Has TV “got” social media yet? For Wale Gbadamosi-Oyekanmi, one thing is certain: social TV can no longer be entrusted to “summer interns”. Hence his agency, Darewin, which handles not only the social presences of hit French comedy show Bref (“So” in English), but also for a growing number of reality and chat shows, hand-in-hand with their producers and broadcasters. He told MIPBlog how.

MIPBlog: How did you get into TV in the first place, and social TV inparticular?

Wale Gbadamosi-Oyekanmi: I started working as a creative executive on hit shows for TV production companies like Endemol or Coyote, and also on digital content for digital platforms such as canalplus.fr. After launching MyPelouse.com, a successful buzz website during the 2010 football World Cup, I was recruited by the international digital advertising agency Buzzman to creatively push forward their PR & social media departement. In 2011, the first social TV campaigns started in France. My combination of both TV and digital skills was seen as a great asset. So I founded Darewin in 2011.

In 2002, when I was taking a small handmade promo of Sofia’s Diary to broadcasters, mobile operators and portals, I had no idea about the potential of a cross-media property and the way audiences were changing their habits of watching entertainment, especially television. I just knew that I had this little character that had these small stories that I wanted to be heard (and broadcast).

What I did know at the time was that it didn’t make any sense to limit the content to just one platform. Internet or mobile usage was exploding, especially with teenagers and young adults, and they were being used to tell the story we wanted to tell without the limits or the formats of TV broadcast. This self-funded cross-media approach paid off and let our small story become a mass-market phenomenon, becoming one of the top TV Shows on Portuguese broadcaster RTP, a book sensation with almost half-million books sold and a licensing hit. In 2006 the show went international and is now localised in 10 territories around the globe.

Sofia’s Diary was shaped around the concept that linear broadcast content was becoming less and less effective as a way to attract and keep audiences. Not that television was dying, but digital technologies were allowing audiences to shape their own entertainment experience. Personal Video Recorders and the Internet-based devices allowed each person to create their own schedule.

The industry does not seem to be catching up with this new paradigm. Broadcasters are still focusing on formats and content aimed at the linear TV broadcast market. More than 90% of their content is created for TV broadcast, and the internet and digital are just other windows to re-run the TV material. Original web (or digital commissions) or web-only licensing are still a rarity, although broadcaster’s websites, VOD services and other forms of on-demand entertainment already count as a significant part of their daily audiences.

The big challenge to producers and broadcasters is to understand the fact that different media requires different languages, approaches and probably different storytelling structures and formats. Historically, new media (cinema, radio and TV were once new media) in their early years usually borrowed their language from existing media. As these “new media” grew up and conquered audiences, they developed their own language and formats.

Webisodes, made for the Web and mobile platform digital content, still borrow most of there structure from TV. Most of the time the content consumed on these platforms is repurposed TV shows, broadcasted on its original format or “chopped” into smaller pieces with shorter durations. But as audiences evolve and become more sophisticated, more and more producers understand that repurposing content is not the best approach. The result is we are now seeing big TV shows (and some movies and popular video games) having their own spin-off web series, mobile or companion tablet games and digital comic books or eBooks.

If the main motivation of producers and broadcasters is monetising the popularity of their TV or movie brands on new platforms, or generating additional revenues by selling apps or digital downloads to their fan base, then content producers need to also realise that this approach has benefits both at a marketing and storytelling level. Writers and creators can expand their stories and characters to new platforms, develop their back story and extend plot lines, without being confined to the traditional TV and film formats, structures and episodes length.

In the last few decades storytelling suffered from established and rigid formats and lengths but now, with new digital platforms, storytelling can regain more freedom and creators can focus on proper story and character development and less on lengths, ad breaks, cliffhangers and all the tricks implemented in the last few decades to make TV storytelling fit the requirements of advertisers and media agencies.

At beActive we’ve been embracing all of these new platforms and the social media phenomenon in order to allow our writers and creators to tell better stories; stories that engage audiences on different platforms throughout the day. For example, we are at the moment wrapping a TV and multi-platform series called Beat Girl, to be released later this year. By the summer we will have released a web series that will act as a prequel to the main story, followed by a novel, a graphic novel, a series of articles in DJ magazines and one mobile game, complemented by a strong social media presence.

Most of this story-relevant content will not fit the rigid format of a half-hour TV comedy-drama, but it’s ideal content for the aforementioned different platforms, and helps in building a fan-base and making sure that that fan-base connects at a deeper level with the main characters and their motivations and plotlines.

