Ed Taylor, managing director of Bristol-based Honey Bee, talks tactics and his multi-pronged approach to navigating the ‘new content economy.’
Ed Taylor
What are the key challenges facing indie producers like Honey Bee in this ‘new content economy’?
We set up in 2020 just before Covid and had a lot of growth in the first three years despite the pandemic, but that growth has been increasingly difficult to sustain. It’s perfectly possible to keep a production company ticking over with commissions, but the idea of creating a business that has any kind of inherent growth in it is, I think, very difficult to do. You just tend to have a good year and then a bad year.
It’s never been an easy process because you’re obviously asking a broadcaster to invest a lot of money in something. I always found there was a ratio to it whereby you spent 60% of your time and it was quite painful, and you were pitching, pitching, pitching, and then 40% of the time, it was really good fun, and you were making, making, making. Slowly that ratio has kind of crept the other way. I think you spend a lot of time in pain and less time in enjoyably making stuff, because less and less is getting through with broadcasters. If you want to have a sustainable business and scale it and grow it over time, well the days when you could start a production company and 10 years later you’ve got half a dozen returning series and you can sell it are largely over.
I don’t want to stop making things but there are fewer buyers in this market and they’re buying less, so you have to go to market where there’s more buyers in order to be able to sustain and grow your business. What we’re doing is trying to broaden, effectively, the number of buyers that we have for content so we can create a more sustainable, scalable business.
How are you doing that?
We’ve started thinking about what our strengths and expertise were, what we had of value in the digital space and how we might be able to leverage that into making content and generating revenues to create something potentially more scalable than the very hit and miss business of getting TV programmes commissioned out.
We identified things that production companies have in general which could be of use in that area.
The first one is obviously just the classic storytelling. We’ve made really difficult, complex stories, and we’ve got a very strong track record doing that, so that kind of stands us in good stead to tell stories about brands or about anything, wherever we take that expertise.
The other thing we have is we have relationships, with talent and with brands because in the last five years we’ve had shows that we’ve made for Channel Five, for example, on Waitrose and Tesco, Aldi and Lidl, so we developed great relationships with them. We already have relationships with brands and also have a very strong track record of doing good things for them. That feels like leverage in the same way.
What new areas are you diversifying into?
The three areas we’ve pinpointed that we want to move into are, firstly, very simply, ad-funded television programming. Coming up with content which brands will then be interested in paying towards. Obviously, South Shore have had a lot of great success with Marks & Spencer’s, and there’s been various iterations of it, but we certainly felt like that was a way of diversifying our television commissioning. We were in touch with an agency that had a piece of talent and a brand that wanted to work together, but what they sent over wasn’t ever going to be realisable as a television programme. We’ve been able to turn that into a deck for a really compelling four-part series which the brand and the talent loved and the channel thinks could now work for them, so we’re operating in that space. Hopefully that’ll be a good ad-funded series for us this year.
The other thing we started looking at was YouTube channels. And obviously, the difficulty with YouTube channels is when you actually look at the metrics and how much money they make in advertising revenue, you need to have a staggering number of subscribers to make it pay. The way that we approach that is we’ve gone to a piece of talent that we know who’s already got a really good YouTube channel and a really good social media presence that’s got a number of subscribers to it, and then we’ve gone to brands who want to want to be associated with that talent in content. Essentially, the brands are funding the cost of making the content for the channel which means that there’s no running cost to it upfront. We’re not starting from zero, we’re starting with a significant number of subscribers, and because we’re looking at brands paying to be part of the channel, there’s not just the money that you get from ad revenue from YouTube there’s also money that you get from the brands for being part of the channel.
The other pillar is podcasting. Again leveraging the two things that underpin all of this – brands and talent. We’re starting a podcast shortly and have already signed up A-list talent to be in that and interviewed, and they’re bringing hundreds of thousands even millions of followers to that. Initially it’s a loss leader because then it’s a question of looking for brands and sponsorship as it hopefully builds a following. The money in podcasting is absolutely all in the brands and sponsorships. We’re trying to leverage the talent to make it more than just a podcast about an issue. I heard about a true crime podcast recently that sounded really good and interesting but I think it’ll be incredibly difficult to get profile and get people to come to it in the massive pool of true crime podcasts.
And how does the company’s time divide up now between traditional television production and pitching, and these new business avenues?
I’d say that obviously we don’t traditionally have the expertise in YouTube, it’s a new medium for us. Similarly, with branded. So, we’ve brought in other people who are developing those areas for us and making those connections and making those things work. We’re still focusing primarily as the core team on network commissions, but with these other things going on alongside as sort of slower builds, which will hopefully augment and then consolidate over time and come together. So in terms of time balance, split, I don’t know, maybe 60, 70% on television commissions and then 30, 40% on everything else.
Some ad-funded content and product placement can be quite obvious and jarring for the audience, how do you maintain the editorial quality of the product while involving brands?
I think it’s just a question of getting your editorial very clearly defined. One of the things I’ve found through dealing with ad agencies and brands, and the difference between them and television, is that when you create a proposal for a TV programme, you give an idea of what you’re proposing. It’s going to be this, and this person is going to go here, and this is going to happen, but the actual detail of it is always worked out in production. Whereas what brands are always looking for is incredibly specific information up front. Navigating that difference in vocabulary has been quite an interesting experience because they both want different things out of it. One of the challenges is trying to nail up front editorially how you can give them what they want without necessarily being able to give them the kind of absolute, critical levels of detail they want which are impossible to do, but also making something which is going to be enjoyed by a viewer and not feel like it’s very, very lumpy in places. It’s a challenge, no doubt.
It also depends how the ad funding is going to play out in the programming as well. If it’s product placement what does it actually look like? You need to play with that to make it as seamless as possible. It really depends on the brand. If you take Rolex, for example, they’re funding a lot of adventure content and have adventurers as ambassadors who will go on expeditions like journeying to the source of the Amazon, and the only product placement in it is they’re wearing a Rolex as they do it. You just glimpse it, he’s not standing there constantly saying ‘I wonder what the time is’ on camera. Those high-end brands want big production values and association, rather than clumsily trying to work the product into every shot and the dialogue.
Where does AI figure in this for you? Generating content quickly and cheaply, or cutting out expensive and time-consuming back office tasks?
More the latter, for us. We’re not about to try and move into making content with AI at this point but taking care of back office and research it can be very useful. I’m yet to have AI generate a pitch that is emotionally intelligent enough to hit what a broadcaster and audience would look for, but in terms of background information it’s useful and it’s brilliant for titles.
As it becomes increasingly difficult to know what’s real and what’s not – which it already is – the desire for content made with people will increase. It’ll be like people going back to vinyl over CDs or digital music. It will have a premium to it because there will be more trust in it than AI content. I think there will be an upswing around real content made by real people.
I think another side of the business that’s interesting for production companies which we’ve looked at but not quite found the right thing yet is events. You’re seeing huge upsurge in people going to see Steve Backshall speak on tour, tours about serial killers – that need for real connection and real interaction is stronger now than it’s been for a long time.
