Twitter storm at sea

This was an interesting experiment we tried recently on enlivening pre-recorded shows – in this case by calling out for a mass action over an ad break focused on three UK supermarkets which are unclear about the sourcing of some of their seafood (though no horse flesh involved …I think) and then presenting back the results straight after the break including an on-screen graphic featuring the number of tweets sent. In the words of the Twitter folk: “A great result around the show last night. We count circa 42K+ in the last 24 hours and a peak of 22K+ at the call to action – which is an equivalent hashtag spike to those Xfactor enjoys around its biggest moments! This kind of audience activation and live polling with Twitter is brilliant.”
The following extract is courtesy of Broadcast…

Big Fish Fight hooks 20,000 tweets

5 March, 2013 | By Alex Farber

Hugh’s Fish Fight saw a massive surge in Twitter activity – to over 2,200 messages per minute – after presenter Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall urged viewers to message the UK’s biggest supermarkets.

Hugh’s Big Fish Fight (C4) 9pm-10pm
Total tweets: 22,151
Peak tweets per minute: 2,289

Fearnley-Whittingstall’s call to action over sustainable fishing saw over 10,000 viewers flock to Twitter over the course of the 60-minute show, according to data from SecondSync.

The show was watched by an audience of 1.1m (5.3%) according to overnight data supplied by Attentional – a conversion rate of around 1%.

The viewer engagement spiked at just after 9.30pm ahead of an ad break as Fearnley-Whittingstall encouraged viewers to tweet the supermarkets’ official accounts after they refused to be interviewed on the show.

The figures represented a massive uplift on the 312 tweets per minute the show averaged across the 60 minutes.

It also dwarfed the total tweet volume of 3,300 and 1,500 generated by the first two episodes in the series – when no call-to-action occurred.

C4’s multiplatform commissioning editor of factual Adam Gee said: “Fish Fight represents the sweet spot of multiplatform – the TV prompts understandable anger and the digital means now you can do something about it.”

The social media campaign was managed by digital agency Keo Digital and audience participation experts Telescope Inc.

Parents Screw You Up – Adam Gee Archive #3

I commissioned this one around 2003 for Channel 4′s Family site. It was written by Tim Wright, my collaborator on MindGym. The title and aspects of the design are derived from an anti-drugs campaign of the late 70s or early 80s (Heroin Screws You Up) via a cover article in a university magazine when I was at college by novelist-to-be Wendy Holden, a contemporary of Tim’s and mine at university and fellow Girton girl. Plus of course a tip of the hat to Larkin. This light interactive offered you a route as a parent or as a child. It was commissioned at the same time as The Showbiz Baby Name Generator.

How much did you get screwed up?

How much are you screwing up your off-spring?

The pay-off

One of a pair

Archive #1
Archive #2
Archive #0

London Lineage

From being born at one of London’s highest points to tapping these very words beside one of its secret oases, my whole life has rolled out along the Northern Line so this evening I had a stab at mapping it…

My Northern Line

Hotel GB opening its doors

Next up from these quarters is Hotel GB – kicks off on Monday night at 9pm on Channel 4. In terms of Multiplatform the emphasis is on lively chat and social media, which is why we’re working closely with Twitter. As my friend Judyth put it last weekend, “you’re a pill-sugarer” – I am indeed a pusherman (my theme tune is here), in the business of disguising public value and learning in colourful shells of celebrity and entertainment. The vibe on the location this morning was positively party-like – I chatted with Gordon Ramsay, Mary Portas, Kirstie Allsopp and Gok and all seemed really up for it, having fun for five days whilst highlighting some critical issues around young people and employment at this particular juncture. Meanwhile Tim Lovejoy and Sara Cox are psyched about diving in for some online banter. Here’s some stuff from Broadcast about it…

Twitter & C4 tie-up for Hotel GB

28 September, 2012 | By Alex Farber

Channel 4 has forged a direct partnership with Twitter to boost activity around its forthcoming reality show Hotel GB.