Nuno Bernardo is the co-founder and CEO of transmedia production company beActive. Bernardo is also the author of a book, The Producer’s Guide to Transmedia. Find him on Twitter and Facebook. 

PR stunt or not, Nike and Casey Niestat had our collective attention approximately three weeks ago when the story broke that a film-maker had gone rogue. According to the tale, Niestat took an entire budget from Nike and instead of producing a spot, spent it on a 10-day trip around the world with his buddy Max. The trip garnered enough footage for ten feature films, which the duo cut into a short film based on the brand positioning for the Nike Fuel Band gadget, named “Make It Count”.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

5 million YouTube views later, with countless coverage by news and advertising industry outlets, Nike and Niestat are quiet on the story behind the story. Clearly the stunt drove the viral nature of the film, which is interesting in its own right, but slowed once the buzz subsided.

I don’t have additional insight on the relationship between Nike and Niestat, but clearly they’ve been working on a handful of projects over the past few years – the earliest evidence I can find is from November 2010, a video called “Mind Games”.  This short film is a noble effort from Niestat on telling the daily struggles of a runner (or any athlete for that matter), fighting the mental battle of self-negotiation through every consideration of a run, dream of hitting the snooze button and exertion of energy in a workout. “Mind Games” also puts the message ahead of the brand, and it resonated with me. It inspired me to recommit to my running routine and eventually, I’m not ashamed to admit it, buy more of the Nike workout gear I love for running. The film garnered under 20,000 views on YouTube.

Whether or not Niestat took the swoosh-embossed suitcase full of cash and headed straight to the airport, there is an interesting debate as to whether the film was even about the brand, just a self-indulgent trip around the world or true entertainment. The fact is that Niestat has been working with Nike over the past two years. My instincts tell me the brand was informed that he might go off reservation and they were willing to experiment, or he felt like he had enough equity in the relationship to take a big risk. Niestat knows the Nike brand well enough to produce compelling content for their target audience. He also learned about the product in focus for this video at a recent Nike influencer event, which he also filmed.

Brand funding has always dictated content creative, and in this case, Niestat was seen as breaking the rules to communicate his take on ‘make it count’. Entertaining content that seeds the brand intelligently, but often not as the main character, is effective. While the content could have been more fine tuned into a true ‘brand story’ that could only be Nike, it still managed to break out of the mould commercial film-directors are often forced to fit into.

For best-in-class branded content, the work needs to pull from the strengths of the brand and the content-maker alike: a collaborative approach to production. Niestat knew the brand, knew the product and understood the brand values. Nike gave him the freedom to manifest that understanding with content that really does remind us to make everyday count. Finding balance means then shifting back into the marketer mindset to determine how to use this custom video via content extensions, media distribution strategy, social media, etc. And if Niestat didn’t have to produce this under the guise of a rule-breaker, maybe we would have seen a series of what it means in each country he visited to ‘make it count’.

A longer series would have been feasible to cut from the amount of footage Niestat created and Nike could have crafted a distribution plan around where and when to seed content, knowing how to promote this content within their existing audience of Facebook fans, brick and mortar stores and other highly visible outlets.

So what did we learn?

- Build content that is authentic to the brand: Producers need to understand the brand’s objectives, build content to serve the story of the brand and the goals of undertaking a content initiative

- Remember to entertain your audience: Brands need to prioritise the interest of the audience, and let producers help guide them to serve those interests

- Team & collaborate: Both producers and brands need to lean on one another to serve the brand ambitions and the entertainment quality of the programme, finding a balance that can only be achieved through proper collaboration

Following these rules, no-one will need to take the money and run. Make branded content count.

Abigail Marks is associate director of OgilvyEntertainment, the branded entertainment arm of Ogilvy & Mather, with whom MIPTV has been working on brand-focused panels since 2007 (find all of 2012′s panels here). This is the first of a series of monthly posts, which will also be appearing on TWEED, OgilvyEntertainment’s blog. Welcome, Abby!

Having worked in a broadcast environment for almost 20 years, I feel privileged to have played a part in the production of some fantastic TV shows. When Peppa Pig was first pitched to us at Nickelodeon we were presented with a few seconds of animation showing Peppa saying “I’m Peppa Pig”, snorting, and very little else. We had money, we loved it, we commissioned it! Peppa Pig is now a multi-million pound, award winning success story boasting its own theme park. Hence, a risky decision to commission with minimal material to review has paid off.

