It’s clear that streaming has dominated the media and entertainment landscape for the last few years. Audience expectations have shifted from linear distribution to multicast and ‘all-at-once’ media consumption.
This was solidified at the weekend with Apple TV+’s CODA winning best picture at the Oscars; the first streaming-original film to win the award. This marks a huge step forward for streaming giants who have been competing not only with one another, but with the wider industry of ‘Hollywood’ – which has often looked down its nose at the streaming experience vs going to see something on the ‘silver screen’.
But what does it mean for the future of the streaming landscape? There’s been something of an assumption over the last few years that the streaming service giants are on top, soaking up the glory of changing an entire industry – effectively untouchable. But this isn’t strictly true.
What CODA’s win does – besides drive more people to Apple TV+ (which I maintain is the most underrated of the major streamers) – is justify why streamers have been spending money on original content production. Being the only place to watch any number of award-winning films is as good an advertisement as any that your service is worth the monthly investment from consumers.
And once they’ve signed up, there needs to be a lot more going on to keep those audiences engaged.
The streamers’ role in a shifted landscape
These industry-defining organisations have done such a good job in, well, defining an industry, that they’ve laid out a blueprint for many others to follow. This means there’s more competition than ever, so they need to fight to maintain audience share and continue delivering the best possible at-home experiences.
It’s because of this that the R&D within a streaming service provider needs to be as robust as possible. They need to be releasing tiny updates and doing beta tests constantly in order to create brilliant experiences and keep audiences tuned in to their service instead of a competitor. Let alone deciding to go and read a book instead.
This is all about quality of service, which means consumer-facing technologies like ad insertion, subtitling or the UI need to be as seamless as possible. And so do the processes happening behind the scenes like encoding and network switching. As in many tech-driven industries, the smallest differences can give you a competitive edge and streaming is no different.
The marketers’ challenge: wish you were here…?
For marketers in many industries, a big part of their role is to define ideal customers, qualifying them from a wide pool of prospects. And while this is true for many of our clients in enterprise technology, that isn’t the case for marketers in the media and entertainment space.
For technology vendors and service providers specialising in the creation, post-production and distribution of media and entertainment experiences, potential customers have already been defined. It’s not about finding the destination; it’s about making the journey.
If you’re a technology vendor or service provider trying to reach streaming service providers for example, you know exactly who your potential customers are – especially at a time when there are so many of them. You’ll know how much of your potential market you’re already taking advantage of and how your tech can help the rest of it.
Luckily, we’re comprised of multiple practices here at the lorries. Our enterprise tech teams are experts at helping their clients discover their prospects while our media, entertainment and broadcast teams know how to help streaming technology vendors and service providers reach their predefined target audience.
In our latest campaign ‘Wish you were here’, we’re concentrating on how agencies that specialise in the media and entertainment industry (yes, that’s us) can help you make that journey. You don’t need long studies of potential pools of prospects. Instead, you need us to work quickly to define how you speak to streamers, plan a campaign that’s going to resonate with them, and ultimately deliver a campaign that lets you speak to this dominant part of the entertainment industry.
Full stream ahead: how to connect with your new audience
No matter whether your journey as a streaming tech marketer needs to get you in front of the industry giants, the up-and-coming contenders or the niche streaming services, it’s all about how you position your brand and your technology.
Streamers don’t need big flashy marketing pitches. They’ll connect better with communications campaigns that demonstrate how you can help them at a technical level. As an organisation that’s continually thinking about its end user, streamers want technology partners that do the same thing. Think about how your technology impacts not just your customer, but their customer.
Day in, day out, our media and entertainment team works with streaming tech providers that are trying to connect with a wider audience than ever before. And because of that, we know how to deliver a campaign that uses the right kinds of messages, delivers the most engaging content, and connects with the right audiences.
And in our latest ebook; ‘Wish you were here’, we’re spilling the beans. We’ve outlined the language you need to use, the best approach to take, and some of the day-to-day marketing activities that form an impactful communications campaign to reach the world of streaming.
Download our new ebook and get in touch with the media and entertainment team on hello@rlyl.com if you think we can create a campaign to help you reach your destination.