Twitter broadcast partnerships executive Dan Biddle has been working closely with C4 and production company Maverick Television to ensure the stripped show’s social media champions Sara Cox and Tim Lovejoy are as effective as possible.

@sarajcox and @timlovejoy, who have 496,000 and 477,000 followers respectively, have been appointed to act as online cheerleaders for each team throughout the show which airs on Monday.

The social networking site has provided behind-the-scenes technical input such as statistical analysis, best practice guidelines and extra code.

The @C4HotelGB profile, which currently has 3,500 followers, was also handed a verified account status immediately.

C4 has previously paid for promoted tweets on the site but is not thought to have worked so closely on a single show before.

Maverick’s production team, led by multiplatform executive producer Claire McArdle, will manage the celebrities updates throughout the series without input from Twitter.

C4 multiplatform commissioning editor of features and fact ent Adam Gee said the input from Twitter would significantly boost the profile of the Hotel GB.

“They have given us a lot of good tips as to how to squeeze the most out of the show via the site,” said Gee. “They have vast pools of knowledge which have provided us with ideas we wouldn’t have had ourselves.”

McCardle added the insights provided by Twitter had been as detailed as how to manage multiple hashtags within a single tweet.

“Their interest in how we are using the site to magnify the show gives us a sense we are trying something new around it,” she said. “It’s like we have been given a real-life verification tick.”

C4 recruits celebs to cheerlead Hotel GB

14 September, 2012 | By Alex Farber

Channel 4 is to recruit two celebrity social media cheerleaders to build engagement with its factual entertainment series Hotel GB.

The broadcaster will tap into the yet-to-be-confirmed male and female celebrities’ huge online followings to reach a significant audience quickly during October’s stripped five-part show.

Each will be allocated a team to support throughout the series, which will see Gordon Ramsay and Mary Portas turn a hotel into a fundraising training ground for unemployed people.

C4 multiplatform commissioning editor of features and fact ent Adam Gee said the ephemeral nature of the show meant making an instant impact was vital.

“It will be a huge multiplatform live event with the main focus on oiling the wheels of social media because the show has a strong entertainment focus,” he said. “The cheerleaders will wind each other up and get their followers behind their teams in a playful way.”

Maverick Television has been appointed to manage the digital activity surrounding the show, which is being produced by its All3Media sister indie Optomen.

Maverick multiplatform executive producer Claire McArdle said the stripped series had insufficient time to organically grow its own social media profile. “To ramp up quickly we must partner with people who are already out there,” she said.

McArdle, who will lead a team embedded round-the-clock in the undisclosed London hotel, said the main site would feature a blog style format, including a quiz, updates and behind-the-scenes footage and interviews.

It will also offer links to career resources.

A standalone casting tool, which will be rolled out to support other shows, will enable viewers to appear in Hotel GB.

{articles reproduced courtesy of Broadcast}

Clean Sweep – Broadcast Digital Awards 2012

C4 and BBC4 triumph at Broadcast Digital Awards

21 June, 2012 | By Catherine Neilan

Channel 4 made a clean sweep of the multiplatform categories at the Broadcast Digital Awards on Wednesday [20th June 2012], with four wins.

Indie-made projects for C4 won Best Game (The Bank Job), Best App (Facejacker), Best Website (Sexperience), Best Multiplatform Project (Live From The Clinic).

C4 also landed a fifth award, for Best News or Current Affairs, for the Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields website.

…

{extract published courtesy of Broadcast}

Fantastic Plastic for Live from the Clinic handed over by Mr Gilbert, headmaster of The In-betweeners (Greg Davies)

 

Links for Hanna

Beauty and the Beast: The ugly face of prejudice

The Big Fish Fight – a multiplatform campaign which is changing EU policy and legislation (fisheries) and has improved supermarket policy/practice, backed by nearly 3/4 Million supporters  – includes iPhone app (listed in Top 5 Lifestyle apps of 2011 by Apple)