However, in a financially challenged environment, taking those risky decisions becomes harder. There’s a danger of becoming risk-averse, but with a plethora of kid’s channels for viewers to choose from, it’s important to stand out from the crowd. So creative innovation is key to success.

When I first started out in kids TV, one show was being talked about more than any other and for good reason. Rugrats, created by Arlene Klasky and Gabor Csupo, ran for 13 years on Nickelodeon and produced 172 episodes. It was a worldwide success, and made every generation in the family laugh. Kids, parents and grandparents could relate to this show, making it an ideal choice for the whole family to watch together. And, as a mother of two boys, that’s exactly what I’m looking for: shows that we can enjoy together. Primetime TV on a Saturday night succeeds in doing this; but I’m looking for this innovation in kids TV too.

My boys viewing habits are fickle. But they now seem to have settled on Cartoon Network at the moment and have introduced me to The Regular Show. This has fast become a household favourite and Mordecai (a blue Jay) and Rigby (a Racoon) have turned my boys into a comedic duo with frequent shouts of “Yo dude, throw me a solid”and “in your face” heard about the house. These crazy characters are groundskeepers who spend every episode trying to get out of doing any work.  Their work “colleagues” are a strange line-up including Benson (a gumball machine), Pops (a lollipop), Skips (a dumb yeti) and, my favourite, High Five Ghost which is essentially a floating hand! Such a bizarre concept for a kids show and yet it works. It can be naughty and cheeky but it never fails to make us all laugh. It works on so many levels, which is undoubtedly key to its success.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

And it’s our love of The Regular Show that brings me to my next find: The Amazing World of Gumball (above, and singled out here on MIPBlog by Aardman’s Miles Bullough). Now, I’d heard a lot about this show when it was commissioned by Cartoon Network and I eagerly awaited the first episode when they started advertising it on air. This multi-award-winning series delivers on every level and we continue to laugh at every episode. Much has been said about its innovative mixed media style; Gumball very cleverly mixes traditional animation with CGI and real-life backgrounds. I agree this is important: but without great writing, this series wouldn’t deliver. Too many shows fall down with style over substance and yet every episode is laugh out loud entertainment. There are jokes that appeal to us all, making it a real gem.

During my tenure at Nickelodeon, my final commission was Olive the Ostrich from the talented Blue Zoo. Blue Zoo teamed up with The Princes Trust to work with children on storytelling and art. The work produced by these children was then animated by Blue Zoo and placed into Olive’s world. She tells these children’s stories in a simple, entertaining and comic way that pre-schoolers can understand, is narrated by Rolf Harris, giving a nod to the parents. The result is a gorgeous piece of work.

From a viewer perspective, it’s another lovely pre-school show but, behind the scenes, working with The Princes Trust and enabling children to be part of something so gorgeous gave it huge appeal as a commissioner.  There are very few pre-school series that succeed in entertaining the whole family, but Olive manages to achieve this.

Primetime talent is often used to engage a younger audience and I doubt “Blast Lab” on CBBC would have been as successful without Richard Hammond. The BBC is in the enviable position of being able to engage key personalities and I’ve recently discovered UK comedian Vic Reeves’ “Ministry of Curious Stuff”.  It’s (comedy gameshow) Shooting Stars for kids and, perhaps some of the references are missed by its intended audience; but for me, it again works on many levels.

The “Ministry of Curious Stuff” is a place to discover the answers to weird and wonderful questions posed by children. Who is the smallest farmer? Can you really predict the future? Will robots one day take over the Earth? Vic will then endeavour to answer these questions, in his own inimitable style.

Vic is helped out by a handful of characters who sit in vaults above him, answering phones, receiving mail and more, in an attempt to discover the answer. What I love about this show is that it manages to be quirky and surreal whilst being informative and nonsensical at the same time (more about the show in this BBC interview, here).

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

And finally, I couldn’t talk about creative innovation without including Horrible Histories. This show proves time and time again that it deserves the many accolades bestowed upon it. Engaging kids with comedy performances is genuinely powerful and the Horrible History songs are used in schools today to enhance learning. This series has made History interesting for all ages and the stellar cast deliver performances befitting of its many awards. Kids are mini versions of us. They want to be entertained and they want to laugh! Horrible Histories has succeeded in engaging “grown up” talent like no other.  This series was given a primetime BBC 1 slot hosted by Steven Fry and series 4 will feature “The League of Gentlemen” cast. And it’s directed by Dominic Bristock, of Alan Partridge fame: another quality guarantee.

