With so many ways to consume media these days, it’s sometimes hard to understand what and who will be watching and on what platform. In a panel moderated by Todd Spangler, NY Digital Editor of Variety, we learned how creators and programmers can connect with a young generation of audiences.
Spangler spoke with Viacom Digital Studios President Kelly Day and comedian and creator Lauren Elizabeth about their partnership and how they each create content that is authentic and entertaining. Viacom Digital Studios launched less than a year ago, stated Day, and is host to a variety of original digital content. Day explained that the strategy for the studio is to know the audience and to develop content that is platform specific. Audiences consume media in different ways per platform, so programmers need to create content specific to each digital platform to have the best results.
Lauren Elizabeth then spoke about her various endeavors as an entrepreneur and creator, and how she uses each platform differently. What most people don’t realize is that for people like Lauren Elizabeth, they do it all; she designs, shoots, edits, promotes, writes and produces. She knows that you could repurpose content into another platform, but it’ll likely not do that well because consumers don’t want to leave the app they are on to see the same thing on another platform. Original content will always win, but you have to know where to put it.
As Kelly Day said, “Building partnerships with great talent is something that is really integral to everything we are doing across Viacom.” She thinks it’s incredibly important to develop programming strategies and audience strategies for the future.