Q: Are there any other similar deals in terms of OTT or online platforms that you might want to give us a preview?
A: A lot of our platforms that we’re launching with, they want TV everywhere and I think that’s one of the reasons why we’re a unique channel. Since we were a little over two years old, we started out initially always owning all of our content outright. That’s now coming into being something that is pretty effective for us with different platforms being interested in taking us because linearly we can show our channels where as other bigger networks have issues.
Q: So it is your strategy to talk about both linear and non-linear at the same time?
A: Yeah because I think you need to own the rights to everything. Nowadays everybody wants every option so you need to be versatile.
Q: Can you share some highlights for Fashion One in 2012?
A: We just launched on Chunghwa on their entry pack which is pretty exciting for us and right before that CNS. So we’re getting a lot of traction in Taiwan with our local feed there. We’ll be able to do hopefully lots of localised content and content for the market.
Q: Is there languaging for the Taiwan market?
A: Yeah we’re doing everything in Mandarin. We actually have a separate feed for Taiwan which is 100% Chinese subtitled.
Q: So Mandarin speaking content would be plans for the year ahead?
A: Yes, come January we’ll be announcing.
Q: I’d like to ask you about Eco Fashion. In a sense, it’s not just about fashion, there seems to be a “green” message about it?
A: It’s really interesting because this is a new trend in the fashion market. If you look at Stella McCartney or Louis Vuitton or any of the famous designers, they’re now all going green. Prior to them doing that or maybe at the same time, we also had a lot of smaller, independent designers doing this and anything from biodegradable materials and sustainable materials. They work with all kinds of materials for instance, coconut or pineapple to make cloth or repurposing rags, or repurposing bike tyres to make cool, high fashion sandals. So we kind of dive into the different countries around the world and showcase their art behind their crafts because it varies based on each designer. One designer is building shoes with rubber, while one is taking trash and having a process to repurpose that, while another is taking a fish scales process to repurpose that, and all making them into high fashion. It’s all really fascinating.
There’s also a health benefit behind some of the stuff as well. It’s really interesting because we’re actually the first ones to do a series on it and part of the reason why I think what Fashion One is doing is really unique. We’re taking a lot of the newest trends, a lot of things that are happening in the world and bringing them to the screen, especially in the many aspects of the fashion world.
We also launched our foundation which is the Fashion One Foundation. We’ll be spotlighting, through short form programming, different foundations that have something to do with fashion or are in our industry in some capacity and we’ll spotlight them for the channel. One of the things we’re focused on is human trafficking, which will be a focus in January and we’re doing a big “Anti-Human Trafficking Awareness Day” on the 11th of January, 2013. It’s one of my passions so I wanted to do something on it.
Q: Who’s managing the commissioning decisions for some of these original productions?
A: I am. My background is I worked in film so I came in working for the studios first and I was running the studios. Then the channel came after, so the natural progression was that I run the channel and the studios. So obviously ahead of studios I have my producers and I have different people running each show but we all communicated about what’s happening, what’s going to come up next and making sure that we’re constantly producing because we own all the rights and we own all the format.
Q: So what were the challenges in these seven months as CEO? When launching a channel of this nature, do you find barriers to entry? A lack of understanding of what the channel is?
A: Yeah I do get a bit of a push back with the fact that it’s a niche channel but when you look at programming for this type of channel, let’s say, Project Runway or Next Top Model, those are the type of shows that you will show on a fashion channel and those have been some of the most successful series within the last couple year. These are the kind of things you can see more and more of and I’m very surprise up until now. I feel that there is a hole in the market and that it’s never been capitalised on. This is where we find our sweet spot is. But I think that when people think of our fashion channel, they think just runway. They think runway after runway and that’s not what we plan to do. We’re giving our viewers something that’s engaging.
Content that they can actually watch and is not passive and will keep our viewers on our channel and keep them interested. In this day and age, more and more women and their obsession with fashion is never-ending. So I believe that we really have something to capitalise on that fortunately for us nobody has capitalised on properly.
Q: Do you face challenges from regulators, for example, in terms of programming quotes and censorship?
A: We do, only because of misconceptions of what our channel is. Our channel is a channel for women. We obviously have some men who love fashion and we do have male viewership but the focus and the core audience is women. With that said, we don’t show nudity, it’s not explicit, it’s still a sexy channel. I think it’s important that with fashion, you stay on trend and with that, it needs to be sexy, glamorous, but it needs to be done in a way that is engaging for the female audience.
Q: Are you in Malaysia?
A: We are on ABN, which we are soon launching. But Indonesia is strict and in Pakistan, everyone is interested because it’s a channel for women. I think there’s a misconception of what a fashion channel is and I don’t think we have a fashion channel yet.