There are only 2 words to sum up this series: pure genius. Keep it coming, please!

Debbie Macdonald is a children’s media consultant. She was formerly VP, programming director at Nickelodeon UK, having worked in acquisitions at the BBC. You can find her on LinkedIn here.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Speaking at TheNextWeb Conference in Amsterdam, Facebook’s director of platform partnerships EMEA gave content owners essential tips on how to make the most of the world’s largest social network.

TV and video companies such as Dailymotion, Canal+ and Sky were all cited as examples of best-practice users of Facebook’s huge potiential for sharing content virally.

It begins, said Christian Hernandez, with taking on board two key things about Facebook’s 900 million users. Firstly, 80 % their friends will be in the same country as them. Secondly, Facebook is now focusing not on six, but three degrees of separation. Because the fim has discovered that you’re more likely to share content from friends of friends of friends than from those people closest to you.

“So make it easy for me to share with all of my friends (whatever their proximity to me); that’s where virality takes off,” said Hernandez.

So how exactly do I “close the viral loop”, as Hernandez puts it? Firstly, use the Open Graph - Facebook’s system which lets you log into any site or app using your Facebook ID – “so it can share easily what I’m doing.” He added: “we provide the platform for your content to be shared. So think not only about how to get traffic, but also about how to get people to share your content with their friends. Then you’ve got them into a loop.”

Hernandez then rolled out a few telling examples of who has “got it right” so far. First up, Dailymotion, the world’s second largest video site, acquired half of its 20 million Facebook-sourced users in a week, after successfully integrating its content on the social network.

Secondly, perhaps one of the most famous examples of Facebook integration: UK newspaper The Guardian. When it decided to launch one of the social network’s first news apps, where users consume its content not on its site, but in a Facebook app, it knew it ran the risk of losing at least 10% of its website’s traffic.

It turns out The Guardian’s Facebook app attracted 10 million active users. Better still: “it opened up a whole new demographic for them: the under 24s”, said Hernandez, adding that this was a demographic the newspaper had traditionally had a lot of difficulty in reaching.

Perhaps most incredibly, Hernandez revealed that Facebook has now become a major traffic provider to guardian.co.uk. Social – i.e. Facebook – has surpassed search – i.e. Google – in terms of driving traffic to what is one of the world’s biggest news sites.

Hernandez also cited French music streaming service Deezer as another content provider that has successfully “closed the loop”. Since integrating Facebook, the service has seen 200,000 new users per week, userbase growth of 500%, and tripled traffic to their mobile app.

He went on to reveal what he called “a new class of Timeline apps”, covering 18 companies across 11 countries in Europe and the Middle East. The aforementioned “local” element is key to these new launches, which include newspapers like France’s Le Monde and broadcaster Sky Italy and France’s Canal+. ”If  I watch a show on Canal+, it becomes part of my timeline,” said Hernandez.

And finally, to ram home the platform’s efficiency, a non-entertainment example: Facebook has also recently integrated UK-based charity site JustGiving. “Each Facebook share from JustGiving raises £5,” said Hernandez. Furthermore, the siteexpects half of all donations to come through Facebook by 2015, he affirmed.

Food for thought…

With partner Ogilvy, MIPTV has been tackling branded entertainment for five years now. But at MIPTV 2012, there was a real sense of TV and advertising execs alike truly getting hands-on with the subject.

Whilst The BCMA (Branded Content Marketing Association)’s Andrew Canter and Doug Scott of Ogilvy Entertainment discussed best practices such as Heineken’s Brand of Year Award-winning campaign with Tom Bowman of BBC Worldwide (photo) – lest we forget, the commercial arm of TV’s least commercial company – the beverage brand’s openness to these new forms of communication was also underlined at a session called “Audience Engagement with Brands” (liveblog), where Nick Bailey, head of agency AKQA‘s Amsterdam office, told the intriguing tale of Star Player, Heineken’s 2screen app for UEFA cup fans. Also discussed at the session was Gamer Commute, a Samsung YouTube film which generated 9.6 million views in 30 days.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

More concrete still was the story of how French TV veteran Alexis de Gemini – the man who brought Big Brother to France – managed to launch a kind of X Factor for make-up artists, sponsored by beauty retailer Sephora… in China, no less (liveblog). “This is a show created by foreigners… and it got through the censorship bureau and is on the air in China,” said Gemini. “I think that’s pretty amazing.” The show secured a more-than 30% share of the TV audience in its slot, with 25 million total votes for contestants on the internet, and 15 million episodes viewed online too.

