{"id":6197,"date":"2018-04-08T03:51:35","date_gmt":"2018-04-08T07:51:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvformats\/vertical-networks-ceo-talks-snapchat-success-mobile-tv-transition\/"},"modified":"2018-04-08T05:47:16","modified_gmt":"2018-04-08T09:47:16","slug":"vertical-networks-ceo-talks-snapchat-success-mobile-to-tv-transition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvformats\/vertical-networks-ceo-talks-snapchat-success-mobile-to-tv-transition\/","title":{"rendered":"Vertical Networks CEO Talks Snapchat Success, Mobile to TV Transition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tom Wright, CEO of mobile-first content studio Vertical Networks, told MIPFormats delegates about the success of <em>Phone Swap<\/em> on Snapchat and how the format is being brought to television, in a session moderated by <em>World Screen<\/em>\u2019s Anna Carugati.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe marry creative with data,\u201d Wright said of Vertical Networks\u2019 approach to developing mobile-first content. \u201cBy the time we make a show, we\u2019re quietly confident, based on the math, that that show is going to be successful. And everything we make is designed to go to television. Everything we make, the end goal is to make big global TV formats.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The company\u2019s specialty, Wright explained, is \u201cdense formats,\u201d targeted to audiences with limited time\u2014and attention spans. \u201cIf you look at a traditional piece of television, one could argue that you might have a 22-minute show and within it, you might have 4 minutes of really good stuff and then packaging. Our approach is to remove all the packaging. If you treat impatience as a virtue, with that comes the requirement that when you\u2019re building a format, there isn\u2019t time to explain what the format is. You have to get into it. There is an obligation that anything you provide for that audience has to be immediately impactful and rewarding. You\u2019ve got to earn the right for exposition. You can\u2019t assume you have this sit-back audience. They have everything in the world they could be doing with their time\u00a0if you lose [their] attention.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Phone Swap<\/em> is among the company\u2019s most successful properties. It\u2019s a dating show where potential couples explore each other\u2019s phones. \u201cIn a world where people put an impression of themselves forward on social media, how do you get to the heart of who these people really are?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Wright said that the conceit \u201cfeels salacious. But the way we cast the show, we try and make it about human stories.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>On the show\u2019s success, Wright noted, \u201cWe think it\u2019s the biggest digital show in the world; 14 million people watch it [on Snapchat].\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He said the show\u2019s popularity stems from Vertical\u2019s approach to developing content. \u201cWe have a daily publication on Snapchat, Brother, where we have 50 million people a month coming to it. On any given day we\u2019re testing all manner of things around the behaviors and content preferences of our audience. Before we make a show, we will typically have broken it down into its constituent parts. We\u2019ll make six or eight different versions of that show, which we\u2019ll discreetly test with various audiences. By the time we make the show, we know it\u2019s going to stick. We have best practices articulated around having a clear premise, jumping straight into it. The lovely thing about the [<em>Phone Swap<\/em>] conceit is it has a clear beginning, middle and end. On landing there is a social experiment which is going to take place, there\u2019s a wonderful moment with the reveal where you find out that we\u2019re going to take your phone and you\u2019re incredibly uncomfortable. We share that awkwardness, we get to look through these phones, which is fun, and then the big moment at the end\u2014are these people going to want to see each other again? It\u2019s about fifty-fifty.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This year Vertical Networks will make ten original series, up from six last year. Of those six, two are headed to TV. \u201cThe way we built the business, to get away from a world where you\u2019re pitching based on the strength of an idea and hoping that matches with the person you\u2019re pitching to, we get to pitch with math. Rather than a piece of paper or a showreel that says, this is an interesting concept; I can say, here are 14 million people who care about the show!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Vertical Networks\u2019 digital shows thus far have averaged 7.5 million people, Wright said. \u201cEven if some of those don\u2019t make it to television, we\u2019re a profitable company. It\u2019s not core to the model, but the television piece on top is where we\u2019re trying to take the business.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The TV version of <em>Phone Swap<\/em> will have an older skew than the Snapchat edition, Wright said. \u201cThe core conceit is the same. The structure changes. The TV version is three dates and we have everything up until the reveal in three parts, and then the fourth act is all the reveals aggregated. It\u2019s a lot more room to breathe. For Snapchat, the requirement to get to the good stuff means you often don\u2019t get to tell more interesting human stories. The broadcast version will feel like it\u2019s from the same family, but there will be more scope for people to hear more about [the participants].\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tom Wright, CEO of mobile-first content studio Vertical Networks, told MIPFormats delegates about the success of Phone Swap on Snapchat and how the format is being brought to television in a session moderated by World Screen\u2019s Anna Carugati.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":290,"featured_media":6198,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[1347,1348,1349,1279],"class_list":["post-6197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-top-stories","tag-phone-swap","tag-snapchat","tag-tom-wright","tag-vertical-networks","pmpro-has-access"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.7 - 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