Media Strategy: Knowing Your Market

The US market: 50  channels to talk to

The main question addressed in this series of posts has been: how do I identify a market for my content? And the emphasis has not been on home markets, but external markets, in other words, exports.

I have emphasized a knowledge-based approach (hope that does not sound pretentious.) I observe that the traditional approach to sales is: show of your wares, attract as much attention as you can, build relationships. All essential, but knowledge can make it even more effective.

First question about the country or market you are looking at is: where are the gaps? However good your contacts, a basic framework or theory of content demand will help focus those enquiries and provide scope for independent initiatives.

So start with the basic assumption that mainstream audiences prefer home-made content.I tried to explain the reason for this cultural preference in the first post in this series.

I will talk about non-mainstream channels at a later date.

Look first for what they can’t they do themselves, or do enough of. Depending on the size of the country or market, there could be many types of content that cannot be made at home in the required quantities…expensive documentaries, drama, comedy, formats for games or reality entertainment.

I use primetime drama as a core example because it is so expensive that even countries with large populations cannot afford as much as they need.

For mainstream audiences, here are some questions:

Is it familiar enough? In other words, even if that audience is used to dubbed or subtitled material, will they be able to make sense of it?

I explained in an earlier blog that basic aspects of US life, for example, have become so familiar that they pose few “cognitive” issues.  A French or British drama on the other hand needs a bit more help. The British series called Sherlock has done quite well – Sherlock Holmes is quite a widely known character, at least in Europe. Midsummer Murders, known around the world mainly as Inspector Barnaby, uses an English village as its location, familiar from the British detective novel, another worldwide favourite.

Stories need not only to feel familiar. They also need to be attractive and relevant. Famous cities work better than country towns.

As for the subject matter, it will have to do a traditional job in a special way. In an earlier post I talked about the human fascination with murder. Every schedule in every country on our planet offers murder mysteries. Decide what is missing from their repertoire and see if you have got it, or can make it.

Our fascination with murder is one of many instinctive biological responses that secure attention. Suspense is another – an ancient response that warns us to pay attention because something bad may be about to happen.

The approach taken in this series is very basic. It is intended to make the point that basic knowledge helps to ground everything that follows. In future posts I will try to understand the more intricate problem of why something succeeds -- sometimes unexpectedly.

But the first step must always be to identify and know the customer. The largest media market in the world is the US. It is only recently that other players have sought to sell into that market on any scale. But things are changing.

That is why structure of the US market is has become so important. To help approach that market from outside, our company has created, in association with the UK magazine Broadcast,  the most comprehensive report on the US market ever written. It’s called US TV: Commissioning Strategies: 2011 to 2012. You can visit the micro-site by clicking the link.

On Vacation

I am on holiday for two weeks.

Media Strategy: Ancient Instincts, New Stories

Image via Wikipedia

Murder: Fascinated and Revolted

Last week I tried to say something about the very basics of content that sells.

You have something they want and they cannot do it themselves.

But this is entertainment. What people want is mysterious and highly personal. How can you generalize?

That’s what we try to do.

Last week I suggested that one of the things that excite people is a place where they would like to be.

One of the reasons US content is so popular – but only one – is because it has been, for the last century, a country where enterprising people could go and live, a destination of choice, a place you could dream about.

In the process it became a familiar place – which is another condition for content that travels. There needs to be some element of familiarity.

So if your location is not a familiar one, you will need to figure how to make it both familiar and interesting. For Familiarity and Novelty are both essential. Relevance is important, too. People will be interested in a location that is cool, fashionable, leading edge in some way, a place they would want to visit or a way of life they might like to be part of….

In addition, you need, in the main, to show people whom the audiences can look up to, characters who are smart, or good looking or brave or enterprising and who show it in the things they do or say. As I have said in a previous post, evolution has provided us with a need for behaviour models. It’s how we learn what to do, how to behave.

There are other things that matter deeply, so much so that you can revisit them again and again and again, concerns that come from deep in our evolutionary past. For example, we are obsessed with murder. Perhaps that is because humans only survived by living in groups that held together because the punished murder –, most of us have a deep revulsion for murder and a deep desire to see the murder caught and punished.

But that deep code of instinctive justice also drives the desire for revenge – which often comes into play when a justice system breaks down. These instinct sometimes fight one another create conflicts which interest us greatly.

By the same token we are endlessly interested in sex and love. Biologists would say that that our role is to carry genes forward into the next generation so we ha e an instinctive interest in everything to do with reproduction, finding the best mate, etc..

Media Strategy: it's about Geopolitics too

Stieg Larsson: speaking as a European...

If you are going to be an exporter of content, you need to know what other countries are looking for.

It’s quite simple really: they are looking for what they cannot do themselves. Nearly everyone prefers content from their own country, in their own language. We are all locked into our private worlds, languages and cultures.

Let us take some examples. Drama is expensive – something many countries can only afford in small quantities. Some countries produce only low-budget soaps – so they may provide a market for good-quality mid-evening series. Even countries which can afford some primetime drama will have be gaps in the schedule.

Because of the preference for own-language work, format licensing has been a huge success. The key elements of the production are locked into a format bible, which is, in essence, a do-it-yourself manual for the production of a hit show.

And some factual content is of generic interest, natural history being the most obvious example. I won’t be saying much about news here, but news footage falls into that category too.

There are also a while number of practical considerations that go beyond price. Content must accommodate a country’s viewing patterns and scheduling habits.

These are some of the questions that need answers before assessing the potential demand in a given market. This can all be done with a careful look at a given country’s media structures and outputs. I will be saying more about how to assess a given market in later posts.

However there are many intangibles, which are more interesting because they are seldom discussed in a commercial context.

Starting a Media Strategy: Culture and Basic Instinct

What is Culture?

My first blogs of 2011 will be about how to create a successful national media strategy. You will be able to apply them anywhere.

A national media strategy is about how a government can help its media industries to flourish, that is perform somewhere near their potential.

I put most emphasis on the global or international dimension, and start with the core elements of a media strategy, that is, the elements of human behaviour which media content addresses.

Nearly everyone else discussing media strategy simply skips this phase and concentrates in incentives or financial tools. We may well end up there, but this first stage is essential. You can't have a media strategy without a framing theory of culture and and the human need for culture.

This series of postings will end with diagnostic questions, designed to identify the position you start from and what strategic options are open to your particular media industry.  You will then be able to assess where you think your industry can best add value.

If you were a food manufacturer or a nation that relied heavily on food exports, you would accept the need to be up to speed with the best knowledge: new scientific research on cultivation, new technology, the nutritional value of your foods, changing demand around the world. You might also want to define and promote a brand – like Belgium is famous for chocolates.

Ultimately, as a food exporting nation, you are addressing a universal need: humans have to eat. Hunger – and the pleasure we get from food – are two of the ways nature has found to make us pay attention to that need.

The Cultural Paradigm

A media strategy addresses the human need to be part of a culture. Humans need culture like they need food. A given culture is the sum total of the ways in which people interact in a given group. (The  chart, originally developed by Gerry Johnson and Kevin Scholes to examine corporate cultures, covers the many dimensions well).


"Culture" is often misused to mean "Arts". 


A few weeks back, I gave you a current view from the two scientists on the root instinct that drives human culture: an instinct to copy others. (The authors of this work explain it as “fast and frugal learning”: the way you pick up the basic rules of life).