The Great British Property Scandal – a transmedia campaign to highlight the revitalisation of long-term empty homes as a partial solution to Britain’s housing crisis, with over 100,000 supporters in its first week – includes an Empty Homes Spotter iPhone app

4Thought.tv – Moral, ethical spiritual and religious questions explored 365 days a year

My Healthchecker - an aggregation of health self-tests which gather and use data in an engaging way

The Sexperience 1000 – an attempt to liven up data visualisation

Embarrassing Bodies: Live - a live switchover show, the first to switch from main TV channel to the web instead of a  multichannel digital channel – linked to the main Embarrassing Bodies site which is a hugely popular health site (the main rival and referrer to the official National Health Service site)

Live from the Clinic – the primetime show which span off of the last item – saved the National Health Service over £400,000 to date through innovative video-based symptom checkers

Sexperience – a sex education site driven by peer-to-peer learning, focused on experience as opposed to theory or opinion

Beauty & the Beast – drove research into facial disfigurement and appearance-related conditions, delivering over 60,000 survey returns to the academic institution spearheading this research in the UK

Model Agency – a video player experiment to realise the value of material on the cutting room floor (for fixed rig shows in particular)

New Year Revolution – helping people make lasting positive change in their life with the help of collective willpower

Landshare – addressing the social issue of long/closed allotment waiting lists/shortage of land for individuals to grow their won food on by providing an infrastructure to connect small pieces of private land (eg back gardens) with voluntary labour with the resultant produce shared between grower and land-owner

Surgery Live – first integration of Twitter and TV on UK TV

Alone In The Wild – release of documentary rushes/dailies in advance of transmission of a primetime documentary series

Quotables – reflecting contemporary culture through quotations, creating an outstanding quotations reference site and collecting utility in the process

4 highlights of work this year

As the debt burden of time edges towards the apocalyptic default of destiny, it’s comforting to sit here by the fire with my Sobranie and peat single malt and reflect on the year that was for me at work. It was a fine year, nay a vintage one, and the 4 things that gave me most satisfaction were:

January: The Big Fish Fight with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall – the year started by taking online campaigning around TV up a gear

May: Live from the Clinic including My HealthChecker – using Embarrassing Bodies as a platform to experiment with Skype on live TV and data gathering, saving the NHS over 400 grand in the process

July: The Sexperience 1000 – given how cliched data visualisation has already become, an attempt to liven it up

December: The Great British Property Scandal with George Clarke – finished the year as I began with some full-on campaigning

So I’ll sit on here, puff away, muse idly on the last twelve months, and watch the counter on The Great British Property Scandal tick over towards that 100,000…

 

The Great British Property Scandal

So here’s what it’s all about:

After just over 24 hours more than 52,000 have joined the campaign

Our Intrepid Leader (George 'Homeboy' Clarke)

It’s been a pretty tough project but that backing plus the following have made it worth the blood, sweat and tears: before the season even started transmitting this multiplatform commission prompted a debate about the senseless waste of empty homes in the House of Commons. I’m just back from an event in Parliament with George Clarke fronting our C4 delegation to rally more MPs behind the initiative, including the committed Lib-Dem Andrew Stunell and the shadow minister for Housing Jack Dromey.

George with The Great British Property Scandal literally on his mind

Here’s the extract from Hansard:

29 Nov 2011:

Empty Homes

Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con): It is an honour to have secured this Adjournment debate on empty homes. It is an issue that I and many Members on both sides of the Chamber have raised in recent weeks and months. Indeed, only last week, three Members asked about empty homes during the ministerial statement on housing.

…

I became involved in the issue of empty homes because of my deep concern about overdevelopment in my Colne Valley constituency in west Yorkshire. It is home to the lovely towns of Slaithwaite, Marsden, Holmfirth, Honley, the Huddersfield suburbs of Lindley and Birchencliffe and many more beautiful areas. I was concerned that our beautiful Pennine countryside was set to be dug up for new identikit homes.

The idea of green fields being developed is bad enough, but it defies all logic to be doing it while thousands of existing empty properties are being left to rot. In fact, my local council, Kirklees, has just voted for a local development framework that will impose 22,470 new homes in the district over the next 15 years, with some going on green belt. I say, bring Britain’s empty homes back into use first.