Another straight-to-the-point panel dealt with how broadcasters are handling branded entertainment: input from ITV, Viacom and Virgin Media “drilled down” to this topic’s finer points, as moderator Kate Bulkley put it:

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

The maturity of branded entertainment was also underlined in a session called “Branded Content in the Marketing Mix” (liveblog), where shows such as A&E’s Fix This Kitchen, which featured only IKEA furniture, were discussed. “This is not about making a long-form commercial… the number-one priority is having a compelling story,”said MEC’s Chet Fenster. And this story needs to be told as part of a long-term engagement with the consumer,  he added: ”Brands are broadcasters, and they’re gonna have to figure out how to talk to the consumer and programme to the consumer.”

“They have rented audiences for years,” agreed Ogilvy’s Patou Nuyteman agreed. “Actually really owning them, and taking care of them throughout the year” is a significant change that comes with responsibilities that brands are not necessarily ready to assume.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Last but by no means least, perhaps the biggest ‘practical’ branded entertainment news at MIPTV was the launch by Ogilvy of the first ever way to measure branded entertainment’s value, the Branded Entertainment Assessment Model (BEAM).

BEAM was developed because Ogilvy believes strategy drives measurement: programmes need to tie into overarching business ambitions and link specific programme objectives to measurable outcomes in planning, development and execution. “Our goal is to set forward some guiding principles… to promote brands to adopt, to feel comfortable” advancing in the nebulous world of branded entertainment, OgilvyEntertainment’s Abby Marks explained.

The session’s video is embedded below; and the session’s full report – the most-consulted liveblog of all of our MIPTV coverage, no less! – is here. It notably includes Ogilvy’s full white paper, explaining all you need to know about BEAM. Look no further!

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Read all of our branded entertainment live coverage from MIPTV 2012 here.

We are also proud to announce that OgilvyEntertainment’s Abby Marks has agreed to become a MIPBlog guestblogger. Stay with us for her monthly updates on what’s hot or not in branded entertainment!

So, that was that. Another week of late nights and early mornings, of 30 minute meetings and 15 minute lunches; in other words, the MIPs. As someone who ran between MIPFormats and MIPCube, finally settling down at MIPTV, here are five points I took with me home from Cannes:

1. We need to talk

And by ‘we’, I mean everyone who is in the TV industry, be they commissioners or producers, tech people or marketing people, format developers or animators, we all need to talk. To each other, I hasten to add. At MIPCube on Friday and Saturday, amongst the many interesting talks and presentations, the most notable thing was the conversations taking place – hackers talking to researchers, connected TV people talking to buyers, everyone talking to everyone. In a world where borders are blurring rapidly, where TV is not necessarily TV for very much longer, the more we know about each others realities, challenges and possibilities, the better we can hope to cope with the transitions we are going through.

2. Story

No matter how many gadgets you build to sync with content, the story at the heart of any project remains the most integral part when aiming for success. No one wants to connect to your connected TV if the content on the TV does not engage and excite, and support interactivity. Context rules supreme, some have said, but as there needs to be content – i.e. good stories – for there to be any kind of context, that argument is quickly made less relevant.

3. The format biz is getting stronger and stronger

MIPFormats showed quite clearly that the trend of the last couple of years – of formats starting to arrive to the market from all corners of the world- is no fluke. Not by a long shot. South America is entering into the fray, the Nordic region is emerging once again, formats are pouring out of Israel, France, Turkey, Japan… The format trade is very much a global one, with flavours of different territories and cultures making their mark on television channels around the world.

4. Hackers showed a way

I don’t know how to programme code. This is something I share with most people at MIPTV. Although I know quite a lot about the limitations and possibilities – a must if you’re developing formats today – the actual work behind the apps and the widgets and the HMTL5-pages is still, for me, shrouded in a transparent veil of mystery.

Not anymore though, as the hackers on the boat moored at the Gare Maritime showed what can be done in next to no time. In less than two days they had a number of great projects up and running; I for one would love to work with them every day of the week. Still, there were glitches; most of them were, however, due to fallacies on the part of the television industry, especially regarding availability of metadata.

