During the pandemic I had lots of interesting conversations with people in the cultural sector about digital stuff.
Some of my most interesting conversations were with Simon Baker.
We talked regularly and started to try and put together a bit of a guide/provocation for folks who might’ve been considering doing digital stuff for the first time.
Sadly we were both too busy and everything was too chaotic for us to ever finish that project.
But I recently revisited some of the initial thoughts that Simon shared with me, and I was struck by how relevant they still felt to so many of the conversations I have on a regular basis.
So, I thought it might be interesting and useful to share those thoughts with you. Below is an excerpt from some of the ‘scene-setting’ that we were trying to do.
Who is Simon?
Simon Baker is a sound designer and he’s also the Technical Director of Wise Children.
In 2020 he received the Achievement in Technical Theatre award at The Stage Awards for his work with Wise Children during the pandemic.
Below are some thoughts from Simon on the usefulness of digital to make and share work, shifts in thinking that might (or might not) be required, and a bunch of other thoughts.
Shared with Simon’s permission.
An intro, from Simon
I’ll admit I’m new to this world of Digital.
So fresh that I didn’t even understand what the phrase meant in relationship to Arts Organisations. Of course, I understand technology and how to implement it to create a show or an event.
As a member of Generation X, I grew up as digital tech grew up. As a sound engineer, I’ve seen the morph from analogue to digital.
The trouble is I’ve never understood the annexing off as Digital as a thing in itself.
Alongside Star Wars and Pirate Radio — two things that have been enormously helpful in my career — my other passion is advertising and graphic design. It runs in the family.
There’s a great book by Luke Sullivan and Edward Bouches called Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This. In it is a great quote:
“There are two kinds of advertising. Advertising that is digital and advertising that gets digital”.
This quote has helped me untangle this notion of Digital with organisations.
There’s the idea of Digital that is making website, writing lines of code and developing apps — work that is digital.
Then there’s the work that just gets digital and how to use it; the idea doesn’t have to be digital; it just uses digital tech as a pathway to deliver it.
For us in the arts, all we usually need a bit of tech and a lot of creative thought. Digital is (or seems) complicated.
However an idea that uses digital is no more complex than an idea that uses print as its medium.
Think about it — not understanding print techniques, paper stock qualities or CMYK colour charts doesn’t stop people from imagining a great poster.
Digital isn’t scary.
Digital can be fun!
There’s a case study in Hey, Whipple of an ad I remember happening:
A 30-second ad in the season finale of Breaking Bad was costing around $400,000. Real Estate agency, Century 21 took an alternate, digital approach.
They ran an ad on the now-defunct Craigslist which listed the actual house Walter White owned. Viewers of the show immediately got this reference, and the copy in the ad went further.
Their ad agency’s social media team went to work, and the result was 80 million impressions.
They connected with fans, bloggers, influencers and the press.
A reach of 80 million with a budget of zero. A genius use of digital.
I love the creative idea, the hijacking of a cultural moment, the wit and fun of it, the expansion of the universe.
This is what is exciting about digital work. It’s just great work delivered through new channels.
If I were to have a wish granted (assuming world peace etc. has already been done — and that I alone will get to sound design the next Star Wars movie) it would be for a member of a show’s creative team to seek out the person nominally responsible for “digital” in a building and say, “fancy a chat over coffee, I think I have got an idea we could work on”.
My other wish — I think I’ve got at least one more… would be for digital teams to sit in on tech rehearsals, get to know everyone in the auditorium — not to make something, just to hang out.
Eventually, the divide between administration and production, creative and marketing will start to blur, and the work will begin to join up, and the universe will expand.
What could your digital work look like? What could it be?
Expanding the Universe
The world of comic books has long embraced the idea of a multiverse — the notion that everything in a story links up through a timeline, hierarchy and continuity.
The Marvel comic multiverse is a great example but there are many others — Dr Who, Star Wars, Buffy. Even Fraiser is an extension of the Cheers universe!
There is harmony in these universes — audiences enjoy being able to hang out in the world, being able to explore other areas of it.
That expansion of the world idea is a useful thought when creating digital work.
Reality TV or long form competitions are the masters of this.
Think of Big Brother’s Little Brother, Love Island’s After Sun and Morning After or Strictly’s It Takes Two.
Each show has its main universe and then various universes connected to it — all playing by the same rules, all in sync.