There is a groundswell of support for the empty homes campaign. I have to admit that I am a big fan of Channel 4 shows such as “Grand Designs” and “Restoration Man”. The presenter of the latter show, George Clarke, will be telling the nation about the scandal of Britain’s empty homes in a forthcoming series on Channel 4 next Monday and Tuesday evening—that is the plug out of the way.

…

What is an empty home? Homes are left empty for a number of reasons—for example, when they are between tenants, being refurbished, in probate or when the owner is in care or hospital. For the purposes of this campaign and this debate, however, we are primarily talking about long-term empty homes. These are properties that are stuck empty, and I believe that getting those houses back into use could be a quick and relatively inexpensive way of providing more housing.

7.17 pm

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Andrew Stunell): Like my hon. Friend, I have been in contact with George Clarke and Channel 4, and I am happy to add a second endorsement of the programme on empty homes that they are developing. He, I and they are appalled at the scandal that 250,000 properties [see how the Government manage to make 100,000 disappear - just like that?] are empty when millions of people are on waiting lists, anxiously looking for homes and unable to find them. As well as being eyesores and as well as easily falling into disrepair, empty homes are often an expensive menace to communities and public services, attracting antisocial behaviour, squatting and vandalism.

The Government know very well that we need to build more homes, more quickly, and the housing strategy statement made in the House by my right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Local Government last Monday shows real earnest intent. At the same time, we have to make better use of our existing homes, as that is better for communities, for the environment and for the families who have the new home to live in. We have been working on ways to bring empty homes back into use, and tackling those homes is one of the key pledges that we made in the housing strategy.

Add your name to the campaign to fill Britain’s empty homes here

Here’s the season trail:

Update 8/12/11:

It’s Thursday night now, 72 hours on, and we have over 91,000 signed-up supporters on the site. Way beyond my expectations. 100,000 is a key number as that enables a parliamentary debate to be triggered. Turn, little counter, turn.

Channel 4 Multiplatform

There was a useful article in this week’s Broadcast about Channel 4′s Multiplatform commissioning and its direction of travel, based on an interview with the Multiplatform Lead, Louise Brown. Here are a few extracts [with a few annotations from me]:

The Great British Property Scandal - starts Mon 5th Dec on C4 at 9:00pm

C4’s multiplatform commissioning lead has been charged with finding innovative ways to get viewers involved in its campaigns [it's not limited to campaigns] through apps and online projects.
Multiplatform and convergence have been two key messages coming out of Channel 4 over the past 18 months, and Louise Brown is heading the team charged with innovation [including me whose focus is features and factual entertainment].
As multiplatform commissioning lead, Brown works with five commissioning editors tasked with working on two-screen projects that create meaningful dialogue.
George Clarke’s The Great British Property Scandal is the latest campaign to be getting the full 360-degree treatment, with a season of programmes supported by a range of multiplatform activity including an iPhone app and an online tool for members of the public to identify where there are empty homes, via mapping technology. The key activity is an online petition.
“It’s calling for a change in the law around long-term empty homes being made available for ordinary people to use, as well as setting up a low-interest loan fund,” Brown explains.
The information will be used by democracy project My Society [MySociety made the tools and app, they don't use the information, the tools pass it on securely] and passed on to the local authorities. Taking lessons from last January’s Hugh’s Fish Fight, which harnessed the mass-TV audience to make a tangible change to policy, Brown is hoping to get more than 10,000 signatures on the petition.
“In multiplatform overall, we are constantly learning; the team’s remit is really to innovate,” she says.
Adam Gee, multiplatform features and fact ent commissioner, has worked on campaigns for both Hugh’s Fish Fight and The Great British Property Scandal. Brown believes his experience can lead to more powerful campaigns in future.

