Recently, I spoke on a panel at Digital Hollywood, attempting to give context to the array of prognostications that take place at such a conference. Somewhere in between my overview of platform adoption and a recap of digital vs. traditional advertising economics, a content creator on the panel leaned into his microphone and interrupted me. “Can I just say something?” he asked rhetorically. “None of this matters if the content isn’t strong.”
Although I think he expected me to engage in a verbal battle
of commerce vs. creation, I took a tactic that caught him by surprise. I agreed.
That’s not to say that platform and advertising don’t matter -- producing to a
platform that has limited ROI or reaches the wrong audience can kill great
content and waste millions of dollars. But I absolutely concur with my fellow
panelist’s broader point, which was that content, business, and technology have
to coexist and collaborate.
His comment reminded me that I spend much of my time talking
about the research side of media research, so I want to take some time to talk
about the content side of it.
As the above encounter suggests, media research is sometimes
mistaken for the robotic dream crushing of content creators. At the risk of brazenly
representing my fellow media research comrades, I don’t think any of us got
into this line of work to crush dreams and commoditize storytelling. We got
into it because we believe that when great strategic thinking is combined with
great creative thinking, magic can happen.
When I think about the questions I set out to answer as a researcher
and consultant, they are often fundamentally about content. One that came up repeatedly at Digital Hollywood
was, “How can a single creative concept
exist on many platforms?” What does the digital version look like, versus
the traditional (e.g. TV, radio, film) version? As an amateur dancer, I love to point people
to The LXD. What started out as a small online video became an online series,
and is now a full-on dance company performing in commercials, on the Oscars, at
TED, and at fundraisers. Given that the creator is Jon Chu, I imagine it’s a
matter of time before it becomes a full length superhero film. I also love
using TMZ as a great multiplatform example. The TV show is built to catch your
attention and make you laugh. The website does too, but if they didn’t break
stories first and update with the urgency of a nuclear war, the site would
probably be a flop.
Another question I love addressing is, “How can consumer adoption of new platforms create opportunities for
new types of content, attracting new audiences?” I turn inward to myself
for an example of this: I prefer music radio, I almost never listen to talk or
news radio. But I like public radio’s coverage of news. I like the questions
they ask, the interesting topics they address, the industry experts they
interview. These days, with Facebook and Twitter, mobile apps and transcripts,
I don’t have to change my radio behaviors to consume public radio. Instead, I read it. I am, by definition, the
growth opportunity that people vaguely speak about.
Then there are the creative questions. One that often rings
familiar to TV producers and writers is what to do when a cast change is
impending. “What personalities or characters
are driving a series, and why? What happens if one of those personalities/actors
leaves the show for a new endeavor?” How can it evolve? Can it evolve? Some shows can move past a major cast change,
and some shows can’t. I’ve seen research
projects funded entirely on the back of getting ammunition to fire on-air
talent, only to discover that the talent under question was too central to the program
the creators had fashioned. If the talent
goes away, the entire premise of the show goes away.
Which brings to mind another common content question that I
see a lot in television. “What’s the fundamental promise of a show?
How are we executing on that, and where can we better deliver upon that
promise?” Just this week I worked on a series that viewers deemed “mindless.”
They meant that as a positive. Sometimes a TV show works simply because it’s a
fun, simple escape from the daily grind. The producers went into the evening
concerned that they might have to tackle the budgetary consideration of additional
set time, in order to infuse more “meat” into the series. They came out of it
realizing that all viewers wanted was to laugh out loud after a long day, and that
pretty much any modification necessary could be done with a few post-production
edits.
Many content creators also strive to infuse relatable
elements into their creations – a character, a scene, a line of dialogue, etc. A question I often ask them to consider is, “What elements are relatable to audiences,
and when might we be getting just a little too close to home for “entertainment”?” I recently made the following case to a
colleague: it’s one thing for a character to get laid off in Season 3, struggle
for a couple episodes, and then find a new job. It’s quite another to build a
show or movie around the premise of a character losing his/her job. There’s
relatable, and there’s deflating. Research can help to define that line.
I’ve been talking a lot about entertainment content, but all
of this applies to news content as well. Ask yourself this: “What
makes a news story compelling?”’ One of my favorite talking points at
cocktail hours is the following: a good interviewer question is the most
salient trigger of “intelligent coverage” that is recognized by news consumers.
That nugget of wisdom came from an online survey. I encourage you now to pay
attention to how often you cringe at “stupid questions” asked by interviewers,
and how much more interested you become when an interviewer asks exactly what
you were wondering.
Indeed, the underlying questions in media research require
as much appreciation for the creative process as they do skill in data analysis
and distilling business insight. If my fellow conference panelist had offered
me the opportunity, I would have pointed out that I’ve been an artist for twice
as long as I’ve been a researcher. To know
me personally is to know that I play several musical instruments and was, at earlier
stages in life, the conductor my college pep band and editor of my graduate
school paper. I spend several hours a week at a dance studio, and serve on the
school board at an arts academy. When I talk about casting, storytelling,
editing, character development, or the mood created by a music score, I’m not
just drawing on professional experience, I’m drawing on life experience. Research and creativity are not mutually
exclusive, but rather, a potent combination.
I often say that my career lies at the intersection of commerce
and creativity. My trade is research.
But my trade is also storytelling, whether it be a comedic story, dramatic
story, real life story, news story, or research story. And ladies and gentlemen, to bring this all full
circle, that is why my business is called Research Narrative.
Thank you everyone, from the bottom of my
heart, for making that vision not just a reality, but a success.
