Netflix's £100 million tv show "The Crown" starring Matt Smith
With Saturday night around the corner, I’m guessing you’re thinking what I am: which series am I gonna start on Netflix? Whether it’s Netflix’s newest and biggest budget show to date, The Crown, Stranger Things, Luke Cage or Making a Murder it doesn’t really matter. What does though is the entertainment juggernaut keeps launching TV hit after TV hit and we keep lapping it up.
In fact, Netflix have done such a great job at telling epic stories that nowadays younger generations are actually rejecting the standard Saturday club night out and opting instead for a night in with family and friends.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) recently reported about this and gave the following evidence:
Millennials were asked what their ideal Saturday night activity was:
31% chose watching a new TV series or film using an on-demand service such as Netflix or BBC iPlayer
27% said going out with friends to a pub, bar or club
14% said going for dinner with friends
Just 10% chose going on a date
(Survey of 2,000 UK adults)
So, if younger audiences would rather watch Netflix than go on a date, how can creative agencies learn from this?
Well, first things first, it’s more important than ever to be able to tell a decent story, whichever format that comes in. There may be many reasons for why people have this resurging appetite for story, but ultimately, your audience is CRAVING quality so you need to plan something carefully, not just work on something that feels like a quick fix.
Secondly, if the ONS survey is anything to go by, this audience’s appetite is going to continue to grow (in fact Netflix’s subscription in the UK increased to 5 million people in 2015 alone!) which means there will be even more people to feed decent stories to in the future! And that means you need to think like Netflix: create quality, scalable formats that look beyond the reach of a one off “viral” and more towards the kind of content that gets people coming back for more the most important thing to figure out is how you’re going to get your audience back for more.
We wrote a very short blog on how to tell a decent story through film here: http://bit.ly/2fmgn7T and our content marketing strategy blogs should help give you a decent start to think about the bigger picture: http://bit.ly/1qJpLpT
Other than that, I guess you should just get a Netflix account if you haven’t got one already and start watching all those awesome stories. And if you ever feel guilty about it, don’t worry...think of it as “research” ;)