Social media:

Making it work for entertainment brands

Ann Longley, Digital Strategy Director, MEC Interaction

What is social media – why important?

First and foremost – it is behaviour

supported by technology.

Social media is media designed to be

disseminated through social interaction, created

using highly accessible and scalable publishing

techniques.

Social media supports the human need for

social interaction with technology, transforming

broadcast media monologues (one to many) into

social media dialogues (many to many).

It supports the democratisation of knowledge

and information, transforming people from

content consumers into content producers. Source: Wikipedia

Social media supercharges traditional word-of-mouth so can influence what is

popular. It has also catalysed new forms of entertainment.

Entertainment is being enriched with social features

Recommendations and reviews

Viewing circlesAudience

participationCommunity integration

Immersive experiences

A spectrum of social entertainment

Social media and entertainment brands

Social entertainment spectrum

Viewing

Circles

Audience

Participation

Community

Integration

Immersive

Experiences

Easy

Difficult

FarNear

Recommendations

and reviews

Social media and entertainment brands

Quickscan of market activity – lots of it is going on

Recommendations

and reviews

Viewing Circles Community

Integration

Audience

Participation

Immersive

experiencesBBC :iplayer – allows audience to forward to a friend/ share a moment in the programme + more social features coming

BBC: Good radio club: a bunch of fellow radio4 fans tweeting along in real time listening to a 30 minute radio show chosen in advance

BBC: Apprentice Predictor effectively helped viewers actively engage and share a unique experience while watching during the broadcast

BBC: Lost Zombies - crowd-sourced internet movie;BBC Internet Documentary -audience invited to get involved in its making.

BBC: BAFTA award winning Spooks ARG, Savannah –educational project with Futurelab – great projects, underpromoted?

Lost: Blogger engagement to build anticipation and demand

Lost : fan generated content – evidence of success

Football 3Cs – a game for fans to play while watching scheduled football on TV

MySpace – Faintheart –crowd input (shallowparticipation)

Lost ARG

Television without pity –Audience reviews that can be shared

Splashcast Social TV (closed due to funding problems)

C4’s Picture This,Landshare,SexperienceC4 Skins/SkinsLife, – worth looking at for their long term synergistic approach

We dig tv (who wants to be a millionaire); viewer in the programme; league tables –3m viewers. Is it still going?

The Truth about Marika from Sweden’s Public Broadcaster (produced by Company P)

Blinkx – great video search engine but no real social features

Jaman – find, watch, review films online. Social network integration/facebookconnect.

Freak/MySpace (Internet drama/does not involve TV)

A Swarm of Angels – a crowd sourced film making project with sustainability challenges (example of deep participation)

Last Will, still in prototype stage. Multi-touch entertainment – something more near field to consider with RAD

New idea: What are the implications of applying Amazon’s e-commerce engine to BBC program planning?

Jaman – find, watch, review films online. Social network integration/facebookconnect.

Social games, e.g. Playfish, Zynga – low cost and popular/could be developed as able programme extensions

Lost Ring, Superstruct (good examples but do not involve TV); Star Trek ARG for latest film release

xbox Project Natal ; MIT’s 6th sense computing***

Social media and the BBCSocial media and entertainment brands

What could be coming to the UK?

Social media and entertainment brands

Recommendations and reviews: V-loggers and others rate and

review television programmes

An idea before its time?

Social media and the BBCSocial media and entertainment brands

Viewing circles: Sharing the viewing experience by watching

together and creating your own channels

WE dig TV – still in Beta

Social media and entertainment brands

Audience participation: Puts the user in the programme –

claims to have 3M players

Making it easy for the audience to take part

Social media and the BBCSocial media and entertainment brands

Audience participation: SKYNEWS has launched a free citizen

journalism iphone app; gives attribution for contributions

But full audience participation is difficult

Social media and the BBCSocial media and entertainment brands

Audience participation: A swarm of angels is a participatory film

community that has experienced some growing pains

Community building is a way to reach new audiences

and have a longer term impact

Social media and the BBCSocial media and entertainment brands

Community Integration: C4 has developed a number of long term properties

linked to programmes but with a life independent of them

What is some of the best that is out there?

Social media and the BBCSocial media and entertainment brands

Audience participation: Interactive Emmy Award Winning ARG

from Sweden’s Public Broadcaster

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iX_ZJkwvKR8&eurl=

http://www.thecompanyp.com/site/%3Fpage_id%3D7&feature=player_

embedded#t=421

Schematic’s in-programme gaming

Social media and entertainment brands

http://www.schematic.com

Audience participation: Enable seamless switching from watching

to playing

Last will – a prototype MITE*

Social media and entertainment brands

Immersive experiences: A compelling collaborative effort

but one that may need mass reach to succeed

* Multiplatform Interactive Theatre Experience

http://vimeo.com/groups/playful/videos/2445637

The evolution of TV

Social media and entertainment brands

Immersive experiences: Public and portable multi-touch screens will become

more ubiquitous in the future.

How could they work with (live/on-demand) TV?

Identifying potential threats

Social media and entertainment brands

Immersive experiences: to what extent will such exciting

game play erode TV viewing?

http://www.youtube.com/user/xboxprojectnatal?blend=2&ob=1

The future of augmented reality

Social media and entertainment brands

http://vimeo.com/5595869

Immersive experiences: augmented reality and reversed

augmented reality create new pervasive programming possibilities

Pervasive computing: 6th sense technology from MIT

Social media and entertainment brands

Immersive experiences: When the future arrives what will it mean

for TV and media as we know it? Time to start planning now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUdDhWfpqxg&feature=related

Accessible

Distant

InclusiveCuratorial

How ‘social’ do

your entertainment

brands want to be?

Thank youFind me here:www.twitter.com/AnnMargaret

www.annlongley.net