How to design a content provider?

Content producers: How is the role of audiences changing? And how is it changing the way you conceive/design, and produce your work?

• In support of research for a Master of Design program in Strategic Foresight and Innovation at OCAD University, I'm doing research into how  audience engagement is evolving and how content producers are responding to these changes. While fragmentation of audiences and platforms is not new, the Internet has radically transformed the content production landscape. Audiences today have more opportunities and tools at their disposal to play an active role in many aspects of the content production process. Examples include: crowdfunding and fan-base building via kickstarter, crowdsourcing content during production, marketing and promotion via the social graph or distribution via peer-to-peer networks. In light of internet disruption, in what ways do you think the role of audiences has changed? Is changing? What do you think audience engagement will look like in the near future? When you embark on a project, when do you start to think about the audience? What role(s) do you imagine they will play and why? How does this factor into your creative thinking when developing projects? What are the challenges with this? How do you get around them? What role(s) would you prefer audiences play in the whole content creation/production/distribution process? Your insights on any or all of these questions are greatly appreciated.

• Answer:

  I'd start your discussion with the role text messaging played in driving the transition from story-driven to marketing-driven summer films. When text messaging hit the US teen demographic, Hollywood learned that instantaneous word of mouth could kill box office far more easily than it could grow box office. That realization caused the nature of big summer films to switch from blockbusters (everyone goes to see it so they can talk about it with friends afterwards) to tentpoles (everyone gets convinced to see it in advance, talks about it with their friends in advance, and goes to see it opening weekend before word of mouth can change anyone's plans). Spiderman is the classic example of a "good" film that resulted from this transition, in that not only was it a great film but Spiderman as a brand was already known to every potential film goer. Advance audience testing and test marketing was able to establish high commit rates to see the film among key demographics well in advance, justifying the spend required to produce the film. (That broad brand awareness was also critical to building merchandising plans for the film. Most original titles were starting to have a hard time maintaining brand awareness during the peak toy buying season in November/December having hitting theaters in the peak summer movie-going months, a trend that Spiderman reversed). There are unfortunately however all too many more examples of "bad" films resulting from this transition. Those films were designed to be advance marketed, were advance marketed, and generated appropriate profits, all without ever touching audiences emotionally in any significant way, weakening the bond between moviegoers and theaters with each such release. After text messaging, I would look at the demographic shift from film consumption to game consumption, both in terms of hours viewed and dollars spent. Gaming surged to prominence precisely as the film industry was shifting its focus to these new marketing-driven titles mentioned above. That shift from story-driven to marketing-driven titles led a new generation of (theoretically) movie-going-age consumers to decide  gaming was providing far more compelling experiences than film. Hollywood's response to text messaging may have been rational and short-term expedient but when playing out against the landscape of Xbox PlayStation consoles it was long-term disastrous.