On platforms and audiences

In conversation with Moritz Zimmermann

"If you know your audience, you should speak to them."

Moritz worked with the Techlab participants in Phase Two – Exploration. This phase lasted four months during which the participants received support in areas such as sustainability, business model development, multi-platform programming and accessibility.

What does a multi-platform project look like?

From the perspective of a content-oriented guy like me, to get a perfect multi-platform project you start from the content and you know in advance which audiences on which platforms you’re creating it for. And then you find your path, and ideally you have a team full of experts - one expert for that platform, another expert for the other platform, and so on. That would be the perfect way. But we don't live in a perfect world.

In reality, often a multi-platform project starts with a project on one platform and after a certain time a second platform evolves, or you decide to try something on a second platform, and then you can have the same content on both or change your content to better fit each platform.

What common mistakes do organisations make, do you think, when developing a project for a platform that's new to them?

For me, my favourite mistake is that they are not on the platform themselves. Not everybody at the organisation must be on every platform, but if you have a team for a project, at least one member should be on that platform, should know the platform and should know what kind of language you speak there, how you interact with each other on the platform.

If you don't have that, and this is the most common mistake, you have prejudices towards that platform, misconceptions about it. I think you must know why you want to be there and for who you want to be there.

How do you work out the best platform for an audience?

Just ask them. If you know your audience, you should speak to them and ask them which platforms they prefer, why they are there, and where they want to be. Learn about the platforms and then you can decide, oh, perhaps we should be there as well, because we meet our audience there.

What’s your advice when an organisation has FOMO and decides it’s got to be on a platform because everyone else is?

I don't want to say that this is always wrong because I also have this challenge sometimes as I work for ARD, a German public broadcaster. Of course, we have analysis and we can see we aren’t reaching certain audiences on our own platforms and we want to change that.

If we want to reach an audience that doesn’t use our platforms, we cannot make the same things as before, for TikTok, Spotify, the platforms we use already. We have to go to where our audiences are, onto their platforms, and make something new.

You need a hook for the audience, to know a lot about what they like to get their attention. It's hard. And perhaps you fail, but you can try.

How can you scale up a deep and meaningful engagement made for a niche target group to reach a wider audience?

This is really at the heart of what I believe in format development. You first need a target group, an audience, and through refining content and getting feedback you narrow this audience right down so you have a very, very close target group at the end.

It might end up being only 20 people, but I believe that you get a lot of clarity in your format during the process. You know exactly what you're doing for your format, for your project, for your content. You know what not to make for this target group, what’s not worthwhile spending time and money on.

In the end you have a product which is interesting for a lot of audiences and different target groups, because you have the clarity. It's not made originally for them, but they are also interested.

You have to be open of course if you want to reach out to more than your original target audience and be prepared to place your content on other channels, to distribute it as widely and freely as you can, or no one will know about it or find it. The content can be specific, but you must distribute it everywhere.

In your experience, what makes a compelling pitch to a potential sponsor or partner?

I think the partner you're speaking to must understand the value of what they are getting and what advantage they will get from being part of a project. If you are asking for money or a contribution, the other side must know and must understand what the benefit for them is. Is it publicity or access to a specific target group? Put that in the centre of your pitch. You can’t just tell the partner how great you think they are.

What was the biggest pitching challenge for the Techlab participants?

When I met the Techlab participants, many of them had confronted economic questions for the first time. Some organisations had absolutely no idea that this would be central to any proposal.

The teams all clearly came with good intentions and were in their line of work to help society. They were convinced that they needed to do what they were doing for the sake of community, society and democracy, and they were not wrong. I spoke to them about being realistic about thinking about their work from the perspective of a business and not putting their good intentions at the forefront of their pitch.

The participants were used to writing funding applications. They were all accustomed to engaging with politicians and potential donors but in spite of this, they return to the comfort zone of an intellectual approach and the strength of their convictions, forgetting to sell themselves and their product.

How do you create an effective pitch for another sector?

Tell the story of why you should be funded in the first sentence. Your work is vital and important, but your pitch shouldn’t be limited to a list of your values, goals and good intentions. Unfortunately, the world we are living in, people are sick of hearing about important issues like climate change. Think about how you can draw people in your work in a new way.

On business model development | Giulia Rancati

Ask yourself: What problem are we solving, and for whom?

Giulia worked with the Techlab participants in Phase Two – Exploration. This phase lasted four months during which the cohort received support in areas such as sustainability, business model development, multi-platform programming and accessibility.

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