The irrelevance of numbers
This week has been a week of true variety for Sparkly Light. In less than 5 days we’ve produced, directed and shot a corporate film about the ‘Cloud’, a 10 hour live Shakespearean webcast, and a taster tape for a BBC Executive. And it struck me that now more than ever, we’re entering an age where numbers are becoming irrelevant. It used to be the measure of success as to how many millions viewed your programme. But no longer. And what a relief!
This week’s corporate film is the eighth in as many months for a client who wants to remain at the forefront of their industry – MigSolv manage a high profile international data centre. Together we’ve enhanced their annual marketing strategy, by delivering a monthly video message to be placed on their website and YouTube channel. Now it might not surprise you that there aren’t too many exciting visuals to compliment a data centre, but that’s where creativity becomes king.
We have developed a year long narrative that answers the questions a potential customer might ask if they’re migrating their data. Every month we represent this narrative with a creative film. Over the year this builds up into a library of films – a visual journey for a potential customer. Whatever stage they happen to be at on their decision making process, MigSolv will have a film to answer their questions.
How many people have viewed these films? Perhaps a thousand so far – at a push. But how successful are these films? Incredibly! The client continues to tell us how the films make them stand out from fellow data centre providers, how they enhance their corporate reputation within the industry, and how they have helped to drive up enquires from potential customers. Not so much about numbers then, but about impact on individuals.
The Shakespearean webcast was a 10 hour live stream of the Globe’s performance of Henry VI parts 1, 2 and 3. It was broadcast on TheSpace.org and as yet we have no figures to tell us how many people tuned in. But I believe the measure of this success will not just be in the numbers. Success can be measured in the achievement of stylishly filming the Globe’s accomplished actors as they maintained an incredible focus to produce some of the best Shakespearean performances of recent times. And all this was acted out and shot in the middle of a field in Barnet, with a live audience too. The single fact that Sparkly Light was able to make this historical performance available to potentially millions of people to watch at home or wherever they might be with their laptop, is success in itself.
And finally there was the taster tape for the BBC Executive. I guess you could measure the success of this project by whether or not you satisfy an audience of one (although in truth, we all know that decisions rarely get made by just one person anymore). However, while filming all day in the depths of Dartford, I was fully aware the future of this project depended on a small group of people enjoying what I, among others, was directing and shooting.
Now I’m not saying that broadcast content, be it online or on TV, should ignore the numbers, but I do think success should be quantified by viewing satisfaction and not just viewing figures. Along with creativity and commitment to the cause, we also need to be aware of those people who have a stake in the project. ‘Those people’ might be a managing director of a corporation, or a broadcast executive with the power to green light a project. Or of course they could be a group of unknown individuals with their laptop open, searching for more Shakespeare or searching for someone to look after their corporate data.
Whoever they are, and more importantly, however many there are, they deserve nothing less than our total commitment, creativity, and care.