The commentary show, the how-to show, the masterclass, the podcast, the in-depth look.
These aren’t just simple making-of projects, these are whole new formats built around the main event.
Audiences love connection, they love to be reminded, they love to recount.
This is why most people buy musical soundtrack albums just after they have watched the show. They want to keep the experience going. Good digital can deliver that.
However, to expand the world you have to completely understand the world and all its complications and details. All the rules of the universe must be obeyed — nothing sinks faster with an audience if the world doesn’t align.
This issue of truth and alignment extends to the idea itself, if whatever you are trying to do doesn’t authentically connect with your wider work, or personality, or view of the world, then it will never get any traction.
Digital is very good at specificity; reaching specific people; sharing a specific perspective; focusing on a specific narrative.
Ask yourself what element of your work lends itself to this specificity?
What is the unique story or experience you can tell or provide? What will your audience get from you that they can’t get anywhere else?
The key thing(s)
There’s a tendency to think in a linear way about making digital work, as a way to deliver ‘traditionally conceived’ work.
I try not to think like that. I look at what there is and work from there rather than think about what I need and then get stuck if I don’t have it.
There’s also a tendency to grow a team too quickly and too fast which makes budgets unwieldy and therefore ideas can fail before they get off the page.
Think of skills and then think who might have them.
Getting the work to audiences
It’s all well and good having a great idea and beautifully realising it, but if it isn’t easy for people to find and experience that work then you’ve wasted your time.
Fortunately there are lots of really smart and helpful people and solutions that already exist to make this happen. Whether that’s companies like TicketCo who can handle all of the transaction, hosting, and media player considerations, or companies like Substrakt who can help you deliver something a little more custom.
Unlike traditional cultural experiences, the norms and expectations around digital work are set by multinational corporations who have more resources than all of us put together.
But our secret weapon is that we are experts in creating experiences, in telling stories, in creating connection. All of this is vital if you are going to create an experience that really works.
A question to ask might be — Who is this for? It’s a good question as it will aid a choice of path to delivering. It will also help define the what and the why too.
A 30 min Masterclass on scoring the music for your latest show might be more suited to YouTube — with maybe a highlighted 1 min trailer made for social media whereas your Live From The Loading Bay series might be far better suited to a pay-walled platform provider like TicketCo.
The youth company’s warm ups might even feel better streamed live over Twitch.
Don’t be scared to experiment — most digital paths or channels have a free entry route — sure, some features may be restricted but chances are you won’t need them at first anyway.
Don’t let the fact some of this work might not integrate into your CRM stop you, this often deters companies. Just make sure your work has enough call to action elements to get people to sign up to a mailing list or subscribe to a channel. You can fill you CRM data in later — there’ll be a way.
I’m a fan of moving fast — the real time speed of the internet is lightning. Tech companies like to fail quickly and move on and this is a good maxim for arts organisations. We all need to experiment more and to fail faster.
PJ Pereira puts its this way — “Think like a marketer. Behave like an entertainer. Move like a tech start up”. Look up his work on The Beauty Inside…
What is success?
“We reached x hundred people, is that good?” We get asked this sort of question a lot.
The truth is that success will look completely different from project to project. Reaching and engaging with 50 people might be a brilliant result for one organisation and a total failure for someone else.
One project may be aimed at trying to make lots of money, another might be focused on reaching people in new ways, or getting people to try something for the first time.
What we would say is that you need to be pretty ruthless with deciding what success looks like for you. You can’t be all things to all people, don’t try to be.
Ok, I’m sold. What next?
If you’ve got this far maybe you’re thinking there’s something in this digital stuff for your organisation. Brilliant. But how do you progress that?
There are a number of ways you could move things forward. All of them involve other people, digital work demands collaboration, that’s one of the reasons it’s so much fun.
If you’re working in a digital team then reach out to your colleagues in other departments — maybe send them a link to this article.
If you’re in a creative, curatorial or programming role then find the people in your organisation who are already doing digital stuff. They might be in your marketing team, they might be in your box office, they might be in your tech department. Put the word out.
If you’d like support from me (Simon) then get in touch.
And when you do something, let us know about it!
So much digital success goes unexplained, and failure gets swept under the rug.
We reckon that the best digital ideas, formats, and ways of doing things have yet to be imagined, we want everyone to be able to learn as we go — and being honest and open about both success and failure has an important part to play in that process.
Good luck.