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.

“The Awards were highly competitive this year,” said FanTrust Entertainment Strategies President Catherine Warren. “We are pleased but not surprised that a number of our distinguished clients were acknowledged by a jury of industry peers.”

Production powerhouse marblemedia swept two key awards, winning for both Company of the Year and Producer of the Year for partner Mark Bishop. Vancouver/Beijing-based Next Level Games won Excellence in Gaming for Mario Strikers Charged.  And the National Film Board of Canada-supported Homeless Nation won for Excellence in Social Media.

As a partner and co-founder of marblemedia, Mark Bishop plays a key role in developing television and interactive projects that tell unique stories that entertain and engage audiences across all platforms, including marblemedia’s This is Daniel Cook and This is Emily Yeung series. Current marble initiatives include The Adrenaline Project and Taste Buds; upcoming projects include the animated comedy The Dating Guy, now in production with Teletoon for debut in 2009.

Mario Strikers Charged is a hall of fame sequel to the high-energy soccer game Super Mario Strikers, for the Nintendo Wii. With this game, Next Level brings Mario Strikers, and its publisher Nintendo, into the online arena, allowing players to compete online via the Wi-Fi Connection.

Homeless Nation is an online forum where Canada’s homeless community share their stories – through blogs and audio visual content – as an on-going dialogue for social awareness and positive change. The project, executive produced by Daniel Cross, was co-produced by National Film Board of Canada.

In addition to FanTrust clients cited for their outstanding contributions to digital media, six awards went to Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund related ventures and individuals.

OddJobJack.com, which won for Excellence in Cross Platform, allows viewers to experience first-hand the on-the-job misadventures of the perpetually unemployed Jack Ryder, a 25-year old Sociology grad, through the sites casual games and contests.

Excellence in News/ Information winner Diamond Road Online brings the technologies of collaborative filtering, tagging and personal recommendations – techniques behind popular sites like Flickr and Amazon.com – into the world of documentary storytelling.

Designer of the Year was awarded to Daniel Riley of Life Capture Interactive; the company was recently received Bell Fund support to develop CBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? website.

Sheridan Scott, instrumental in founding the Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund, received Special Recognition for her long-standing commitment to Canada’s new media industry.

Producer Mark Bishop and marblemedia most recently received funding for TheAdrenalineProject.com, where users play and compete in a tournament style game online with Boomer, the over-the-top cheerleader and drill sergeant who serves as a guide and mentor throughout.

“The Bell Fund continues to play a major part in cultivating digital media leaders and innovation, positioning Canada at the global center of excellence in this industry,” said Catherine, who has also served on the Bell Fund Board for close to a decade.

###

It seems everyone wants to set up singles – and award-winning producer marblemedia is no exception. marblemedia took its latest animated property, The Dating Guy to MIP in Cannes – where FanTrust also introduced the multiplatform series and its singleton cast of characters to digital broadcasters. The show is currently in production in English and French with Teletoon Canada.

Watch the demo video below

More than a TV series, The Dating Guy includes a The Morning After Show, a companion comedy of digital shorts, casual games, “hook-up” widgets and social networking.

Portals, digital distributors, casual game sites and other prospective strategic partners can now check it out at DatingGuy.com and can contact FanTrust to provide this hot digital content to co-ed audiences who live, work and play online.