Lea Karam, founder and CEO of Mindscope, led a MIPJunior panel conversation with the BBC\u2019s Patricia Hidalgo, pocket.watch\u2019s Chris M. Williams and Animaj\u2019s Greg Dray on the best strategies for connecting with Gen Alpha and Gen Z.<\/p>\n
Karam is a behavioral scientist, strategist and founder of Mindscope, a consultancy dedicated to understanding emerging audience trends. She discussed meeting the fast-changing needs of young audiences with Hidalgo, director of BBC Children\u2019s & Education; Williams, founder and CEO of pocket.watch; and Dray, co-founder of Animaj.<\/p>\n
\u201cKids are becoming creators and AI is playing a big role in this new ecosystem,\u201d Karam said on the key shifts in the children\u2019s media business.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s critical to refocus as much as we can as an industry on building and creating for kids,\u201d Dray said. \u201cWe focus on the consumer. We are going after white spaces, like sports-related programming for kids and families. We are focusing on the audience.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pocket.watch is a key part of the kids\u2019 creator economy ecosystem. \u201cWe founded on the thesis that characters and IP are coming through the most competitive environment in the history of time for content,\u201d Williams said. \u201cThey\u2019re competing with 20 million videos uploaded every single day and 4.2 billion videos on that library on YouTube. As creators with millions of fans globally who love them, it is not love, it is not timing, it\u2019s magic. It\u2019s the same type of magic that would lead to massive success for a movie or a TV show, except in an environment that\u2019s insanely more competitive. So, the fundamental thesis is that if it is succeeding as a character or IP or content brand on that platform, our company then takes that and extends it into franchise economics by making shows that appear on Hulu, Disney+ or Peacock or other things or by selling branded products in retail stores like Walmart and Target based on those brands. The competitive platform of YouTube has already shown us that it\u2019s going to succeed. So, now, I take it off a shelf of 4.2 billion things and put it on a shelf with 5,000 or 500, and it generally performs to the relative success. That part of the model has not changed at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hidalgo is traversing this environment from a public-broadcaster perspective. \u201cWe are in a really interesting time,\u201d Hidalgo said. \u201cWe have always done what\u2019s most required of this audience. If you think about it, the biggest shows for children are actually those that are both highly entertaining and highly educational. We have to think about how we use this new era to connect with this audience and do good at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Discussing the role of YouTube in young viewers\u2019 lives, Williams said the platform \u201cintentionally created good principles for content. It was actually a fair balance between learning and entertainment. That does open up and incentivize\u201d more educational content on the platform, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m absolutely convinced that the next big children\u2019s IP will come from a platform like Roblox,\u201d Dray said. \u201cThis is the place where kids are spending an increasing amount of time. At some point, we\u2019re going to see the same phenomenon on Roblox. Today, on Roblox, it is still relatively complicated to find brands with franchise potential beyond Roblox. But clearly, we are seeing some absolutely astonishing numbers. From my point of view, the next children\u2019s IP is likely to come from a platform like Roblox.<\/p>\n
Williams added, \u201cAnother thing we love about things like Roblox is that it is, in fact, a production studio. You have to look at it that way because the content being fueled and distributed through those Roblox experiences is fully bringing that loop together. We have creators who really lean into Roblox. And it\u2019s not just about playing the Roblox game; it\u2019s creating stories within those Roblox universes as if it\u2019s a production studio. That\u2019s driving people back to Roblox and then YouTube.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s fundamental to match that behavior, but also understand how they move between formats,\u201d Karam said. “Usually, it\u2019s not about the format. It\u2019s about the benefit or the motivation that they seek from it as well. They want to play, connect with people and express themselves. It\u2019s about tapping into that and building your IP around that as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not the future, this is the present,\u201d Dray said.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom our research, parents are not that worried about the screens\u2014it\u2019s what they\u2019re on on the screens,\u201d Hidalgo said. \u201cTraditional broadcasters were always speaking to children. We have changed that at the BBC. We\u2019re now speaking to parents because we know those parents need to hear from us. They really need us. They\u2019re lost. What is the right program for my child when he\u2019s 3 and he\u2019s starting to speak? We launched a brand, CBeebies Parenting. CBeebies is a TV channel for preschoolers. Now, we are also a brand for parents. So, we talk to parents. We have advice for parents. We actually help them navigate and understand all the different moments of development of their children; when media, storytelling and content are good for them; and where they can find it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Williams added, \u201cJust because something may look different than what we grew up with, doesn\u2019t inherently make it bad. If it doesn\u2019t look like Sesame Street<\/em>, it doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s bad for kids. We have to find the balance, as you originally described, between that entertainment value and that education. Parents shouldn\u2019t feel shamed when their kids enjoy something because it has some attributes that are really good and some that they might perceive as more pure entertainment. As millennial parents, and now that we start to see Gen Z parents, they are going to understand that differentiation.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s really about getting technology and human intelligence to work hand in hand because technology is built by humans for humans,\u201d Karam said. \u201cIt\u2019s utilizing those platforms to connect.\u201d<\/p>\n The session wrapped with Karam asking the panelists for their visions of what the sector looks like five years from now.<\/p>\n \u201dAs someone who is always trying to be out front before everybody else, it is the most opaque right now because of one thing, and that is AI,\u201d Williams said. \u201cFrom my most optimistic perspective, it empowers a new generation of creators to tell stories in production values that they weren\u2019t able to tell before. I\u2019ve never been more optimistic and absolutely terrified all at the same time. It does create an opaqueness for what those three to five views look like.\u201d<\/p>\n Hildalgo said, \u201cI am very hopeful that we\u2019re going to start using AI for good, and we are all going to make sure that whatever we do, it\u2019s a fantastic tool. What we can actually achieve will be incredible. I can\u2019t wait to see what children start creating.\u201d<\/p>\n Dray is similarly upbeat about the potential for AI and other new technologies to empower creators and audiences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Lea Karam, founder and CEO of Mindscope, led a MIPJunior panel conversation with the BBC\u2019s Patricia Hidalgo, pocket.watch\u2019s Chris M. Williams and Animaj\u2019s Greg Dray on the best strategies for connecting with Gen Alpha and Gen Z.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":290,"featured_media":30666,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[8203,4518,8021,8204,11545,11546,913],"class_list":["post-30667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-top-stories","tag-animaj","tag-bbc-childrens-education","tag-chris-m-williams","tag-gregory-dray","tag-lea-karam","tag-mindscope","tag-patricia-hidalgo","pmpro-has-access"],"yoast_head":"\n