But what does it take for rights-holders to build out a property that appeals to brands and channel partners for a fan-friendly online success?

Here are FanTrust’s top tips for connecting content creators and rights-holders with distributors and brands.

· Work in parallel with prospective sponsors and distributors before signing your deals

· Determine where you are on the spectrum of commercial versus pure-play content:

• Content only
• Sponsored/underwritten
• Branded entertainment

· Create a premium package for any sponsor:

• Audience (either massive = 50m monthly impressions; or supremely desirable and targeted)
• Content (feature a popular star or popular online genre, such as comedy)
• Distribution destinations (deploy on the brand’s channels as well as relevant destinations and portals)

· Obtain projections for traffic based on similar content for every distribution channel

· To negotiate the best deals with brands and distributors, come to the table with an audience (e.g. via social media or the stars/bands featured in your content)

Sure, fans can be evangelists for your brand, your distribution channel or your content. Fans can friend you on Facebook, critique you on Twitter and mash up your stuff all over YouTube. Fans can help you with your core business, secure second season pick-ups or boost international television sales. Fans can also inspire you take your entertainment business in new digital directions: onto apps and consoles, social networks and social games. Next up: fans will stand up and count for investors.

Soon, fans will be part of your business valuation, M+A strategies and financings. Here are some reasons why, based on some trends FanTrust tracks:

• The average value of a fan is as high as $136 bucks, based on product spending, brand loyalty and willingness to recommend.

• Fans are more likely to remember brand messaging than other audiences, a powerful reason to build a fanbase as part of any campaign. This is especially true when it comes to mobile fans, according to big brands like Marks & Spencer.

• Facebook fans of big brands like Starbucks and McDonalds spend twice as much as other customers.

• The estimated value of Starbucks’ Facebook Audience: $1.8 Billion.

The right number of fans can not only help you to secure deals with brands, broadcasters and distributors, but increasingly fans are part of the investment mix. Producers raising money to finance media properties need more than just great content for the right demographic, they need a baked in fan-base or at the very least accurate projections about audience reach.

For the past ten years FanTrust has seen lots of business models (and many strange bedfellows) — but only recently an increased attention to audiences, and fans in particular.

We’ve witnessed and advanced this steady rise in both television and new media companies valuing their fans, fan relationships and fan communities.

This is an important development in an entertainment industry where audiences have traditionally been seen as amorphous blobs, like ratings or bums on seats. Valuing fans will bring media rights holders, brands and investors closer together, speaking a common language and putting the committed consumer first.

Next time on the FanTrust blog, FanTrust’s top tips for connecting content creators with distributors and brands.

"I don't think that fan cult and fan culture is new. I think what we're seeing is how it unfolds and how it manifests in real time." - Photo by Dominic Schaefer

If there’s one thing Catherine Warren has learned from her media career, it’s how powerful an audience can be.

It’s what convinced her 10 years ago to launch FanTrust Entertainment Strategies, through which she has helped broadcasters, game companies and TV and film producers around the world to use digital media to build fan bases and drive revenue.

“The audience used to be looked at as an amorphous group,” said Warren. “They were not looked at as a community or as individuals who could provide things like viral marketing and context.”

FanTrust [Warren] has helped everyone from the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. and Microsoft Corp. to British Columbia Lottery Corp. expand their fan bases using the web and other communication channels.

When Nokia and Orange Telecom France formed a strategic alliance to increase video game use on their mobile products, they called on FanTrust to build game developer momentum for the alliance.

When the Public Broadcasting Service’s KCTS station wanted to penetrate the Canadian market, it turned to FanTrust [Warren] for the initiative’s finance and business strategy.

Warren’s reputation and roles in the media world continue to grow thanks to her ability to bring together the right content, communications channels and partners to build fan-base passion.

Among her loftiest roles is jury chairwoman for the experimental stream of the newly created Canadian Media Fund. The $27 million fund supports high-risk interactive digital media content and application creators.

During the stream’s first round of funding in October, 27 projects were approved for a total of $12.9 million.

Lynda Brown-Ganzert, another Vancouver-based digital media mover-and-shaker, who also sits on the experimental stream’s board [jury], describes Warren as a great synthesizer.

“Catherine has the ability to take things in what can be a pretty confusing space and link them together,” said Brown-Ganzert. “She’ll look at what’s happening around the world – different trends, emerging technology platforms and human behaviour – and she’ll weave it all together into a well-thought-out strategy.”

Warren is a jury member for both the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, which hosts the Emmy Awards, and the Rose d’Or, a European festival that recognizes quality television.

She has been a board member of the $18 million Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund for 10 years and is the fund’s communications chairwoman.

In September 2009, Warren was appointed to the board of the United Nations’ World Summit Award for New Media, which promotes digital content and information and communication technology applications that can improve lives.

More than 20,000 applications from 157 countries were included in the 2009 awards competition.

Excerpt from Curt Cherewayko’s article in the January 11-17, 2011 issue of Business in Vancouver.

Click here for the full article.

In terms of increasing the understanding and control a user has over the information accessed by third-party applications, Facebook is introducing a new permissions model that will require applications to specify the categories of information they wish to access and obtain express consent from the user – before any data is shared. Users will also have to approve any access to their friends’ info, in turn subject to the friend’s privacy and application settings.

Visit Media in Canada for the full article

Even with the current economy, we have a wealth of experience to draw from and a lot to be optimistic about.