We try to say fashion in all aspects of life, because we still are doing some runway and I think it’s really important to showcase the latest trends, showcase the newest runway collections especially. Not only just the important ones like the UK or some of the more famous ones like Milan, Paris, but also some of the more interesting ones people might not see, like Africa. It’s not a hundred percent of our channel; we’re doing a lot with original programming, a lot with other engaging content.
Q: Is informative magazine-style series is something that you would go into as well?
A: Yes, absolutely. We’ve done a series called Front Row which is basically a chat show with industry professionals talking about the latest trends and how you can bring it down from the runway to your closet. Even a lot of the women they don’t know what the trends are, where it’s going. Are we in the 80s are we in the 90s? What are we doing here?
So it’s nice to see what the latest trends are and have some ideas on how to bring it into your closet or how you take it down from the runway and make it your own. That’s what we’re doing now. We’ve done history of fashion but from a really cool, younger perspective, saying how basically where some of the most famous designers take their inspirations from throughout history. We’ve done the Design Genius show where we repurpose all kinds of funky materials. It’s kind of like Project Runway on its head where we have them all come in and within a very short period of time they have to create high fashion gowns with bicycles and wood chips and rubber gloves. And the way they strip and repurpose and start to take the materials and what they can create is unbelievable and they do this under a really short period of time, it’s really impressive. We had one of the designers that designed for Cirque du Soleil; different people from all over the world come in and compete so it’s really a cool series.
We have a Fashion Correspondent Search, finding out fashion correspondents on the ground in all the major fashion capitals around the world where they report about what’s happening, interview famous celebrities and designers and models and get in on the nitty-gritty of what’s going on in the industry. That also feeds into our fashion news programming which is a bit more specific to fashion. You see tons of gossip content for news and then you get regular news. You don’t really get content that is kind of in the sweet spot for fashion and ton of fashion news content. You never realise that there’s so much and it’s so interesting, especially for women.
Q: In some of your series, you could potentially feature a lot of fashion labels. The genre lands itself to the possibility. What’s your philosophy on branded content?
A: I think the beauty of a fashion channel is that with magazines for instance, women pick up a magazine 50% to read the article and 50% to look at the ads. So the beauty of fashion channel and where I think we can monetize on the channel moving forward, is that we can brand and news brand it in every frame of our content and it won’t disengage the audience. In fact with women they actually like it and want it and that’s the difference. I think that this is one of the ways where our channel is really unique and can really monetize down the line.
Q: Has there been a strategy then, when it comes to conceptualising shows that you do it with a brand in mind?
A: We do some of it with brands in mind. We did a show called Fashion in Motion and it’s with famous fashion designer Ika Butoni. She basically really wanted her creations to be shown in five fashion films and she wanted them to be based around the five Chinese elements. So we conceptualised and came up with a reality series with a concept based around this.
This is a good example of how we used the branding of her line, her brand, her name and we combined it into a series where it’s visually engaging to the audience and interesting to the audience but also brands her as a designer. Also it has an on-ground element as well because as soon as we finished the show, she also is using the fashion films for her website, our website and also the launch of her store in Hong Kong.
Q: So that’s something you can potentially take to an advertiser or a sponsor and say ‘there is an on-site publicity potential?’
A: Just like everything else where people are talking about TV everywhere, same thing goes when you brand something. It needs to be everywhere; people aren’t just looking to one thing these days. They don’t want just TV or they want it all, they want the package. That’s why we can give them the TV side, the online side, we can offer everything. So that’s some of the reason why people are interested.
Q: What’s your outlook for 2013?
A: We have a lot of deals that are just now signing. There are about three to four new deals that we’ll sign soon in Asia. We’re also signing many other deals around the world. We have many other deals, Tricolour in Russia, a bunch of big platforms around the world, but we’ll be focusing on getting distribution in the last couple territories where we still need it in Asia, like Australia and possibly more penetration into China. We’re just about to launch our Latin feed. I’m talking more specifically about Asia here, but more importantly we’re launching our Latin feed and we’re going to be putting the big push to South and North America. It will all be in Spanish subtitles.
We actually did one show in Spanish already. I believe content is king and that’s my background. That’s where, all my life, when I went to USC film school, when I was working for DreamWorks and Disney; everyone would say ‘content is king’. You’re always looking for the content and people are still talking about it, it hasn’t change. So I really believe that when we put our focus there, that people will take notice and that’s going to make the difference.
Q: You mentioned earlier on that you feel there’s a hole in the market but isn’t the lifestyle genre getting saturated?
A: A lot of people think right now, that with a lot of new channels coming in its getting a little bit saturated but there’s certain ones that come and stay and certain ones that go by the sidelines. So it’s not really of an issue to us. I mean I haven’t actually seen any other fashion channels come up outside of TV and we feel that there’s always a need for women’s programming and really more and more it’s really where people are putting their focus.
