UNDERSTANDING THE VIDEO AND ANIMATION ECOSYSTEM

The visual content ecosystem is one of the most important tools that I use with clients to demonstrate to how I understand not only their content needs but also the lifecycle of each piece of content that lives within their ecosystem and how much an individual client should spend to create, nurture and phase out that piece of content from their ecosystem.

Before we can get to that we need to understand what the visual content ecosystem is.

An ecosystem is defined as a community of interacting organisms and their physical environment.

A visual content ecosystem for a brand is a community of interacting visual content assets and the environment in which they live.

In the picture above you can see my grim graphic for how many traditional production companies, agencies (and sadly indeed some clients too) think of their clients (or their own) ecosystem.

Often this thought is as simplistic as TV Commercials for TV, Brand Film for the website, maybe an Instagram or IGTV edit for social (which is really just putting one of the previously mentioned pieces of content on that platform with little to no consideration of whether it is fit for purpose for that platform or how their audience consumes content on that platform or not).

This graphic represents where your thinking should start when thinking about where your ecosystem lives…

Once you understand where the content lives you can start to organically think about the kind of content that should populate these environments and more importantly - how you create a feeling of seamless connectivity across all the content that lives in the ecosystem.

A great way to visualise this idea by yourself or with your team is to map your content ecosystem.

This is a great process to go through when planning your video strategy for 2019 and is a great way to visualise the outputs of that strategy in one place that gives a clear and concise view of the lifecycle of each piece of content and the price associated with it.

I do this in two ways.

The first way is to map the content which populates the ecosystem.

Just like any map four points of reference are required.

The first two points of reference relate to the content lifespan.

The content lifespan is important for you to understand because you need to know that no piece of content truly lives forever with your audience.?

It has a lifecycle and if managed correctly you will derive the maximum benefit from each piece of content in your ecosystem.

The first point of reference is disposable.?

Its where all the content with a short life span lives in the ecosystem.

It is important to understand here that just because a piece of content is disposable doesn’t mean that it has less value or is of less meaning in the scheme of the ecosystem.

Many pieces of high value content are disposable.

Most social video is disposable because it is consumed by the audience very quickly and then the audience moves on to the next thing that interests them on the particular social media platform the content appears on.

A lot of sales orientated content is disposable because there is a specific sales cycle and once it is over…?

The content has no context or meaning to the audience.

The second point of reference I use is called enduring.?

Some people refer to this point as evergreen.?

I don’t because personally I feel the term evergreen suggests that the content lives on and on and often places?a false or misleading assumption with clients that evergreen content never needs to be replaced.?

This is an amateurish way of thinking about a content lifecycle.

Every piece of content in the ecosystem needs to be allowed to die eventually…?

Yes just like in life this might be sad but it is a reality of the shifting need of the audience which must be met at all costs for a brand to stay relevant.

Enduring content by is nature is the content that endures beyond a standard content lifecycle (which by todays standards means it lasts longer that twelve to twenty four months).

It is content that will still have relevance and in some cases if perfectly executed will grow in relevance to the audience beyond the standard content lifecycle.

The types of content that populate this section of the ecosystem are Brand Films, Testimonials, some Corporate Videos and Training Films that are not based on specific software or processes that are reviewed annually.

TV Commercials live somewhere between disposable and enduring depending on their message, target audience and how effective they are.

The remaining two points for mapping the content of the ecosystem are the points which relate to the production quality required for the content to effectively reach its target audience.

It’s important to understand and accept that not every piece of content needs to be a polished, high production value, massive crew and cast extravaganza to reach the audience effectively.

In fact for some campaigns this approach is completely wrong (this will become clearer as I explain these two points).

The bottom reference point on our map is now titled captured.?

Captured content refers to campaigns like the ice bucket challenge which are user generated content captured directly on a phone, camera or laptop camera and uploaded or streamed directly to the audience often without editing, colour grading, titles or any of the other elements that add production value to a piece of content.

Captured content can be (as was the case with the ice bucket challenge) as effective as the most piece of crafted content if it has the right message and approach to appeal to the specific audience.

It is also appropriate for many forms of internal video communication and some forms of hygiene content where a brand wants the content to feel like it is real, genuine, unedited, unfiltered and direct for audience consumption as is.

The last point on our content map is titled crafted.

I use the term crafted because craft more than anything else is a contributing factor in cost for a client.

The way I often position this to a client is to get them to think about the end credits of any film they have ever seen at the cinema.

On a big multi million dollar summer blockbuster where you are waiting for a post credit scene… You could be waiting a long time because of all the end titles featuring the crews names.

When seeing these names what you don’t appreciate or understand is that each of those names has added their craft to the film.?

Their specific or unique skill which has enabled the film to look as amazing as it does.

Like a lot of things in life the more craft that is added (the more crew the more expertise) the more expensive a piece of content can become.

Often when I communicate this to clients for the first time it is an interesting experience.?

It as if the impenetrable unseen factors involved in project costs has suddenly become crystal clear.

Now that you have the four points on this first map the exercise becomes interesting for yourself and your team.

Using the four points of the map you can start to place your current content as well as the future content you need to properly populate your visual content ecosystem.

More than this you have also communicated this in a way which helps you and your team understand how each piece of content fits in regards to its longevity and an indication of how much each piece of content should cost by showing the craft that is required for each piece of content to be effective.

This is the first part of understanding your ecosystem.

The next step is to map this content against the environments in which they live.

This is also important because you start to develop an understanding of which pieces of content may migrate across numerous distribution channels and which will be single channel.

You can also start to plan for how you make the single channel pieces of content still feel integrated and central to the entire visual content ecosystem you have created.

A simple way of doing this is often to create a table or excel with the different environments the content will live on in the clients ecosystem (mobile, laptop, tablet, TV, streaming, VR, OOH etc) and list the content that will live in each environment.

You can then easily cross reference what is multi and what is single platform and start to develop the content accordingly.

STILL NEED MORE HELP?

Reach out to me and the?team at APV ! We’d love to talk to you about how we can help you understand more about how to plan your video strategy and make amazing content that connects your story to your audience!

Thomas J Elliott is the Senior Producer/Director for?APV ?an advertising agency specialising in video and animation with offices in Wan Chai Hong Kong.?

He is a winner of numerous international awards for video and animation and the author of five books on visual content.

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