In Search of Profits,
by Joyce A. Schwarz (originally published) 5/23/2000
With all the “big boys” at the Cannes Film Festival that week, the new wave of digital entertainment producers and solutions ranging from Eveo, First Look.com, Pseudo, On2, iPix, WildBrain.com joined panels with Oxygen and Microsoft TV platform executives. Was this a case of when the cat’s away the mouse will play?
THE DEATH OF DEN (Digital Entertainment Network)
Only time will tell, since some of the biggest companies on stage and in the exhibit areas were only gleams in their founders’ eyes at this time last year. Some flush with VC funding, the newbies are promising to create and distribute the next wave of content.
On closing day (of Digital Hollywood 2000)Thursday, when the Wall Street Journal tolled the death knoll for DEN (Digital Entertainment Network) and Boo.com, conference attendees were searching out panels on monetizing movies on the Net and building traffic and brands. Back to show business again, with the emphasis on the “business” and bottom line. But as one executive admitted, “No one’s making money on content yet”.
FROM SAM DONALDSON TO COURTNEY LOVE....
The diversity of the keynoters from ABC anchor Sam Donaldson to music/film artist Courtney Love to reporter Carl Bernstein to investor John Scully (former Apple head) seemed to reflect an industry in flux from an old network and studio economy to maverick independents players
GEN Y ON THE NET.....
Moderating one of the final panels of the final day, this reporter asked seven key players in creating content and community for the next generation their secrets for new economy success. During this panel “Gen Y on the Net—Teen Sites Strategies for Entertainment and Commerce”, Renny Gleeson, senior VP marketing and one of the original founders of ITurf said it best when he proclaimed, “One site does not fit all”. ITurf is a network of nine proprietary sites. Gleeson showed a fast-paced, grainy digital video clip from the ITurf ad campaign that underscored his firm’s goal to be where the action is as both a destination and a hub for the 13 to 24 age group
VOXXY....signs Jennifer Anniston
Voxxy isn’t due to launch until this fall, but Kristi Kaylor, president and co-founder is already developing ”funky rich-media experiences” that are platform agnostic. Voxxy has made digital cable channel deals and signed a partnership with the Microsoft Television development group. Kaylor says, “We’ve talked with thousands of girls to find out what they want to see. We have international and local advisory groups.” Voxxy has also signed “Friend’s” Jennifer Anniston for a series and as spokesperson.
Start out by researching what your audience wants and involve the users in the creation, advised Alan Schulman, EVP, managing director for Pittard Sullivan, New York, who has created Web sites for Fox Family Channel, ESPN, Lifetime, ABC, USA and National Geographic.
ALLOY.COM (still alive in 2006)
The winning trio for reaching Alloy’s (Alloy.com) audience was to create a) an online presence, b) a catalog that reaches 20 to 25 million teens and follow it up with c) a popular e-zine. “We just bombed the market with catalogs, followed it up with emails and drove the boys and girls to our site”, explained CEO Matt Diamond. This convergence of content, community and commerce has helped brand Alloy as a leader for Gen Y.
“Teens know best what teens want to see,” said Margaret Gould Stewart who is senior director of Integration and Design for the Lycos Network, which features Angelfire.com, Tripod.com and htmlGear.com, all which include significant teen audiences totaling more than 10 million registered users. The multi-brand strategy has worked well for Lycos, she said. And she added it should continue to work on an international sphere.
iFUSE.com
The goal is to inform, engage and entertain your audience, maintained Rich Battista, CEO of iFuse, a text-based play, not a broadband play. Battista co-founded the site after spending nine years in the entertainment industry with News Corp/Fox after a stint with Morgan Stanley & Co. The right mix he sees for the future is entertainment, pop culture and news. It’s a lifestyle segmentation, not necessarily a demographic split, he advised.
SNOWBALL.com....
A network of 250 independent Web sites forms Snowball.com, according to Teresa M. Crummet, VP of marketing. “We have a Web-centric approach to reach the 13- to 30-year-old,” she added. “We seek out addictive content by and for this generation with student writers.” Rather than Gen Y, Snowball has branded the term “Gen I”, The Internet Generation, under Crummitt’s marketing initiatives. Her background with companies such as Walt Disney and American Express and her experience in launching CyberCash prepared her well for her programs “by and for the generation”.
It’s a generation full of surprises the panel said when asked about Napster and Nutella and other self-propagating technologies
Schulman said, “You have to be prepared for he Napsters”. Gen Y panelists agreed that you can’t simply be a dot-com, you have to be a cross-media company. This generation makes style, they don’t just wear it.
But what’s in style today maybe oh-so-last-year next week.
The good news is that the Internet works in real time
Almost like that thing that we once called live TV!
Joyce Schwarz strategist based in Marina Del Rey
California.head of JCOM, www.joycecom.com. You can reach her at [email protected].
In a former life, she was a an executive at Foote Cone & Belding in San Francisco.
Class site.
Your site has very much liked me.
Different work!!!
Posted by: Cruninov | July 13, 2007 at 11:17 AM