In a shared car en route from MIPTV in Cannes to Nice airport, a rather hungover, very senior advertising executive from a major London-based global agency made a few rather startling confessions regarding the place of mobile in the marketing mix. “It’s mainly for PR purposes, we certainly don’t make any money from it,” he mused about the mobile advertising division that he heads up. “It’s about being in that space, so we can come to things like MIPTV and talk knowledgably about mobile advertising, so we maintain our position as cutting edge. Our clients like it as a bit of a value-add, but it doesn’t really bring in much revenue.” Asked what form these mobile solutions take, he said it tends toward rich mobile content that you would be willing to pay for, brought to you for free courtesy of the brand looking to promote itself. While it certainly beggars belief that, especially in this economic climate, any company would have a division devoted to something that doesn’t bring in much revenue, just for PR purposes, there is a certain amount of peer pressure to have a presence in the ‘new media’ space. And while TV brands seem keen to talk about their forays onto new devices, often in press releases, very few seem willing to talk about the outcome of those ventures. One of the highest profile recent successes in Asia, has been Sony Pictures Television’s (SPT) Sufei’s Diary – produced in China via a joint venture with China Film Group, called Huaso Film/ Television Digital Production Co. Ltd. The 40-episode multi-platform series, produced from scripted format Sofia’s Diary (which originated in Portugal), is best described as a multi-platform interactive soap opera. In each episode, Sofia faces a dilemma that audiences help her to solve by taking a poll vote. Sofia’s Diary had been seen online, on TV, mobile, magazines, books and other media – the aim was to create a 360-degree multiplatform interactive experience which audiences had not experienced before. Having debuted in China mid-December 2008, as of end-March 2009 the Chinese version had generated over 24 million interactions. Sufei’s Diary was viewed daily online via popular portals such as Sina.com, online video-sharing site Youku.com and nationwide university broadband network, Cernet.com. The show also attracted advertisers to integrate their brands and products into Sufei’s daily life. Clinique, Sony Electronics and online job search website www.51job.com all collaborated with Huaso during the development stage of the series to incorporate their products into the show. Mary Chan, SPT’s vice president, production said that the company is already in talks with advertisers about innovative brand integrations for season two of the show. The company made its first originally created, multi-platform property Afterworld in 2007. One of SPT’s latest cross-platform initiatives Gemini Division integrates advertisers including Microsoft, Acura, Cisco and UPS; it debuted in the US last summer, in Australia in November 2008 and is distributed online through NBC.com, Hulu.com, GeminiDivision.com, AOL TV, YouTube; on mobile via Verizon Fios, AT&T, Helio, Verizon Vcast, NBC Wap sites; on-demand through Digital Cable (Comcast, Time Warner), Satellite (Dish) and EST’s X-box Live, Microsoft Zune, Amazon.com Unbox. Asked about lessons learnt from experimenting in the ‘new media’ space, Ross Pollack, senior vice president, distribution, Asia at Sony Pictures Television said some of the key factors to success these last few years include marketing commitment, user interface and focus on content. “New media is already considered old media by people in our industry as we have been dealing with it for years, but to most consumers it is still a fairly new way to enjoy content. To this extent, it is imperative that a new platform spends the marketing dollars necessary to push not just the platform brand, but the benefits of video on demand and digital distribution. User interface is another key factor in consumer take-up. Studies have shown that with each click or page change that a consumer needs to go through to get to what they want, you lose a certain percentage of your users. User interfaces have to be created in a way that are easy-to-use, and give consumers exactly what they want with the least amount of effort. Finally, it may seem self-serving to list focus on content as a key success factor, but the simple fact is that consumers gravitate towards new platforms based on the platform’s ability to offer what they want in a way that is better and more convenient than existing platforms. So content is still a determining factor that needs to be emphasized when marketing a new platform.” Jeremy Pink, president and managing director at business and financial news channel CNBC Asia Pacific tends to agree. “Ultimately, success is determined by the quality of the product first, then the medium. We are constantly improving and developing our core content so that it’s fast, accurate, actionable and unbiased information on any platform.” “Our content, whether it’s our live channel, video clips, text or audio, is across multiple platforms from the television to the internet to the mobile phone. For example the live television product is available online and on mobile. Some of the television segments such as cnbc.comNewsNow are also licensed to mobile operators as a video-on-demand clip. We also create specific video clips for mobile use. Another example is our text news headlines, which are accessible on our website, our mobile WAP site, and also on mobile widgets, large-outdoor digital signage across multiple cities and even in taxicabs. CNBC’s goal is to reach our influential audience anywhere at any time. As our audience is highly affluent and desirable, we look to offer our content across different platforms to service their needs.” Pink says CNBC Asia Pacific’s digital products have been largely regional in nature, with customization to service our partners and customers as requested. We also have local partners that localize our products themselves. Asked which of the newer platforms are proving more successful, “WAP is increasing in popularity, especially with the rise of smartphones and the increase in access speeds. This