• While retail experienced a modest Christmas, Facebook made about $35M from virtual gifts alone in 2008.
• Business models that are free to customers — and both traditional and new media are good examples — now account for the majority of revenues for 60 of the world’s 100 largest companies.
• And global digital revenues, with their annual double-digit growth, are still projected to hit $153B by 2011.
• By 2020, 80 percent of all media consumption will be digital; today it is already more than 50 percent.
• The Guitar Hero World Tour led to the creation of 25,000 user-generated songs in the first ten days of release, representing a new subscription model to monetize fans — and a whole new level of fandom!
• New media supported new levels of fundraising and community outreach for non-profits: Wikipedia just reached its $6M goal from donations; and the United Way of Canada recently launched a YouTube awareness program with FanTrust.
• There will soon be as many avatars in the world as people in Canada…leaving Canadians to wonder if we’ll be replaced by Club Penguin in the G8?

So, as 2009 rolls out, and as I celebrate my 25th year in digital media, I believe that our industry’s collective depth and experience will stand the test of time and continue to take innovation to new heights. If desperate times call for desperate measures, no doubt troubled times can be the mothers of invention.

Welcome to the FanTrust guide to digital success – Setting Your Digital Resolutions for 2009. December is traditionally a time for reflection and goal-setting, both personal and professional. Though you know what it takes to reach your goals for, say, losing weight (less eggnog, more yoga) or having fun (more eggnog, less yoga) –what if you’re venturing into uncharted business terrain?

This month, we’ll walk you through short, simple exercises – complete with case studies and success stories – intended to spark transformation in your company. Set your sights on overall digital business goals, digital capacity, market niche and fan engagement strategies.

With more than two decades of experience in digital media, FanTrust can help you grow your digital lines of business. Our hope is to leave you inspired and invigorated for a happy, healthy digital business in 2009.

All the best!

Week Three: Define Your Niche

So far in FanTrust’s Setting Your Digital Resolutions series, you’ve identified digital business goals and investigated your fans’ online behaviour.

The next step – defining your company’s niche – requires the right blend of aspirational thinking and capacity assessment. It’s also a highly custom exercise. Over the years, FanTrust has led many entertainment companies through its Digital Brand Snapshot. Companies that to the outside world may appear very similar – television producers with similar broadcast partners, format genres and slate sizes, for example – have defined their niche in remarkably different ways.

Many content producers define themselves as storytellers. Some see themselves as media-specific storytellers– television, games, movies, etc. In this case, digital growth will generally stem from strategic partnerships on new distribution platforms, or creative IP licensing deals.

Other producers see their team as media-agnostic storytellers. FanTrust client marblemedia is a great example. marblemedia recently won both Company of the Year and Producer of the Year at the Canadian New Media Awards, and has built its award-winning reputation as a content creation company devoted to telling stories that entertain and engage audiences across all platforms, including This is Daniel Cook and The Dating Guy. Another inspirational client is the National Film Board of Canada, an organization that is producing and distributing virtual online communities and platforms for social engagement and documentary media creation, including Homeless Nation and its Filmmaker-in-Residence program.

Entertainment and media executives overseeing blockbuster digital success share a common attribute – they are able to pinpoint and extend the fan experience.

Oprah’s media tagline is “Live Your Best Life”. The Oprah media empire inspires its female viewer to challenge her thinking, expand her physical and spiritual knowledge, change her behavior and improve her life in the process. The Oprah Bookclub is one of the most recognized brand endorsements in North America. Therefore, the Skype-powered New Earth Web events and podcasts were a natural digital extension of the Oprah media niche.

The online cult phenom ICanHasCheezeburger.com boosts more than 4 million page views a day – that’s 4 million views of animal (mostly cat) photos set to funny captions of what they might say.  Ben Huh, CEO of Pet Holding Inc., which runs a network of humour sites including ICanHasCheezeburger, summed up his company’s niche succinctly when he said “We just want to make people happy for five minutes.” His is not the only entertainment and media company to find a market in “web escapism”.

How you define your company affects where and how it will grow in the multiplatform space. Often, how a company defines its digital position is the result of management’s digital comfort-level, rather than company-wide business capacity. This can lead to lost opportunities. FanTrust serves as a valuable executive coach, educating teams on market and revenue opportunities and realities – including budgets; technical and operational requirements for projects; case studies; and audience engagement.

An ICE 2008 advisory board member and presenter, FanTrust President Catherine Warren recently sat down with ICE Cubes host and producer Alan Sawyer to share her thoughts about the digital ABC’s – audience, business and content – including:

• How audiences are changing entertainment content and the business of entertainment
• Aggregating fans to monetize online content
• Developing a profitable digital strategy (property-specific or corporate)
• Raising capital for multiplatform IP
• What the gaming industry can learn from the TV industry, and vice versa

To listen to the podcast, visit the ICE Cubes player.

ICE 2008

http://www.ice08.com/

This announcement marks yet another collaboration on digital delivery and cross-platforming of HD entertainment, not to mention, the increased partnering of video games and films. This was a no-brainer for Disney given that in seven months Xbox Marketplace has seen 10 million downloads and the game platform already has a built in and engaged audience. As for Microsoft, movies have been available for digital download for some time now on rival iTunes, but not immediately in HD. It looks like in this case Microsoft is one step ahead of Apple.