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[Media Actually] Beyond Product to Content, the Secret of the Trend Keyword 'Collaboration'

Content Curator Dr. Sophia Seo's [Media Actually]
I'm Sophia, the content curator. I adding stories to your content experience.

  • Thursday, June 21, 2018, 10:11 pm
  • ACROFAN=Sophia Seo
  • press@acrofan.com
 
At the local elections held on June 13th, MBC borrowed the format of the FM Radio's leading program, “Bae Cheol-soo's Music Camp”, to broadcast the election. In fact, it is the first time to bring the format of music program, while broadcasters have made various efforts to provide the voters with fun and information in ballot-counting broadcast so far. It was a successful collaboration of a music program and election broadcast.

'Collaboration' refers to collaborative work that a heterogeneous corporation carries out with a certain goal to convey a new experience to users, and it is actively appearing mainly in 'products'. In fact, product collaboration has already become a successful marketing technique as it is no exaggeration to say that collaboration products have been the driving force behind 'camping phenomenon', which is the phenomenon that some consumers line up overnight to purchase 'limited edition' products.

Recently, however, the phenomenon of 'collaboration' has been emerging in 'content' beyond the scope of products and services. This is because it shows more positive effect on recognition and sales when working as a collaboration than working alone. Typically, in 2011, the luxury brand Versace collaborated with the SPA brand H&M, and the collaboration gained huge popularity around the world that it is called ‘Battle of Versace’. As collaboration is considered to be a successful marketing trend, recently, there is a tendency to try collaborations in various fields such as food and medicine. However, in fact, although the probability of failure is very high as the probability of success is high, the failure of collaboration is not likely to be discussed.

If so, what kind of rules are hidden in one that determines the success and failure of the collaboration? The core of collaboration is, above all, in 'expansion of experience'. Here, the expansion of experience means the depth and breadth of experience. While most think of collaboration as a new experience created by meeting between different domains, in fact, successful collaboration should upgrade the experience of each domain, which means it should provide a deepening of the experience. For example, through collaboration between A product and B product, the positive experience with the A or B product should not be reduced or eliminated, but rather should be multiplied.

Next is the expansion of the area of experience. By meeting different areas, a new experience that could not be created by each area should be felt. In other words, the combination of A and B must provide a different value, such as C, rather than simply AB. At this point, it would be more successful as fresh as users cannot imagine what C is (but in a way that does not impair the existing positive experience). Also, the collaboration does not always have to create a new experience, but it can be progressed in a way of offsetting the negative experience of A or B.

Therefore, not only for making new changes, the collaboration should be progressed in consideration of which experience of the product you want to deepen and what extent of experience you want to widen. It is important to note that if you try to collaborate without considering this, you will even destroy your existing positive experience.

■ ‘Content Collaboration’, How Much Have You Done? Three Principles of Content Collaboration

Now, collaboration became a necessity, not a choice. The reason why the collaboration has become a necessary course of corporate marketing is due to the attractiveness that it can reduce the cost, effort, and risk taking every time the corporate releases a new product or service and secure a certain amount of sales at the same time. For this reason, a collaboration, which was mainly focused on offline products, has recently expanded into the content area. In fact, content collaboration seems to be similar to commodity collaboration, but content collaboration has a unique feature in that it can try collaboration throughout the process from content production to distribution and consumption. Therefore, understanding the rules of each step allows you to enjoy content collaboration more fun.

The first is productive collaboration. Productive collaboration is a form in which IPs of different contents create new contents together, or IPs of other contents are put into one content. In the case of the former, the movie <Avengers> could be a representative example. Collaboration is different from One Source Multi Use (OSMU). Collaboration is a transmedia that collects individual contents and create one big story, while OSMU uses IP of the original content to create an individual secondary creation. That is, the connectivity and interactivity of the content are maintained. Each character of the movie Avengers has individual stories, but each one also creates a new story by gathering together. An example for the latter case could be <Infinite Challenge>, which is an entertainment program of MBC. In the Infinite Challenge, members create collaborations with the existing contents by making a new challenge weekly. Also, recently, several one-person creators gather together to create joint broadcasts, and this can be an example of the latter case.

The second is distributive collaboration. It might be unfamiliar in terms of expression, but it refers to the collaboration of content and platform. In spite of the existing distribution platform, it provides a positive consumption experience by providing it to the new platform. From this point of view, distributive collaboration is mainly used to give a positive experience such as convenience and reliability of content rather than new content experience. One example could be Disney content, which had supplied its contents solely to Netflix. Another example is that domestic TV broadcasters have provided contents related to election broadcasting to social media or portals during the election season.

The last is consumptive collaboration. It is a form of offline extension that allows users to participate or to consume again offline. Consumptive collaboration is different from character products that we commonly know. If a character product is a separate product for selling the character, consumptive collaboration is a combination of the experience of the existing product with the experience of the content by adding IP of the content to the existing product. For example, JTBC drama <The Package> has released 'The Package set menu' which includes the behind story of the drama and character introduction with the franchise coffee shop “TOM N TOMS”.

As such, content collaboration has already deepened our daily lives and gives new media experiences to content users. Above all things, we must remember that what is important in collaboration is the "experience expansion" through two encounters, not two different "encounters".