12 Janvier 2023

Here are Sandra Lehner's bets on what 2023 will bring for the industry in terms of innovation trends. 

© Starbucks & Netflix

While I predicted last year, the focus of the streaming giants will be on producing original content to encourage people to subscribe, this year it’ll be all about smart partnerships. The streaming market is now so competitive that it’s basically unprofitable, forcing companies to find new ways to acquire and retain customers while increasing perceived value and decreasing costs.

One of these smart win-win partnerships is Netflix’s partnership with Nike that will bring more than 30 hours of workout videos to the entertainment streaming app. The leading streaming platform and athletic apparel brand have joined forces just in time for that annual New Year’s resolution of exercising more. The videos, produced by Nike Training Club, are available across all of Netflix’s subscription plans. They are also dubbed into four additional languages. From Nike’s POV, it’s great to get access to a new audience, with Netflix’s 223 million global subscribers. But for Netflix it’s an excellent deal, too, as they tap into Nike’s huge (young) fan community. Nike is one of Gen Z’s favorite brands after all.

Another win-win partnership was Netflix teaming up with Starbucks for their book club and accompanying monthly social content series titled “But Have You Read the Book?” hosted by Orange Is the New Black star Uzo Aduba. Filmed in various Starbucks locations around the U.S., each episode shares an inside look at how a book is brought from page to screen. Cast, creators and authors engage in conversations about both the book and adaptation — what drew them in, how they relate and its messages.

Both Branded Entertainment deals include not only financial advantages for the streaming giant, but also in terms of reaching new audiences.

The key to acquiring new customers is still original content. But while shows like House of Cards and Ozark were huge hits for Netflix, they are not the reasons anymore, people are signing up for the service. The question now is how do Netflix & Co. make additional revenue from their original content shows? It’s probably, at least in part, by finding a new partner for whom shows like Ozark are exceptionally more valuable now. We’ve reached the point where less flush streamers will happily pay to air reruns of other streamers’ content.

At its core, content removal is a consequence of a few things: not wanting to pay backend fees, taking advantage of tax write-downs, and “freeing up” room on the digital shelf. But it’s also about becoming a new monetization tactic as audiences use tiered entertainment options. Especially FAST Channels could give old streamer content a second-life. Free, ad-supported platforms like Pluto TV and Freevee asserted themselves in 2022. Paramount's Pluto TV made up 1 percent of all viewing in October, according to Parrot Analytics’ Julia Alexander. 

© Netflix

After premiering in November 2022, Tim Burton series Wednesday broke several records for Netflix, such as beating Stranger Things season 4 to become the platform's most-watched English-language series in its first week. Unsurprisingly, Netflix officially renewed it for a second season on January 6.

Another series that broke records and won all awards in 2022 was HBO's Succession. By many, it is considered to be one of the best shows currently on television. Succession is filled with dark humor, with each character having a quick-witted and vile arsenal of insults and backtalk. The series, loosely based on the real-life Murdoch family, takes a dramatized look at the owners of a major news conglomerate, offering some of the best drama and intrigue on TV.

And one of the biggest commercial hits among dark comedy shows is The Boys, in which Amazon Prime took the superhero popularity to a new level. The dark interpretation of comic book worlds shows superheroes as celebrities, media personalities and even politicians. The show shows the danger of media control and a potentially more realistic take on what would happen if superpowered beings existed in the world.

I think the love for dark comedy will continue and increase in 2023, especially among young audiences. 

© Noos Studio/Shutterstock

The future has arrived, and artificial intelligence (AI) is officially everywhere and more accessible than ever. For example, on TikTok there’s a range of AI inspired effects to choose from, including the ability to create an entire background for your video by merely typing text. This is called Generative AI and refers to machine learning algorithms that let computers take existing content, like text and images, and create new content. By using text-to-image software, you could type something like “woman in a red dress and blue sky”, and within a few seconds, the AI will generate a new piece of art. Generative AI is also coming for videos. A new website called QuickVid combines several generative AI systems into a single tool for automatically creating short-form YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat Videos. You just have to give QuickVid a single word and it chooses a background video from a library, writes a script and keywords, overlays images generated by DALL-E and adds a synthetic voiceover and background music from YouTube’s royalty-free music library. QuickVid’s creator, Daniel Habib, says that he’s building the service to help creators meet the “ever-growing” demand from their fans. “By providing creators with tools to quickly and easily produce quality content, QuickVid helps creators increase their content output, reducing the risk of burnout,” Habib told TechCrunch in an email interview. “Our goal is to empower your favorite creator to keep up with the demands of their audience by leveraging advancements in AI.”

Images, videos, what’s next? Yes, copy. End of last year, OpenAI released a new chatbot, ChatGPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer), which can do things like write code, answer questions, and provide very specific copy using AI technology. According to OpenAI president and co-founder Greg Brockman, the site  reached 1 million users within its first five days. Since its release, conversation has blown up on social media and in various media outlets on what the implications of this new technology could be on everything from search engines to college essays to a film script? ChatGPT can’t exactly write humorous or cheeky copy as well but can definitely be used as an ideation tool. As with DALL-E 2, optimists in the industry seem to agree that rather than acting as a replacement for copywriters or content marketers altogether, ChatGPT could be a way to speed up work and potentially make it easier for them to brainstorm.

While AI can’t replace originality, creativity, or thought leadership, we’ll likely be seeing a lot more of it in the coming years. Probably also a Hollywood script written by AI. Ryan Reynolds is already using it for a Mint Mobile ad after all:

© Twitter