Methodology, Skills and Professional Benefits Participants Participants' Comments MEDICI Head of Training «The 12 Labours of Hercules» Report of the Reports – Workshops 1 to 4

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Eighth Workshop – 26 to 28 September 2018, Royaumont Abbey, France

Module 2 – How to access smart data to better reach the audience?

Impulse speaker: Raimo Lang (YLE/Creative Content division product development for VOD, AOD, TV, radio and on-line)

Please also see Raimo Lang’s presentation (PPTX)

Introduction

A new regulation is taking place in Europe for VoD and SVoD platforms to respect the requirements of each country in terms of supporting local projects and European content. They will have to contribute to the financing of projects and give access to their data. It will be a long process. In order to create a highly relevant content for different audience segments, a better understanding of recipients is needed.

• There is a dramatic decline in cinema-goers and television audience among people below 60. There is so much competition for the audiences’ attention. So we need a better understanding of the audiences in order to be able to reach them. How can producers and funds gain a better understanding of a respective audience?
• There is some quantitative data available that could be used by the industry and funds to get to know better their audience. How can funds access that data?
• Is it not time for action?
• How could funds co-operate on creating their own data as well as getting access to the existing data?

Challenges associated with data harvesting

• There is a lot of talk about the access to smart data. Smart data consists of different massive datasets that have been correlated to bring us to some intelligence. However, it is still only historical data that, indeed, plays an important role in the evaluation of projects, funds, audience engagement and participation, reception, etc. However, this data is useless when you introduce it into the creation process, trying to look into the future and figure out the type of content that could potentially work. It numbs creativity and kills innovation.
• Film funds collect facts and figures about the supported films from cinemas, broadcasters, retailers and VoD platforms, and by following the films’ performance at film festivals. However, all that data is not correlated and does not provide an in-depth audience insight.
• There is also a lot of debate about the quality of the television data because the methods that broadcasters use tend to be old-fashioned and cover only a small sample of viewers. Additionally, this data gives little insight into the emotional aspect of the audience vis-à-vis the content. In other words, broadcasters know what people watch, but they do not know why they watch it?
• A dataset for creation, on the other hand, is data that you create through a direct and intimate dialogue with representatives of the audiences and will be discussed in more details throughout this module. A number of public broadcasters in Europe have created a methodology for developing user-centered content design to generate this type of data. However, it is still a rarity among the public film funds.

Data-Harvesting Case Study: The Finnish Public Broadcaster (YLE)

The YLE’s Creative Content Division for product development for different platforms makes distinction between

• Data for evaluation/Scientific data for evaluation that YLE uses to obtain more audience-related knowledge. This data is collective, objective, transparent, logical and quantitative. It measures and legitimizes the success. However, this type of data is dead. It tells you that you have to make more films for the young audience, but it does not tell you how to make a script and how to talk to the audiences.
• A completely different type of data that is generated by scriptwriters and directors who traditionally do not get inspired by the data for evaluation. This data is based on the writer’s observation. It is personal, interpretive, subjective, inspirational, focused on relevance and small signals. It helps more in writing scripts and understanding better, for example, the audience below 30 years.
• Data use by YLE is a mixture of the above two, and is generated via a “Content Probes” methodology that will be explained below.

“Content Probes” as a methodology

Content Probes is a new methodology for data-based content development created by YLE. It is a systematic mix of science and artistic observation (it combines data provided by means of both scientific methods and writers’ observation).

The main characteristics of Content Probes are the following:

• Content probes try to use the best from both types of data.
• They help writers through collecting thoughts and revelations from the people who are different than the writers themselves. For example, you can show demos of a drama in development to representatives of the target audience during numerous user-workshops and get feedback based on which you can continue developing the content.

Why YLE uses the Content Probes methodology?