5. Brands are even more interesting

Everyone would love to work with brands. Brands have money that can be poured into your project to let you produce what you want to produce. A match made in heaven, right? Well, not always. Brands come with demands as well, demands that sometimes can be problematic to take into consideration when trying to create compelling, immersive and engaging content. At MIP this year, I was delighted to see, listen to and talk to a number of brand representatives that suddenly were talking my language. Story, content, UX, audience interaction… If this trend holds up, the next MIPs will be interesting indeed!

Simon Staffans is a format developer for Media City Finland, and a regular contributor to MIPBlog. You can follow him on Twitter here.

Photo: Titanic sold especially well at MIPTV 2012

On the back of the news that global television viewing rose by an average six minutes in 2011, according to the latest Eurodata TV Worldwide report, MIPTV 2012 saw a flurry of deal-making as channels refreshed their content offers.

Other factors underlying the amount of deals done at the market include the dynamism of the growing VOD sector, the acquisition of digital terrestrial broadcast rights and the intensely competitive pay-TV arena.

Shine sealed what it sees as a landmark deal last week, which will see its global reality format MasterChef produced in China by the Shanghai Media Group. The show will air on SMG’s Dragon TV.

Further Chinese acquisition came with ITV Studios Global Entertainment’s multi-year output agreement with Joy.cn, one of China’s largest content websites.

The deal will see programmes such as ITV Studios’ Titanic, and US network drama Prime Suspect made available via VOD.

Jiangsu Broadcasting Corporation signed a Latin American deal with Worldwide Rights for Beauties Around and Elite’s Game; Jingdu Century Culture Development and Yunnan Development Group inked a deal with Myanmar’s Skynet to produce 40-episode drama series Myanmar Dancing Queen; and CCTV’s documentary channel CCTV 9 signed a co-production deal with BBC Worldwide, covering Generation Earth and Wonders of Life (watch MIPBlog’s interview on that here).

A further major agreement saw film and TV studio Miramax sealing its first ever multi-title movie distribution deal with British broadcaster UKTV. The accord allows for a selection of the studio’s 800-title library to be made available across UKTV’s pay and DTT channels.

It was a particularly bullish market for factual and documentary deals, with German distributor ZDF Enterprises (ZDFE) completing a deal to sell Death Row, the four-part series from director Werner Herzog, to broadcasters in Italy, Poland, Holland and Belgium.

ZDFE also acquired a 63-hour package of programming from National Geographic Channels for international distribution. The deal, which follows on from a previous agreement between the two companies, includes seasons three and four of Alaska State Troopers and season four of Hard Times.

Reflecting National Geographic CEO David Lyle’s observation during the MIPDoc keynote, that the modern audience wants real stories and emotional engagement rather than cultural observation in contemporary documentaries, Al Jazeera’s multiple award-winning production Bahrain: Shouting In The Dark, was sold to seven territories including France, Sweden and Portugal during MIPTV.

Another and very different kind of reality, in this case the hugely popular Jersey Shore, continued to sell both in its original form and as a format. VIMN announced a deal with French broadcaster TF1, which will see the show airing on DTT channel NT1. The deal also included an option on the format for a possible local version.

This and more in the MIPTV Quick Review, your essential digest of MIPTV, MIPCube, MIPDoc and MIPFormats 2012′s key news, quotes & developments. Online soon!

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Left to right: Simon Staffans, MediaCity Finland; Marc Goodchild, IpDipSkyBlue.tv; Richard Kastelein, Agora Media/Appmarket.tv; Omri Marcus, Red Arrow Entertainment; and James Martin, Reed MIDEM 

At today’s MIPTV Wrap Up session, the panelists were asked to bring a slide that summed up the market.

Format developer Omri Marcus of Red Arrow Entertainment chose an image of ITV-distributed format The Audience because, he said, is sums up the growing social aspects of modern TV content: “It has a social element where 50 people help you with your daily problems,” he said. “And what is interesting is that the show, like several others that are around at the moment, is based on the wisdom of the crowd where a group of people do their best to solve all the problems a person encounters in life.”

Format developers are adding social media features to their shows but many commissioners are still uncertain about the benefits: “People who develop new TV shows are usually very good at reflecting what’s going on, but the social media phenomenon, which I consider to be such a great gift to us all, is not properly represented or as broadly appreciated as it should be,” Marcus said. “I have two dating shows with me here in Cannes and both are based on social media. But programme commissioners are still very slow to recognise the potential.”

