On a sunny thursday afternoon our team met up at ExMachina’s industrial-looking office in the center of Amsterdam. In store was a brainstormsession with ExMachina’s COO Thomas Glas.
As leading interactive game developer ExMachina has developed several second screen applications for prominent costumers like The Voice of Holland and Germany’s Next Top Model, using their Play-to-TV platform. Function: creating interaction, stickyness, exposure and data analyses tools for their customer.
It ended up being a very inspirational session with some great learnings we would like to share with you. Let’s first cover the basics.
First, Thomas reminded us of the great reach NOSop3’s media mix has. There are great possibilities to incorporate these in one overall platform, and is a great marketing tool. Next to that, the news program is live on air. This offers great opportunity for engagement. According to Thomas there are three phases around the live program: prologue – program – epilogue. These are the three phases around the program to work with. And don’t forget about the opportunities for second screen during the radio show.
Second, it’s all about the user. Thomas’ shared his companies philosophy of never being ‘more than one click away from your target audience’. In his view its tremendously important to cover all platforms and all media. And about it being all about the user: keep it simple and complementary for the user, and use the users sensitivity for impulses. Example: when creating a quiz, use the statistics in your show. Users enjoy the feeling of having contributed. You need the users’ feedback. Let him know this and reward. Engagement is key. As is completing your feedback loop.
Last, Thomas shared one of their succesfull Belgian concepts: an interschool battle where schools, through a second screen application, participate in a quiz resulting in an overview of Belgians’ best high school. Knowing NOSop3 has a desire to reach schools or publish content on their trend screens, this might be an interesting approach.
We are well on our way towards concepting. Interesting times, interesting people and flow is high. We are looking forward to telling you more about our concept phase soon!