• It is particularly relevant for targeting the below-30 audiences that the traditional broadcasters loose after they stop watching the children’s programmes. YLE’s audience research indicated that the demand of young people is more profound than assumed. It is apparently a generation that does not want only entertainment, but wishes to be engaged on a more complex level. These findings opened a new area for the public financers of audiovisual content that are expected by default to produce content that will not be only commercial and entertaining.
• It is not only public service broadcasters that do not understand audience below 30. Even young filmmakers do not understand their own generation well enough. Filmmakers usually come from the middle-class and well-off families. They understand only some part of their generation. The Content Probes provides them, and all other content creators, with a new approach and method that can help them find out what is relevant for a potential audience - what people will want to find, watch, like and share.

How the Content Probes methodology is implemented

• To better understand the context in which this methodology is used it should be stated that YLE launched their VoD platform (YLE arena) in 2008. There they will publish an entire series the same night the first episode is screened on TV, making it available to everybody for free. As a result, the audience began considering YLE-content more relevant, which in return provided more audience stability for the broadcaster whose financing – that mainly comes from the government – depends on the social impact of the produced content.
• The methodology of Content Probes has been applied only to catalogue-based entertainment (content published on VOD) not event-based content and studio-entertainment that operate in different manner regarding the audience-building.
• YLE’s goal is that the produced programme will not only be relevant for only 2-3 weeks. The focus is on quality projects that could stay in the catalogue for a long time (2-5 years).
• To begin with, YLE sampled out series that were immensely popular with different audiences and researched how people used them when they discovered them in the YLE’s catalogue. The research 1) measured if the sampled series represented a monomedia or multimedia content; 2) explored the goal of the series and 3) explored its impact on society and people.
• The results coming out of Content Probes are not the numbers, but insights into the impact that content has on society and the target audience groups. In other words, using Content Probes implies jumping out of the channel era where the goal was to measure numerically how many people watched certain channels into the catalogue era. Here the goal is to create and measure the social impact of social media, VoD, journal reviews.
• Social Probes allow for the creative people to become more involved with their audience during the development phase. They cannot anymore have the attitude: “we made a nice film and now it is out of our hands what happens with it”. They are now have obliged to explore themselves what would people think about their films and they have to talk about it with all involved and evaluate the impact.
• Content Probes require that a larger number of viewpoints be considered during the development.
• Conceptually, the Content Probes rely on the Design Thinking Principles invented at the D-School, Stanford University in 2005 as a human-centered innovation process guided by prototyping. Translated into the language of filmmaking, it means that content-makers need to know whom they are approaching with their content emotionally. Very often filmmakers have false ideas about what the audience needs, because they do not know the people personally. They must learn to truly empathize with their target audiences, define what are the wants and needs, ideate, then prototype in order to test what they have created and then evaluate the test results. Only after this first iteration process can creatives start to develop the actual content. In this way they target the primary audience already during development, while the secondary audience is addressed later, after the content has been produced.

Content Probes Elements

The Content Probes consist of four elements that are all considered during the content-making process:

1. One set of questions / exercises addresses is “what we know” (explicit professional knowledge).
2. The second One set of questions / exercises includes the things “we know that we do not know” (rational research).
3. The third set of questions / exercises addresses what we do not know what we know (silent professional knowledge)
4. The fourth element is the source of radical change – “we do not know what we do not know”. This element defines the most critical point in content development – the area where dangers lie and where the greatest potential could be.

Content Probes Methods

The YLE developed the following two concrete methods of collecting data following the Content Probes design:

• Empathizing with the audience: This method directly enables content-creators to understand people that are not like the content-creators themselves. When a content-creator does not understand the things his content is about, the product simply will not appeal to the target audience. The content-makers tend to develop content on the basis of a lot of assumptions, but if they do not do a reality-check on those assumptions, they may easily end up on the wrong path. To avoid this problem, the YLE introduced the method of confronting content-makers with people they are writing about in order to inspire a true empathy. According to this method, ten content-makers define twelve prototypes and profiles of people they would like to get to know better since they are writing about and for them. Then they find the real people (of certain age, profession, etc.) representing those profiles. They then create exercise books for them. Creating exercise books is a projective exercise. Instead of being asked about their reality and facts, people are asked about, for example, their imagination and other delicate, more qualitative, stuff. The selected people spend ten days filling out those books before they send them back to content-creators who use them for inspiration when developing content. These books can also be circulated to different groups of content-creators working within the same genre.
• User workshops: The YLE introduced this method more recently in order to generate objective qualitative data about the content-users. User workshops validate development work together with target users. So far, the YLE has conducted nearly 100 of these workshops. Each of them takes two hours during one evening and involves the team that created the content, eight demanding target users, and a facilitator who takes care of the method. This method reminds of the well-known “focus group” method by its set-up, but is different. During user workshops, people do not only respond freely to a ready-made content (pilot) like it happens in focus groups. The content that is provided for them during user workshops is rather like a buffet. For example, people are provided with four options and asked to choose the best and the worst one and argument their choice. In this manner, they do not just say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to a prepared pilot. Also, during the workshop, creators present 5-7 crucial elements of their content such as theme, characters, storyline, metatext, motivation, audiovisual style, etc. These elements are then reviewed and co-developed with the users. All this helps content-creators to learn in the stage of early development if and how the target audiences correspond with the envisioned content elements. It ensures that the key subject and the narrative work are relevant to the audience, thus the risks become controlled and unexpected pitfalls can be avoided.

Case studies illuminating the Content Probes Methodology

Drama series “Love Mila”

“Love Mila” was the YLE’s first success series. It was made for the age group of between 13 and 17, but the secondary audience included people until the age of 45.

The YLE content-creators started the whole process by conducting research and organizing workshops in order to understand the generation that was between 15 and 25. The data provided personal insights into the target generation. The YLE also set a high benchmark regarding the style and the quality of the series in accordance with the international standards, which the young generation liked. To sum it up, the YLE content developers made radical changes in the following four areas that, which allowed them to develop an experience that could be elaborated on in future projects:

Length: Instead of producing one long or normal television series, Love Mila consisted of much shorter episodes (5-8 minutes) that were grouped into seasons of 26 and 72 episodes. It was done in line with the demands of young audiences that require short formats when it comes to drama series.

Release window: Instead of television channel, the series was released completely on VoD. It will also be on Youtube. The main character had a live Instagram profile showing situations that happen in-between the drama episodes.

Genre: The series represents the switch from single genre stories to a multiple-genres-style. Each episode played on a different film genre, which is exactly what young people like and demand.

Marketing strategy: The YLE marketing was replaced by peer-group marketing, which means that the content was promoted virally via digital social media.

Crime project 2015-2016

The YLE did a similar thing with a crime project. A writer’s lab was established where guests in some way or other related to crime were invited into the workshops: criminals, police, sociologists, sex workers, social workers from aid centers, crime writers, and therapists. In parallel the writers analyzed in detail ten prominent, international crime series. This process translated into a step-by-step development of themes and concepts. During the workshops, the writers created new crime scenes that would refresh the existing crime genre in Finland with new, realistic ingredients. The lab phase is called “the pre-year” as it precedes the formal development process. During the pre-year writers develop an early concept that they then pitched to the YLE commissioners.

Group Exercise

The MEDICI participants, divided into new group formations. They were then asked to design a co-development incentive that would include audience research. They had to consider the following questions:

• What kind of insights and data will you be asking for from the producers?
• What kind of data will you, the funding body, need to validate the proposal?
• Were any critical issues brought up in the constructive discussion during the group work?

The outcome of the group exercise

Group 1: “Co-development Scheme”

We expect producers to provide us with a unique set of data for a unique product. Documentary filmmakers are already doing this because they are very good in articulating the motivation behind and relevance of their projects. They conduct field research thus provide unique qualitative and quantitative data.

However, in our co-development scheme, the data would be only supplementary to the process. Big studios have hundreds of people in their departments harvesting data about the current situation, future options and about the competitors, but they still often fail. Therefore, data must not be the main factor for decision-makers. Decision-makers in our co-development fund should remain open also for surprises and risks; they should not only blindly follow the data.

