Ian McKee, CEO of Vuulr, discusses how brands can differentiate themselves with content in a crowded and competitive market. Now that entertainment is an internet-delivered product, the brands that deliver it need to play by the internet’s rules.

The foundation is differentiation

In the endless sea of choices available to the audience today, one burning question for every brand is how to stand out. Such that audiences find you, stay, and then invite their friends.

The only answer is by not playing it safe. As Seth Godin (the marketing author) says in Purple Cow,  in today’s cluttered landscape, playing it safe means you are, like many other brands out there, forgettable — condemning you to pay the advertising tax to keep reminding your audience that you exist.

The alternative is to be remarkable and differentiated in a way that is valuable to the audience so that audiences make and repeat remarks about you to their network— which, in turn, reduces your cost of acquisition and retention. Think of the buzz around Squid Game.

The winds began to perceptibly shift in 2020 when Parasite and Bong Joon-ho won Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director.

Beyond the validation those awards meant to a relatively unknown South Korean filmmaker and the value of diversity in storytelling, there was this revelation: Parasite, acclaimed by critics and hailed as the first foreign-language film to win the top prize in the Oscars’ 92-year history, was also wildly popular in the key market of the United States.

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A year later, we witnessed the same phenomenon in the streaming space when Squid Game captured viewers’ attention on Netflix.

Squid Game was made by Siren Pictures, a Korean-based outfit that had earlier made three films prior, none of which had gained traction outside of Korea.

It was made with a production budget of US$21 million for ten episodes. Contrast the average US$2 million per episode of Squid Games with Stranger Things, with its US$12 million-per-episode budget.

Still, this was a risky bet. And, clearly, it paid off— only Netflix knows the absolute numbers in terms of acquisition and retention, but from a marketing perspective, it was a huge hit, with the title and Netflix shaping the global zeitgeist for weeks.

The signals are now undeniable: audiences have become receptive to excellent storytelling and quality content, whether or not it comes with subtitles and recognisable faces.

As the leader in the streaming-entertainment space, Netflix might have been tempted to rest on its success and hedge against its risk. Instead, in an industry that too often reacts slowly to change, the company understood the importance of bold, swift action.

Sticking with a proven formula is easy. It is comfortable. It requires no internal justification.

But it’s the wrong thing to do in today’s fierce battle for audiences.

Test and learn

Not every title will be a hit— nor should it be. If it is, then you’re not taking enough risks!

Acquisition teams should move out of their comfort zones and search for content that may not even have US distribution.

By the time it has, it is no longer as remarkable as it needs to be. Your competitors are just as able to pick it up as you are, so you gain no competitive advantage.

New, upcoming sources of production— Korea, Turkey, India, Nigeria (Nollywood) and, now, almost every other producer country— are where hidden gems are to be found.

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For those without the infrastructure or scale of a Netflix, how can they go about sourcing and discovering content globally?

Digital solutions platforms help

Online content marketplaces have aggregated massive catalogues of content globally. They now provide the convenience to buyers of a single destination to easily search for content, no matter where it originates. This allows acquisitions teams to look further than what has distribution locally.

With standardised metadata, in English, with trailers and screeners instantly available, online content marketplaces allow acquisition teams to quickly search for and evaluate titles to find those remarkable titles that will differentiate your platform.

Once you’ve acquired a piece of content, you can push it out and learn how it performs. If it moves the needle, turn up the marketing machine (as Netflix did for “Squid Game.”) Unique, objectively interesting content gets people talking. And word of mouth can be a powerful, organic promotional tool.

New pricing models, e.g. per viewer, per minute (or, if yours is an ad-funded platform, a percentage share of ad revenue), means that taking these more adventurous acquisition choices does not mean having to pay a flat rate and the platform taking all the risk.

In the end, there’s no magic formula or set of data points that can consistently predict which titles will hit and which won’t. Entertainment is a creative industry, and creating content is still principally an art rather than a science.

But by understanding your brand, your audience and precisely what you’re measuring for (retention? watch times? new subscribers?), you’ll have what you need to build a global acquisition strategy and truly differentiate your brand in a crowded, competitive market.

First published on Media Play News on January 21, 2022

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