Tech Toured and Absorbed
Tech Toured and Absorbed
31 Jul, 2013 By: Stephanie Prange
One of the interesting elements of last month’s Los Angeles Entertainment Summit (LAES) was the Tech Tour, a series of booths with information on technology that can both help market and forward the industry. I hope attendees were able to take advantage of it because it offered some interesting insight into the future direction of our business.
The tour included companies that help clients use “big data,” or vast amounts of consumer information collected WITH their knowledge (not that spy stuff that has the U.S. government chasing Edward Snowden around the globe). Learning what consumers “like” on Facebook or what they will offer up about themselves to enter a contest is useful data to target them with marketing messages on brands they consume.
There were also companies eager to assist studios with apps connected to entertainment brands and disc releases. Navigating this new world (oft termed “second screen”) is a challenge facing every studio, and it was interesting to talk to those who design apps as well as companies that help the studios streamline app production for Apple, Android and other platforms.
Also part of the tour were companies that help package and display product; create value-added exclusive trinkets; and prepare, deliver and copy-protect digital files for delivery to digital services, such as Netflix, Amazon and Hulu.
I spent about six hours (with a few caffeine breaks) talking to the folks on the Tech Tour. I know some studios, such as Warner with its Media Camp (many campers were on the Tech Tour), are looking to create a forum for new ideas. The Tech Tour was such a forum, and I think I absorbed a great deal of information that I am still processing.
The industry backed off of this kind of gathering for a few years as we all absorbed the financial collapse and fast-moving technological changes affecting us.
Entertainment Merchants Association president and CEO Mark Fisher eloquently outlines the sentiment in the industry in his opinion piece in our Aug. 5 issue. He titled his column “The Good New Days,” which I think is particularly appropriate, considering both the nostalgia for past conventions elicited by and the new tech element of the LAES.
Times changed, as did technology, but the need to gather and learn about the changes in the business didn’t.