Webinar Recap: I’ve got Digital Content – What do I do Now?

January 27 (Replay at end of page)

This week we hosted our first webinar of 2021 on a topic that is top of mind for arts organizations around the world: how to distribute high quality digital content. We were delighted to be joined by four guests, bringing perspectives on both content creation and digital distribution. Patrick Mühlen-Schulte, Managing Director at The Washington Ballet, and Dale Edwards, Director of Marketing and Communications at Houston Grand Opera provided insights on digital content strategy at arts organizations. From the platform side, Marquee TV’s Kathleya Afanador, Co-founder & Head of Content, and Marc Kirschner, Co-founder & Head of Product and Innovation, shared their expertise in the digital space.

Getting Started In Digital

After showing clips of their respective organizations’ digital offerings, Patrick and Dale shared their experiences getting their content up and running. At Houston Grand Opera, Dale explained, the strategy was primarily centered around keeping their audiences engaged — especially those who had already purchased subscriptions. How could they create a digital version of their season that would still bring value to their patrons? The result was two series: one of shorter, story-driven productions and another which brought in Houston’s favorite voices for recitals. Consistency was important, so new videos are streamed twice a month, with additional behind-the-scenes footage offered in between.

Patrick and his team at The Washington Ballet were driven first and foremost by the need to create art during these challenging times. In his words, “what happened was that an entirely new form of art was created.” Dancer and choreographer Tamás Krizsa developed a new piece specifically for filming, working with a composer and camera crew, which was then performed outside in the rain and captured for digital. This experience opened the door to exploring this new art form, that additionally was much less expensive to produce than their live ballets.

What Type Of Content Works Best?

Kathleya shared insight from her work at Marquee TV on the types of digital content that audiences seem to gravitate towards. She explained that, more than the content itself, it is the packaging and editing that sets some digital initiatives apart. 

• Overall visual effect: lighting, set, and camera angles are of the utmost importance for content viewed online. Yet they must be treated very differently than they would for a live performance. Lighting that works on a stage may be too dark for a screen, in which case audiences will likely click away.

• Packaging: it is important to consider the virtual user and their needs. Unlike live audiences, digital viewers are not as captive, so a double bill would not work as well as splitting up pieces for audiences to watch on their own time. Intermissions also are not a necessity when viewers can just hit pause when they wish.

• Editing: the editing of a piece can “make or break” the experience. It is important to find an editor who will let the work breathe.

Established Platform vs. Streaming On Your Own

Both The Washington Ballet and Houston Grand Opera elected to create partnerships with Marquee TV to host their organizations’ content, rather than streaming on their own websites, but for different reasons.

For Patrick, reach was key. By hosting their performance videos on Marquee TV, The Washington Ballet would be listed alongside Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Ballet, and other internationally renowned companies. This provided an opportunity to connect with global audiences in a way that their own website would not.

Dale spoke about how Houston Grand Opera had just undergone a website overhaul, and were still working through the site’s technical capabilities. Risking the quality of the streaming was not something they could afford — sound quality, Dale explained, “is the number one thing for opera goers.” So partnering with Marquee TV allowed them a guarantee of high quality content that they might not have been able to secure with their existing technical resources and expertise.

Preparing Your Content For The Screen

Kathleya provided helpful insight into the decisions that successful organizations make in digital to optimize their video content.

• Thinking long-term: when Marquee TV works with arts organizations they are interested in creating lasting partnerships so we can collaborate to grow content and audiences.

• Securing rights: this is the biggest hurdle they face when talking to new content partners, so it is important for institutions to know which rights they need and who will be in charge of securing them.

• Understanding audiences: it is helpful to be able to find overlaps between an organization’s audience base and Marquee TV’s to know how best to promote them.

Developing Resources For Digital

At Houston Grand Opera, digital video content had been part of their strategic vision for a while, so they were already developing their internal capacity in different ways. As Dale explained, the marketing team is always looking to tell stories through visual content so they began building skills from there, along with upgrading their capture technology. What is key is a strong production team you can trust -- and that can be external or internal (stage managers, for instance, make for great associate producers). Ultimately you are still telling a story, and as Dale put it, “people in the arts are good at telling stories.”

For Patrick, the word he focuses on is “enhancing.” The pandemic was an opportunity for his team at The Washington Ballet to really flex their innovation muscles. The biggest resource question, then, is funding. Patrick does not see digital as a ticket revenue stream but as a definite return in investment in terms of the footprint they are creating and the outreach they will have by being part of a broader digital picture. In the long run their global branding will pay off.

Marc shed some light on the challenges in gathering financial resources, especially the geographical differences. In Europe, there tends to be more government funding for digital initiatives — he gave the example of Arts Council England and the way it has built upon digital in a cyclical way over the years, which allowed companies like the Royal Opera House to have robust offerings. The government funding then inspires more private contributions in these cases. In the United States, arts organizations will have to rely much more on the private sector from the start to secure this type of financial support.

What’s Next?

We asked all of our guests to share their thoughts on how they are thinking about the future of digital when arts organizations begin to return to their pre-pandemic live capacities. At Houston Grand Opera, they are treating their current pandemic season of digital as a case study to see where their audience’s appetites are for online content. For next year, it will be determining how to supplement live performances with digital productions, considering models such as subscriptions, pay-per-view, and non-performance products. Making sure they have alignment across internal and external stakeholders will be key. Dale also highlighted digital as a way to reach audiences who can no longer attend live performances, an important benefit for accessibility.

For The Washington Ballet, Patrick emphasized the connection between their digital strategy and their overall mission, which is to live out great ballet and great ballet training. Digital will continue to be a way to do what they already do even better. This will likely mean a mix of filming live performances and creating content specifically for streaming — but whatever they do will serve to enrich their dialogue with supporters and the community.

Kathleya agreed that a hybrid approach will likely be the strategy for most companies, but acknowledged that each arts organization will have its own approach. Marc followed up by emphasizing the shift in audience expectations and behavior that has taken place during this pandemic — one that will be durable in the years to come. Individuals who are not able to access a live show will now expect to have access to some sort of recording. Additionally, the recovery to pre-pandemic tourism levels will take years, so there must be a way to fill this gap in the meantime. The scalability of a strong digital partnership allows for a significant reduction in cost to develop this revenue.

Patrick highlighted the cost-saving aspect with a particularly poignant anecdote: the first video they created for streaming on Marquee TV cost less than a one-page advertisement in The Washington Post, and will last far longer.

Audience Q&A

We spent the final portion of our webinar answering questions from our audience, which resulted in some of the following valuable insights from our panelists:

• Benefits of on-demand: by watching on a streaming platform, audiences have more flexibility to watch a piece on their own time. Marquee TV sees many viewers return to a performance over and over, as they may not have the availability to watch a long opera or ballet in one sitting.

• Beyond the views: while measuring numbers and lengths of views can be helpful in some ways, Marc encouraged arts organizations to think beyond this, instead focusing on what audiences do next. With a subscription model like Marquee TV, users can really explore a genre, and institutions can use this information to impact purchasing decisions.

• Create for digital: long lead-ins showing the theater and people getting to their seats only serve to further emphasize that the viewer is not physically there. Design digital content with the digital audience in mind.

• Leverage partnerships: each digital performance could require a very different technological approach, so outsourcing to trusted external partners for video is a great way to minimize the investment needed to create quality content.

Watch The Recording Here