Group 2: “Fifty Shades of Numbers”

We call our co-development fund “Fifty Shades of Numbers”. We, as public film funders, do not want to commission work. Our main mission would be to provide education for producers about data because data may influence the creativity in a negative way as well. Producers would have to learn how to use data in a constructive and liberating way. Furthermore, we would provide the means for harvesting data. It would include hiring data-experts and paying for the technicians that producers may need while working with data. The experts would work with the creative team so they do not get stuck and “drown by numbers”. The data should be both – a qualitative and quantitative – intelligence.

After developing a concept based on the relevant data, the producer would come to the fund and present the concepts and projects. Apart form the quality, producers would need to provide evidence that there is a market for a particular project. Our co-development fund would be international so producers must come up with projects that involve at least two countries. We would then look into the content and select the project with the best quality.

Finally, the producers who would receive the funding for collecting data would be obliged to bring back that data to the fund. The fund would archive it for future uses.

Group 3: “Sexxi”

Our co-development fund would be called “Sexxi” We would distribute our funding in two ways.

• We would spend money on research. In that regard, a creative collaboration lab to support research on audience would be arranged. The lab would create room for producers, writers and directors to work together on the pitch for their film and to design the strategy for reaching a wider audience in several countries. The lab would also enable the creative teams to learn from other sectors such as TV-series, TV-drama or animated series that have already been very successful in researching demands of their audiences.
• The remaining funding would be spent on prototypes, animatics, data-analysts, script-doctors, marketing exerts, researchers and other kinds of experts that filmmakers may need. We would focus on original stories and those adaptations that bear urgency and feature very current stories. Before granting co-development support, we would also check if the film is urgent, historically and culturally relevant or if the audiences can communicate well with it on an emotional level? However, we are still not sure how we would validate the relevance and the emotional aspect of the films. Could data do it better than the old commissioners?

Group 4: “Seduce Us”

Our co-development fund would be called “Seduce Us”. We would not expect the producer to have a finished script the moment they apply, but they would have to be able to present their idea, topic, story and format. They would propose some serious research and provide a detailed description of their research methodology, target audience groups and market analysis for every country involved in co-development. They would also be asked to do focus groups with marketing experts that we would assign to projects as facilitators. All the co-producing companies would have to be involved in all the activities.

However, we still find the process of assessment and evaluation tricky. It comes from the fact that there are differences between film funds. Some funds expect producers to do all the above activities during the development phase while some funds do not. In some countries producers are not used to researching audience and they do not have experience with that, which would make it difficult for them to apply for the fund like the one we propose.

Group 5: “Dating Data”

We called our co-development incentive “Dating data”. We see it as a call for tender. Every year we would target projects for different audiences. The first year would be dedicated to new generations of teenagers (age 10-15). We would do it through three steps:

• The first step consists of a workshop that we as a co-development fund would organize for producers. As we have almost no knowledge about data, we would hire marketing researchers who can explain how to find and make both qualitative and quantitative data. This workshop would be mandatory and producers who want to progress to the next funding stage with their project would have to attend it.
• The Second step is pre-development. There must be at least two producers attached to a project at this stage. Submitted projects could be of any genre, length and format. Producers submit their projects together with data generated during the workshop. They are expected to talk with influencers from social media, do interviews, etc. We, as a co-development fund, need to see when and where the audiences want to see the future film based on the specific data for every project.
• In the last stage we would allocate the money to the selected projects of best quality.

Cooperation between public funds in an increasingly complex and international environment: opportunities, actions, ideas

• Introduction
• Module 1a – Panel: Co-operation between funds means mainly supporting co-production
• Module 1b – Are there possible alternatives?
• Module 2 – How to access smart data to better reach the audience?
• Module 3 – How could funds help each other to make the projects they co-finance visible?
• Module 4a – How to simplify and make life easier for funds and producers in terms of paperwork.
• Module 4b – Digitizing the Funding Process
• Module 5 – How to assess the performance of funding programs dedicated to international co-operation?

• List of Participants (PDF)
• MEDICI Eighth Workshop Full Report (PDF)

Illustrations by KAK

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