekers.
And presto – the content result is a YouTube success propelled by the likes of Sachie, a Canadian vlogger based in Toronto, giving it her online boost with 250,000 followers.
So, how does it make money? Apparently, they're attracting titans like Apple and Hewlett-Packard looking for geeky science/tech fans, and companies like Benefit Cosmetics (famous for the original lip plump) longing to score with teens.
The Mystery of the Failed Murder is another hit. Research showed that there was a hole in the market for Nancy Drew.
No joke.
It also revealed that 84% of Nancy Drew fans were women; and that there was a huge constituency of Nancy Drew games, movies, party ideas, websites, mobile aps, clubs, real life and location fan gatherings, and even conventions. (If you're looking to book, my recommend is the 2020 Nancy Drew 90th Anniversary Convention in Hawaii, but if you can't wait there's a big Canadian convention coming to Toronto in 2019.)
“One thing is for sure. There will be no cable box in about 10 years because Grandma will be dead and nobody will know what it is or how to use it.”
What about the Venn Diagram you ask? It turns out that four identified groups hit the jackpot: Nancy Drew loyalists of course, Clue game players, comedy-horror fans, and people who like funny ladies.
So where is the Venn sweet spot? Erotic murder mysteries with a heroine wearing ridiculous shoes and a jäger bomb personality.
You can't make this stuff up folks.
The content resulting from this approach then gets distributed via whohaha.com, YouTube, Snapchat, Twitter, and Instagram, harvesting a whack of fan engagement and social interaction among millennials.
Tangerine the banker is interested, Cupcake Wines thinks there's a brand connection to its "blood red" wines and, saving the best for last, Febreze, Tide and Swiffer determine that, since there's blood everywhere, there's also an organic tie-in to freshening and cleaning up!
Bennett and his team are clearly up to something very neat as their approach to targeted niche audiences is in itself pretty creative. Engaging and identifying seemingly diverse "fan-doms" around specific and overlapping audience attributes is clever.
Plus, they've managed to skirt copyright and IP concerns by simply cherry-picking key Nancy Drew traits and never mentioning her full name.
How far can this methodology go though?
It still seems to be framed within some pretty bracketed age demographics, so can Smokebomb push the envelope and prove the theory that, in the digital world, there's no such thing as age – it's only about what you love?
Can they snag the 55+ year old on the same line as the 17 year old lip plumper?
One thing is for sure. There will be no cable box in about 10 years because Grandma will be dead and nobody will know what it is or how to use it.
In that future, this early work by Smokebomb might well be both enlightening & prescient.