popularity will increase even more when access costs go down,” he says. “On the internet, video usage is starting to really pick up, thanks to increasing broadband speeds and adoption.” Over at CNN, some cyberspace initiatives have included attracting user-generated news, and a successful Facebook tie-in for the inauguration of President Obama. “We launched iReport.com, our user-generated news community website in 2008, allowing viewers to follow and participate in the news by contributing pictures and videos. From its February launch through the end of 2008, the site registered more than 214,000 iReport.com contributors and received more than 188,000 photo and video submissions,” explains William Hsu, vice president, CNN Advertising Sales, Asia Pacific “Around the inauguration of President Obama, CNN.com had a unique partnership with Facebook that enabled CNN.com Live users to update their Facebook status directly from the CNN.com Live player, where they also could see status updates from their friends and other Facebook users. 3.6 million unique users spent a total of 16 million minutes on the CNN.com Live/Facebook video player on Inauguration Day. In conjunction with MyClick, CNN International launched CNN MyClick, an application that allows users to directly connect to CNN’s free* mobile news site at cnnmobile.com utilizing camera mobile devices. Also on mobile, our offering includes live mobile TV, short video clips, CNNmobile.com, a downloadable JAVA application and SMS breaking news alerts. And online, we also have localised websites in Japanese and Korean.” Ringo Chan, vice president, wireless, interactive content development and distribution, Asia Pacific, says that strategy is characterized by the varying levels of technological development around the world. “Clearly some markets have more advanced technological infrastructure eg North Asia (Korea and Japan) which allows for faster uptake and use of ‘new media’ products and services such as mobile browsing and video streaming. At the same time, China and India are also two countries with a huge growth potential in mobile browsing uptake. While more consumer electronic manufacturers move towards designing and launching products such as IPTV enabled devices such as flat screen TVs. BluRay players, console game stations, this will lead to faster growth on internet browsing on alternative screens.” SPT’s Pollack agrees that while overall strategy is to be technology and platform-agnostic, any differences are determined by the technological development in each country. “The great thing about Asia is that what we consider new media, the internet and mobile, is growing rapidly in this region. Even in markets where internet or broadband penetration is low such as India and Indonesia, the penetration of mobile is relatively high. Either way, Asia is connected. And thus, there are a lot of opportunities for new media platforms to grow and thrive in this region. We have seen the rapid pace in which IPTV has developed in S. Korea and Hong Kong. We have also witnessed the proliferation of online video content in China. The key is to stay current on the latest technology and infrastructure developments and to be open-minded when working with new media platforms. It also helps tremendously to have all of our digital rights managed by one division. New media companies can come to us to license both online and mobile video on demand rights as well as electronic sell-thru rights.” Beyond programming on-air, ESPN STAR Sports (ESS) has driven a number of digital media initiatives ranging from gaming and mobile to Internet. Explains a spokesperson, “ESS offers a host of games ranging from fantasy gaming and match predictors for BPL, cricket and F1. In fact, these applications have become … advertising entities in their own right with concepts like NFC Manager, a BPL fantasy league, Tiger Challenge, a BPL match predictions game that has also expanded to the mobile platform; and Caltex Supa Strikas for the FA Cup. This year, NFC Manager saw a significant 43 percent increase in the number of registrants and a 68.6 percent increment in the number of teams from the previous season.” ESS’s media player showcases a wide range of exclusive online video content. Viewership for the media player to date stands at almost 200,000 unique views. On the mobile front, says the spokesperson, “In India, we are the leading sports media service provider for text alert services, which covers across multiple sports. We are the content provider to major telecommunications companies with over 50 percent market share. We also have a wapsite (mobile website) www.mobilespn.in (which) is also the sports home page for telcos such as like Airtel, Idea and Aircel. During the cricket season, the website generates close to nine million visits daily and has emerged as one of the top wapsites in terms of PV’s from India. We have not started serving ads on our site but we do plan to approach advertisers in the next three months for serving ads. We’ve also moved into the SMS2.0 space by providing mobileESPN content on Affle and emerging as the most preferred sports channel on SMS 2.0. In Malaysia, ESS has launched a Barclays Premier League SMS News Alert Service. Other digital initiatives to encourage fan opinion and participation include online voting contest Champion of Champions, attracting 4.6 million votes, and 300 users to its Facebook group. F1 the Greatest encourages sports fans across Asia to vote for their greatest ever driver and the Fantasy F1 will be a competition run throughout the 2009 F1 season. The final word goes to CNN’s Chan. “Second Life, which has been unable to live up to its initial hype, saw marketers invest money in this (including ourselves), and many were left wondering what the tangible benefits were as the site’s prominence faded. Some valuable lessons we have learned when it comes to new media business development are that you have to involve other players in the entire ecosystem. ie device makers, content aggregators, consumers. Once all players are involved you are in a better position to create content that best fits the market’s needs, to shorten the launch time to market and to generate user feedback early.” TVAplus