In the multi-platform environment of TV, website, mobile and video-on-demand, there is bound to be problems in retaining audience attention and loyalty. This issue formed the core of a Monday conference panel session: Do you know who your audience is? Who’s writing the new rules of engagement?
John Hegarty, chairman and worldwide creative director of the UK ad agency BBH, admitted he really didn’t understand platforms. “In the ad industry, we’ve had to know how to write for different platforms a€” television, print, the Internet a€” for many years. What I’m really finding is the incredible lack of talent. We’re all artists but some of us should not exhibit.”
User-generated content is muddling the entertainment business, said Lewis Henderson, senior vice-president and head of digital media at William Morris Agency. “Some things are fascinating but user-generated content can also cause disruption. At the end of the day, only a small percentage of this content will float to the top.”
Peter Tortorici, president of the US communications agency GroupM Entertainment dealt with the challenge of how to locate increasingly fragmented audiences. “We now have to re-aggregate the audiences that we used to find easily in one place,” he said.
Ben Silverman, CEO of Reveille, the US-based branded entertainment TV producer, felt that one way of engaging the attention and loyalty of audiences was for content producers and advertisers to collaborate on risky ideas that can become the next big thing.
