SampoMedia is launching a series of workshops to help connect creative businesses with audiences and to help those creative thinkers find the tools and the confidence to control their own destiny.
The workshops – called Audience In The Mind – make use of a wide range of data about audience demand and consumer behaviour more generally; academic research; and more conventional market and industry reports to help producers find and engage the right audiences for their work.
And it applies this knowledge to a methodology aimed at allowing content creators to maximize the creative and commercial potential of their work, and to build sustainable businesses.
WORKSHOP LEADERS
The Audience In The Mind workshops will be led by two well-known and experienced leaders of workshops and events.
Peter Buckingham is the former head of distribution and exhibition at the UK Film Council and the BFI and an internationally recognised expert on audience development and digital innovation. His pioneering work has included the creation of the world’s first Digital Screen Network, the development of Film Club and the founding of piracy-beating website Find Any Film. He is a course leader at the Media Business School and a member of many advisory boards, including the European Digital Cinema Forum, Cinema First and Power to the Pixel.
Michael Gubbins is a journalist, analyst and consultant working across a wide range of media and specialising in audience research, digital change and chairs the board of the Film Agency for Wales. He is the former editor of Screen International, Music Week and Computing, and author of influential papers, a contributor to including the Digital Revolution series for CineRegio. He is a member of the British Screen Advisory Council, and of the advisory boards of Met Film School, European Transmedia Alliance and Power to the Pixel. He leads events as chair and keynote speaker around EuropeThe workshop takes data from film, media and other creative industries and arts, and from academic sources to give content creators fresh perspectives on how they approach their work.
Unlike many other workshops, the SampoMedia approach is not based on on-dimensional prescriptive approaches, which suggest a single right way of managing any project.
Our evidence will show that there is a natural progression from linear ‘old’ media to new interactive transmedia models. SampoMedia’s method begins with knowledge of audiences, not with technology. We aim to help content creators find the audience and the business potential from their ideas, finding the right media and tools for them.
We focus on three facets of any project – reach, engagement and experience – as the foundations of any successful business model.
SampoMedia’s courses are practical and interactive, working with content creators to help them find the way to realise their ambitons.
Our workshops are based on real audience data, case studies and academic and business research.
OBJECTIVES
The idea is to turn discussion away from industrial restrictions and towards releasing the passion and creativity that drives projects in the early stages. It aims to find the potential in a product by focusing on interaction between the guiding creative spirit of work and the realities of audience demand and behaviour.
The workshop leaders – Peter Buckingham and Michael Gubbins (see right) – have experience in a variety of disciplines and have worked in the traditional businesses, the wider media and arts, and in digital media.
They have created a practical workshop programme that is practical and highly interactive. It will leave participants with a clear sense of how to develop their ideas, exploit the intellectual property of their work, and to use the value created to construct sustainable business.
Speaking at the Cannes Film Festival, SampoMedia co-founder Gubbins said: “We aim to move beyond the often conservative teaching of many industry events, or of those prescriptive workshops which suggest an inexorable shift from old media formats to supposed new media, interactive and transmedia future.
“We want to help creative ideas find their own potential through an understanding of audiences.”
WORKSHOP STRUCTURE
Section One: The audience matrix
Identifying and planning the right audience for your project.
Section Two: Audience reach
Identifying the right media and most effective communication with your audience.
Section Three: Engaging audiences
Business planning based on interaction with audiences and data capture, and making audiences part of the creative process.
Section Four: Audience experience
Understanding motivations and emotional engagement for different products and finding the right experience for your product.
Section Five: The business of reach, engagement and experience
Planning for extension and exploitation of the IP of any project and creating a business model.
Section Six: Sustainable audience-centred businesses
How to turn the SampoMedia approach into sustainable business.
The workshops are available for film, media and creative industry festivals and events around the world. If you wish to know more about booking an Audience In The Mind workshop for your event, or to know more, email: info@sampomedia.co.uk
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