If your content disappears, will anyone miss it?
That classic question will keep every content marketer's attention at night — or at least take up a healthy portion of the brain during planning and strategy sessions.
But what if your job is to market a content product — to make sure that your audience develops a relationship so deep that they're sure to miss it — just let it go? How do you retain your audience and turn their attention to new shows?
It was a challenge Jackie Gagne had to face over and over again. As senior vice president of multicultural marketing for HBO Max and HBO, Jackie brings together award-winning content, campaigns and events to promote cable TV series and shows and streaming services. online including Game of Thrones, 2 Dope Queens and Insecure.
However, no matter how welcomed or loved the show is by the audience, decisions about renewal or whether content stays on the platform are still outside her team's sphere of influence. .
Content challenge canceled too soon
For example, Jackie's team worked with agency partner Hearts & Science to promote the 2020 premiere of the sci-fi/horror series Lovecraft Country on HBO Max. To achieve the expected 10 million cumulative views of the episode premiering by the time the series ended, the teams came up with creative ways to reach mass audiences. Among that potential audience, teams have leveraged the content experience especially for sci-fi fans and Black viewers.
To reach a mass audience, the team worked with Vanity Fair on articles about the show.
To reach black people, they created a writing contest on the black culture and news website TheRoot.com. For the Love of the Craft asks people to write about monsters in black American history. Winners receive $5,000, publication of their submission, and mentorship from the program authors.
They also collaborated with the music story website Genius for discussion content the program's creative choices And challenge create a score for a sequence during the pandemic.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=am7ZW3D_w-g[/embed]
HBO Max won the 2021 Creative Content Distribution Strategy First Prize for the Content Marketing Award, and it won Jackie a nod to the final for 2021 B2C Content Marketer of the Year.
Lovecraft Country went on to earn significant amounts of attention, two Emmys (and 18 nominations), and numerous fans. However, it was canceled at the end of the first season.
What will happen to the audience Jackie and her team built for that show? How does HBO Max retain viewers when the content that drew them to the platform disappears?
Part of the answer comes from audience initiatives like Human by Orientation for the LGBTQ, Pa'lante! for the Latinx and HBO POV communities, which celebrate the diversity of behind-the-scenes talent that bring HBO's programming to life.
I asked Jackie how she uses these initiatives and other techniques to build — and keep — an audience. She shares her philosophy about putting the audience in the lead role and creating a connection that transcends a series of movies or shows.
What does 'first object' mean
Your work is described as “audience lead” or “audience first.” What does that mean in terms of how you approach your work?
Audience-led or audience-first means we prioritize the audience in all of our work.
We think of our audience first when we develop our marketing strategies or campaigns because we want to make sure that those campaigns and our initiatives are authentic, they cause resonate, and they really reflect the audience my team serves.
That means we go beyond the demographics. Our work is informed by cultural insights and points of passion. We spend a lot of time identifying influential voices in the community. We look at the media they use. And we work with a number of partners and partner organizations to help us Get to know your audience better and make sure we're taking the right approach in our marketing efforts.
That's the difference between reaching an audience and touching them.
Audience first is the difference between reaching an audience and touching them, @jackiegagne says 10 by @HBOMax and @HBO via @CMIContent. Click to Tweet
The audience-first approach really lets you touch them. Our goal is to develop programs that are culturally relevant and will promote emotional connection which is what HBO and other brands ultimately want to do.
Create an 'always on' connection
When you succeed in emotionally connecting with your audience – creating a passion for a series like Lovecraft Country, for example – what happens to relationships when the series isn't renewed?
Retention is an important goal for us, so we recognized early on the importance of establishing what we call a permanent connection with our audience.
If audience retention is important, establish a constant connection with your audience, @jackiegagne says 10 by @HBOMax and @HBO via @CMIContent. Click to Tweet
We've developed new strategies with the idea that when a show like Lovecraft Country comes to an end, we can showcase other relevant talent and shows to the audience. In addition to supporting the sequence of events, we do trigger operations and event . We have partnerships with a number of important cultural events and festivals such as Essence Fest, which takes place every July and is an important cultural event in the Black community.
We also have longstanding relationships with the New York Latino Film Festival and the LA Asia Pacific Film Festival. The idea is that we want to have a constant conversation with the audience. You always want to have something suitable out there.
Is that the concept behind initiatives like Power of Visibility (POV)?
Initiatives like POV are all part of that always-on approach. We have pieces of content for the Power of Display that we've tagged around 100 of the behind-the-scenes talent that brought our show to life.
# HBOPOV allows access to the world of our pioneering behind-the-scenes talent.
The makers behind @ securehbo , @BlackLadySketch , @ BallersHBO & # LovecraftCountry share what “The Power of Visibility” means to them and their work. pic.twitter.com/sB0ZMQN3Vy
– HBO PR (@HBOPR) December 20, 2019
Those pieces of content run on our social platforms, but we also host POV events and workshops. We've expanded the show beyond the content series into real-life activities. We host POV events, seminars at industry events and partner events. These allow our audience to meet that diverse talent, hear their stories, and engage in conversations about presentation and about the content itself.
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Build the right internal and external team
How have you built the team you tap into for cultural insights? What do you expect from your team members and agency partners to help you create innovative content experiences for multicultural audiences?
Our team reflects the audiences we speak to every day. That is extremely important. Our partners also reflect the audience. And I will say that in both cases we are passionate about cross-cultural audiences and creating moments that benefit underrepresented groups.
The marketing team at @HBO reflects the audiences we come into contact with on a daily basis, say @jackiegagne 10 via @CMIContent. Click to Tweet
For sure, for our team members and partners, we definitely look for that passion. We also look for creative ideas that again elicit an emotional response that fuels conversation and allows our audience to connect authentically with our stories and the talent behind them.
How do you balance the workload between your internal team and partners, agencies, and other external resources?
The team is structured according to the audience vertical. We focus on Black, AAPI, LGBTQ+ and Latinx audiences. In every industry, we have audience experts. Doing that allows us to have expertise.
Internal team members are experts when it comes to these audiences.
As we work with our creative partners, we execute on the ideas and we build the strategy.
As we're formulating and rolling out concepts for how to promote a show, we'll work alongside our partners to identify all of the opportunities out there to engage audiences.
Regarding the partnerships and cultural moments that I mentioned, those are relationships that we own and establish. For example, if we are going to attend Essence Fest, we know from looking at the content and what we want to focus on, who the talent can be and agent partner to help us.
What is next?
You work across multiple channels – live events and industry panels, virtual events, user-generated content, social media, native advertising, etc. What do you see as the biggest future opportunity?
Our goal is to always satisfy our audience where they are. So all of those things will be important to our work as long as they provide an opportunity for us to get involved.
We do a lot of exciting events and activities and technology will help us enhance those experiences both in real life and certainly for virtual. We saw that with Lovecraft Sanctum, where we did a series virtual reality events created for the program.
More recently, we leveraged 3D technology to invite Latin artist Romeo Santos to appear at a pop-up experience we created in New York to promote a documentary to air on HBO. Max. I think technology is going to play a bigger role and that's something we'll continue to explore.
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Cover photo by Joseph Kalinowski / Content Marketing Institute
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