“C4 prides itself on having really impactful programmes. When you have been stirred by a programme, you need to do something with that. That is what is so exciting about having multiplatform at the heart of things now,” she says.
One of the key lessons from the campaigns is that people need to have a variety of access points to do something that is achievable, she says.
Campaigns are not the only area in which C4 is looking to invest. All of its programmes have a web presence, but the level of interactivity will vary, says Brown. “In terms of resources, I would rather have the focus on a few standout, compelling experiences around really appropriate subject matter than try to make everything a little bit multiplatform,” she says.
Brown points to the range demonstrated by The Million Pound Drop Live playalong game, Comedy Blaps, Hippo: Wild Feast Live and forthcoming gameshow Bank Job.
In the ambitious Hippo: Wild Feast Live, a dead hippo was placed on a river and C4 attempted to let the audience watch almost every stage of the animal’s body being consumed as its energy was passed down the food chain. “It came together quite quickly,” she reflects. “Natural history is another area where I really hope we are going to see some more events or experiences. If we get the right subject matter and the right approach, it makes it a uniquely C4 experience. Not everything worked, but if everything is going right, we are not pushing hard enough.”
Despite some technical glitches, the project attracted an audience that was willing to spend time on the website – one of the factors Brown considers when looking at a project’s success.
The starting point when assessing how well a project has done is the number of visits to the site, followed by the number of minutes people spend on the site, and then the number of return visits. On the Hippo project, viewers spent an average of 19 minutes watching a live stream, which culminated in 6,500 hours of live-action views.
Those are the overall markers of success. But each genre should be approached differently as each has its own potential for multiplatform. In scripted content such as drama and comedy, the key thing is talent, says Brown.

Ideas machine
…
C4 has just ordered 14 developments from 200 pitches submitted after its first ever online briefing. The plan now is to increase the frequency of briefings and the number of commissions. “The total focus of my team is finding new talented companies. Sometimes they are content companies and sometimes they are technology companies,” she explains.
“At next year’s briefings, I would like to see more TV companies interested in multiplatform commissioning. We have some of the best digital companies, who come along with really brilliant thinkers, and I would like some of those TV thinkers to come along and meet with them.”
C4’s strategy of two-screen commissioning revolves around the TV, but over the coming year, we can expect to see a more fluid use of ideas. “I would be gobsmacked if an online idea doesn’t migrate onto TV next year. There are ideas we are considering already. There is already a case where it is has gone into a strand for a show. It is absolutely what we think and know will happen,” she says.
Ultimately, C4’s aim of pushing the boundaries in convergence and two-screen has led to a change in the way it commissions and the type of content it is working with, and a deeper understanding of audience behaviour. The next year will only see it building on that foundation.

How to pitch
Do
•    Know why your idea is perfect for Channel 4
•    Come to our briefings
•    Keep up with our current Multiplatform commissions – what you can learn, where you might overlap
Don’t
•    Overthink it – commissioners want to input/help
•    Assume the involvement of existing C4 talent
•    Pitch comedy or drama without a writer

Cash and Burn

Channel 4 multiplatform: 
A broad development slate
Channel 4 multiplatform commissioners have ordered 14 developments since the online summer briefing.
There’s a non-linear narrative drama and factual-based projects looking at topics such as international finance and food waste, while an entertainment format looks at the depth of friendships online.
Adam Gee has ordered a development looking at international finance. The project, from Cardiff ’s Cube Interactive and Twofour, aims to offer an experience of how international finance works and promises the unusual spectacle of a City trader, a bookie, a housewife and a monkey pitted against each other.
The idea is seen as having potential to translate to TV and could potentially be stripped over a number of days. Ten Alps’ Wasted, another Adam Gee order, focuses on a new chef who promotes how to avoid wasting food. The format will show people how to use their food by the end of the week rather than throw it away.

