How To Win Friends And Interact With People

By Tom Adams, Communications Director, Mook (http://www.mook.co.uk)

Everyone's talking about interactivity. Commissioners insist on it, viewers engage with it and producers worry about it. But if you come from a traditional TV background, how do you acquire the skills to make the most of it? In a lean competitive market, argues Tom Adams, partnerships are the answer.

British broadcasters spend tens of millions of pounds on standalone interactive tools and content each year. And they have long insisted on a strong interactive component to programme proposals - in everything from light entertainment to docs. The power of cross-platform formats like Big Brother and Walking with Beasts is axiomatic, and commissioners are frantically trying to build on this success with new interactive ideas. So why do many producers still jump on chairs screaming when they see a mouse?

The answer is simple: programme makers make programmes, not websites. It's hard enough getting an idea off the ground, without having to learn the principles of another discipline while you're doing it. Even if you are fanatical about interactivity, you probably can't afford to invest in skills beyond your core offering. And if you run a small company, you probably take out the bins as well as having the ideas. So unless you've got an overactive thyroid, there's no time for tutorials in the return path of an average multi-channel viewer. Unfortunately, really successful interactive concepts like Big Brother or Banzai are more than good programmes with a website. Their success depends on interactivity. It takes more than a passing acquaintance with iTV or the Web to devise a genuinely integrated idea.

One way to get round this problem is to form partnerships. Collaborating with a like-minded interactive agency would seem like the perfect antidote to learning it all yourself. They bring their interactive know-how to your TV expertise and you click instantly (sorry for the pun). After all, outside the big broadcasters, the main repository of interactive knowledge lies with design and technical agencies that have developed their interactive skills on the Web. So it makes sense to get to know a few. But if it's that simple, why aren't we all doing it?

From the agency perspective, the main barrier is money. Although they often invest time in competitive pitches, design agencies aren't speculative by nature. The pitch process is usually set up around a well-defined brief and doesn't last longer than a month or two. They can also calculate the risks involved - which usually relates to the number and type of companies they're pitching against. And if they win the work, it's usually on a project basis with a set fee. So it feels dangerous to invest time in an idea - like designing the interactive component to a TV show - which might take months to develop and never get commissioned. This is particularly the case if the agency is brought in at the last minute to provide 'a rough cost for a website' and some 'basic designs'.

Independent producers, on the other hand, are natural gamblers. Juggling six raw ideas, four or five development projects and two live productions, they're inured to risk and live in a perpetual state of uncertainty. Commissioners have been known to insist on last minute additions to proposals which call on outside expertise - like adding an SMS or web component to a show. This leaves the overworked producer desperate for a creative opinion and costing within days of their deadline. If they find someone to help, it's often hard to convince the third party to share their expertise on the promise of a commission, and it doesn't seem fair to share what rights you have with a last minute partner. There is also the perennial issue of arcane technical jargon, and a widespread confusion about what you should pay for interactive design services.

So on the face of it, partnership would seem impossible. But if you look a little closer, independent production companies and interactive agencies have a lot in common. We're often small independent businesses surviving on cash flow in a grotesquely competitive and fast moving marketplace. We sell intangibles like ideas and creativity, and then bring them to life to tight budgets and impossible deadlines. Above all, we care an almost indecent amount about the quality of our end product and the pleasure of our audience; an audience which increasingly expects a seamless join between our two disciplines.

Producers form creative relationships with all sorts of different people - from editors to graphics houses - so why not try it with an interactive agency? If we can find a model which allows early in-depth collaboration, shared risk and shared rewards, there's no reason why it won't work. I'm convinced that partnerships are the key to success in interactive programming. So if you can find a like-minded company whose skills you respect, and share everything from mistakes to format rights, there's nothing we can't achieve together.

This article first appeared in Pact magazine.