54 Executive Summary
theibcdaily
Leaders’ Summit
Bringing Gen Z into focus Tom Pickett CEO, Ellation Region: USA Interviewed by: Monica Heck
When the audience is Generation Z (also known to marketers as post-millennials), following the audience becomes a major challenge, particularly for linear TV channels and production businesses. Engaging with Gen Z and adapting strategies and products to attract them and make money is difficult when their eyeballs are split across multiple fragmented channels, including YouTube, Twitter, Snapchat, Netflix and Amazon, in a seemingly fickle manner. Despite talk of world domination by the likes of Netflix and its creation of a whole new content distribution world, there exists a real opportunity for audience-focused aggregators to emerge, according to Tom Pickett, CEO of Ellation. And this could be an opportunity for branded distributors and channels who are looking for new ways to package their content. “This is the next wave,” he explains. “There will be a new set of distributors that emerge and become best in class audience aggregators that can really super-serve particular segments.” Pickett speaks from experience. Having graduated from the ranks of Google and
YouTube, following a stint in the US Navy as an F/A-18 pilot and ‘Top Gun’ alumnus, he’s now in charge of Crunchyroll, a premium video service focused on Japanese animé with over 20 million registered users and one million paying subscribers. His remit also includes VRV, a new audience-focused subscription platform built for fans of animé, animation, gaming, comedy and geek culture. “Gen Z’s whole world is shaped by distribution over mobile devices,” says Pickett. “They’re not native to the traditional TV bundle; they are going to piece together several digital services that have brands they have grown up with.” To reach this elusive demographic, Pickett urges broadcasters to engage with fans on their turf. That means a hefty social media presence, some patience and the acceptance that a YouTube and Facebook presence may not be major money-making efforts. “It’s a new concept for a lot of the traditional folk, that a presence and investment in social media won’t pay off immediately in terms of economics, but will become the source of their audience funnel of the future, such that you can upsell and drive them to a place
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where over time you get the economic return from them. It’s a two-way process across multiple dimensions.” To target particular audiences, there are interesting ways to go beyond video, according to Pickett, including fostering communities to enable fans to connect on a deeper level, through merchandise and events. “The idea is to serve particular audience segments in a way that differentiates against the big mainstream services, like Amazon and Netflix and Hulu.” While these services are doing a great job at targeting massive subscriber bases by offering a little content for everybody, Pickett believes there’s a big opportunity to focus on more particular passion areas or audience segments. “There’s an opportunity to be everything to someone, and not something for everyone, by serving audiences in a way that’s different from the mass services.” Aggregation and bundling will also matter increasingly in the future, concludes Pickett. “We are going through a phase of service fragmentation but as we move forward, we will see new bundles packaged in interesting combinations in the video distribution world.”
“There’s an opportunity to be everything to someone, and not something for everyone”
26/09/2017 11:25