Intimate Exchanges uses Alan Ayckbourn’s 1982 play to explore the concept of non-linear drama. Multiplatform drama commissioner Hilary Perkins ordered the project from Tern in Glasgow.
A number of potential interactive treatments are being developed based on the themes of the original play. The idea is based on examining how decisions can be made both in a local environment, such as the living room, and how that might compare with regional and national decisions.
An in-depth knowledge of digital culture is the basis for The Network, which is being worked on by Nerd TV. The development, an entertainment format commissioned by Jody Smith, looks at how well people’s online friends really know them, and is another development earmarked as a possible TV transfer.

Reproduced courtesy of Broadcast. The full article can be read here (subscription only).

Servicing the Health Service

Here’s an interesting article from a perspective inside the NHS about my current project ‘Diagnosis Live from the Clinic’ and how it relates to the necessary reform of the NHS and the prerequisite innovation around its service delivery. It is written by Sophia Christie, Chief Executive of NHS Birmingham East and North, who is on assignment to the Department of Health, and was published in the Health Service Journal at http://www.hsj.co.uk/

Wired in: digital service delivery can put healthcare into the home

The success of new technologies in major sectors such as retail and travel has put control and convenience in the hands of the consumer. Why then is the health sector not thinking “digital by default”?

Over the last decade, service content and delivery in travel, banking and retail has made a radical shift to the phone and the web, at the greater convenience and control of the consumer.

With this as the context for the rest of our lives, using the health service is becoming an increasingly frustrating experience for many people. In 2009, there were 450 million clinical interactions in the NHS, costing £42bn. Face-to-face interactions made up 84 per cent of the activity and 98 per cent of the cost. Costs and use have continued to rise, but proportions of face-to-face activity have remained steady.

“Digital by default” may have been adopted as a design principle across government, but in the NHS we don’t think to offer contact other than as face to face, even for administrative activity. Much of our contact with services is more transactional.

Recent discussions in response to the white paper and consultation on the information strategy have highlighted three goals, which should underpin the relationship between the NHS and the citizen if we are to sustain our position as dearly beloved British institution with a new generation of users:

• People should feel in control of their health and care, as citizens and members of communities;
• Accessible, accurate information should support informed choice and greater safety;
• Services should be multi-channel to enable convenience, efficiency and effectiveness.

The three are clearly inter-related; we are unlikely to feel “in control” if we cannot routinely access information about our own care, or have to reorganise our working day for the convenience of the outpatients department. The NHS has a track record in the adoption of new clinical technology, but we need to apply this innovation to the process of service delivery.

On 25 May, a new series begins on Channel 4, Diagnosis: Live from the Clinic. Produced by Maverick TV, it builds on the success of the Embarrassing Bodies series and the groundbreaking “NHS Local” digital service they developed with NHS West Midlands. The series will feature live consultations with doctors using Skype to support discussion of a range of minor and common conditions.

Channel 4 is set to expand its audience into a slightly older, more family oriented group than the Embarrassing Bodies viewers. That series was backed up with an increasingly interactive and popular website, where viewers have been able to link into self-tests for a range of conditions, and signposting on to services.

Maverick reports that in two months the My Healthchecker app has been used 650,000 times, and the website recently passed 10 million visits.

Diagnosis: Live from the Clinic proposes to go further, supporting individual consultations on the site after each programme, based on NHS Direct algorithms, with the potential to link to NHS Direct as appropriate. The service has been able to schedule its workload in anticipation of a surge of interest in certain conditions following each broadcast.

The use of Skype will cause us to reflect on why we don’t routinely plan for these types of consultation, or exploit the potential of text and email for queries and routine communications. We need to understand those who are digitally excluded, but in 2009 more than 80 per cent of adults had a mobile phone, and 31 per cent of these had web access. Meanwhile, 73 per cent of homes have internet access. There is a huge opportunity here for technology to support the home as the hub of care.

Some situations will require face to face, but opening up alternative channels for more transactional activity will release time and space for those who really need that. Older people are the lowest users of the internet, but the fastest growing group, and their children and carers are web savvy.

Policy in this area is still developing, and will rightly be subject to lively internal and public debate. But our public are changing, and if we cannot serve them effectively, others will do it instead.

{courtesy of the Health Service Journal http://www.hsj.co.uk/  }