Richard Kastelein, managing director of the Agora Media Group, identified All3Media’s decision to sell its programming directly to viewers via a connected TV app as a development with enormous ramifications: “it’s a huge leap forward and represents a very exciting new chance for producers to build relationships with brands, which they were not able to do previously,” Kastelein said. “And when you consider that there will be 150-200 million Smart TVs by 2014, the implications of what All3Media has done are enormous. We are in fact looking at a new gatekeeper, and clearly broadcasters are quite scared by the implications of being bypassed. But as much as this is a threat, it also represents a massive opportunity. And I have no doubt at all that we’ll see more companies doing something similar.”

As Marc Goodchild, managing director & chief creative at IpDipSkyBlue.tv pointed out, when it comes to selling content directly to fans, Angry Birds maker Rovio already has its audience in place and can reach them via push notifications. Indeed, this is what it plans to do with the new animation series it announced here on Sunday.

“There are 700 million Angry Birds game apps out there, so their content has a massive audience,” he said. “And then there are other interesting examples such as Moshi Monsters, which the producers took straight to audience, but ironically the biggest uptake was when they advertised on kids channels, so they were using old media to force uptake.”

There is currently a whole new wave of transmedia producers, or at least of producers who describe themselves as such, but format developer Simon Staffans, of MediaCity, remains unconvinced: “I met a lot of people this week who described themselves as transmedia but it’s clear that many of them really are not, and there is a danger that they’ll dilute the relevance of the term,” he said. “And while I understand why this is happening, there are also quite a few genuine pioneers out there who have never described themselves as transmedia.”

According to Goodchild, the truly exciting aspect of transmedia lies in the fact that it places the story centre stage, and then tries to find the best and the most appropriate platforms to complement it. But as Staffans pointed out, product placement brings about a different dynamic: “If transmedia storytelling methods were to be applied to product placement, it could rapidly become much more effective and relevant,” he said. “It’s a very exciting area.”

When the session moved on to open discussion, Staffans said he was definitely encouraged by the fact that “everyone was talking to each other at MIPCube. Storytellers understood the technological limitations and the need to raise money, brands realised the need to put out compelling content and the tech community were talking to everyone.”

For Kastelein, there are some examples of broadcasters attempting to be more social – for example Channel 4’s work with Embarrassing Bodies and Sexperience (notably referred to by the UK channel’s Adam Gee in his MIPDoc keynote). But as moderator James Martin pointed out, the number of new TV shows with Facebook pages is still just 29%, while only 15% launch with Twitter accounts. This suggests that the traditional industry is still uncertain about how best to engage with the social media audience.

The emergence of branded entertainment was regarded as a significant development, with Marcus calling Coke’s activities “very encouraging, inspiring. It’s a completely new category, though I’m not really sure what will emerge from that.”

Goodchild sees brands as being “ahead of the game” citing Fosters Lager’s curation of comedy content online as significant – and also pointing to new technology that allows brands to integrate themselves into the fabric of video content. “So a poster in the background of a music video or TV show might show a brand that reflects the behaviour of the audience,” he explained.

The big missed opportunity, according to the panel, is all of the compelling background data or shoulder content behind a production which could be used to populate second screens. “All the knowledge that is generated during production is effectively binned right now because of lack of budgets to organise it,” said Goodman, “but it would be great to unlock the potential of that.”

YouTube loomed large as a discussion point with all of the evidence suggesting that the Google-owned company is gearing up to join the TV media mainstream. Greater sensitivity to partner copyright issues, increased focus on ‘channels’ as opposed to ‘views’, and US$150m investment in original content could be preparation for a significant push – with over-the-top services delivered via connected TVs and supported by Google ad technology.

In terms of other companies to watch, Kastelein cited Zeebox, the 2screen app that could enable a closer correlation between advertising spend and consumer spend. Sky’s recent decision to take a 10% stake in Zeebox values the start-up at US$150m, underlining the significance that established media companies place on the ability to leverage data more effectively.

This and more in the Quick Review, the executive summary of MIPTV, MIPCube, MIPDoc & MIPFormats key events. Just fill in your details in MIPBlog’s right-hand column to receive your copy!

The MIPTV News’ Andy Fry also contributed to this post.

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