About the BBC - Simon Lloyd

Marketing and Audiences settle in at Salford

Simon Lloyd Simon Lloyd — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 09:56:58 +0000

Autumn is here and October sees a new season in the Marketing and Audiences function based at BBC HQ in Salford. Our newly established Media Engagement team officially started operating out of MediaCityUK on the 3rd of October. This is includes teams who are planning and managing our promotional inventory across TV, Radio, Online and CRM plus teams that manage our Shows & Tours operation and the Big Screens which are located in major towns and cities across the country. Our Marketing and Audiences teams have also been busy working with CBBC, CBeebies, Radio 5 live and BBC Sport promoting the new Autumn schedule and the start of the new football season. Monday the 26th Sept saw our first 5 live broadcast from the new studios and Saturday 8th October saw the first airing of Justin's House on CBeebies - take a look at the preview trailer. So very busy but exciting times.

We have also announced that we are reviewing our Media Services roster for the buying and strategic planning of our external media spend across traditional media and digital so I am looking forward to seeing the breadth of agency talent out there in the market as we conduct our search over the next few months.

Finally I want to offer a thank you to the Marketing Society, for hosting a dinner in Manchester and allowing me to passionately talk about the whole BBC in the North project, specifically the new Marketing operation. It was great to meet some fellow Marketing Directors based in the North of England and getting them to chew over with me some of the opportunities and challenges that face the BBC in the North. One fellow described the BBC as a big fish that has landed in Salford but an analogy that was presented to me at a recent dinner with Martin Hall, the Chancellor of Salford University is, I feel, far more apt. "The BBC is like an octopus with many tentacles to grapple with". In response I can say, "indeed we are" but at the end of each of those tentacles is a warm handshake and the route to great partnership.

Simon Lloyd is Director of Media Engagement and Marketing & Audiences, North

Marketing the BBC at MediaCityUK

Simon Lloyd Simon Lloyd — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 09:06:40 +0000

They might not make great telly moments like the World Record hula-hoop marathon marking the move of Blue Peter to Salford, but over the last few months there been other moments marking the start of a significant cultural shift for the BBC.

One of these moments happened a few weeks ago with the start of the move of parts of the BBC's Marketing and Audiences departments to MediaCityUK . This state-of-the-art site will become the home for me and over 70 Marketing & Audience colleagues who will all be based here by the end of the year.

One of the reasons we are here in Salford is to help bring the BBC closer and be more relevant to our audiences based across the North of England. Currently around just eight per cent of BBC programmes are made in the North despite a quarter of all licence fee payers living in the region, but BBC North is part of the BBC's commitment to spend the Licence Fee more fairly across the UK.

While we are only just moving into our buildings at Salford Quays, we have been investing in programmes and content across the North of England over the last few years. This has translated into fantastic content such as the award winning TV event, Frankenstein's Wedding... Live in Leeds and critically acclaimed dramas such as United, 32 Brinkman Street, South Riding and Eric and Ernie. Projects such as @North have also enabled us to invest £500,000 in new digital content for the CBeebies and CBBC audiences from companies across the North of England.

We hope by being here we can serve our audiences across the country better - understanding what they want, what they like and dislike and helping them find, enjoy and interact with the content which they love. We're also giving people more of a platform for getting involved in BBC activities - for example being involved in events such as the Manchester International Festival as we were this year. This all reflects a real aspiration to reflect the audience better and help drive approval ratings in areas which have traditionally been lower.

Being based in Salford Quays also gives us the opportunity to work with local agencies and recruit from creative talent pools to ensure we have the best and most creative workforce and helps us deliver our commitment to the North of England to build and develop a workforce in Salford that is among the best trained and most flexible in the media.

Indeed we are currently engaged in an ambitious recruitment process which will help achieve this and have already attracted some really exciting talent from the region such as Charlotte Thompson, former Director at agencies BJL and McCann Erickson, who's joined BBC North as Head of Media and Audience Engagement and Martin Tapley, Research Manager for Audiences in Learning, previously an Account Planner at TBWA\Manchester.

So what will this mean for our audiences? Our role is to partner with the BBC's editorial teams in helping them to make the highest quality programmes that they can and then help them to reach the largest audience possible through creating compelling and engaging campaigns.

We're responsible for a diverse range of areas including Marketing, Media Planning, Audiences and studios and tours. As well as representing the content areas based at BBC North including BBC Children's, BBC Radio 5 live, parts of Future Media & Technology, BBC Learning, BBC Sport and BBC Breakfast - we also working hard to make a difference across the whole of the organisation, pioneering flexible and innovative ways of working and ensuring the maximum amount of the licence fee is spent on things our audience love.

Our dedicated teams will continue to shape the future of some classic brands and promote some of the best loved shows in the UK, ensuring a distinctive northern flavour in the tradition of the award winning Frankenstein's Wedding... Live In Leeds. We'll also be making even better use of tools such as audience interaction and social media to drive approval from audiences.

The challenge of engaging audiences across the whole of the UK - reflecting the nation back to itself - is not one which will be delivered overnight. The BBC is only at the beginning of this journey but it's truly exciting for Marketing and Audiences to be playing such a key role in helping create a closer connection with audiences in the North.

Simon Lloyd is Director of Media Engagement and Marketing & Audiences, North.

There's always plenty of news and information on the BBC North web site. To apply for opportunities at BBC North go to the BBC jobs web site.
The picture shows Lacey Turner, David Harewood and Andrew Gower in Frankenstein's Wedding... Live In Leeds, a BBC North production.
Simon has a profile page on the BBC North web site.

Introducing the Next Level for BBC iPlayer

Simon Lloyd Simon Lloyd — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 16:15:13 +0000

As you may know, the new-look BBC iPlayer went live this week after a four-month trial period. It's an evolution of one of our most popular digital services, adding more functionality but making it simpler to use at the same time. Tomorrow, our communications will evolve too with the launch of a new marketing campaign - BBC iPlayer: The Next Level. You can view the first trail below.

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I wanted to provide a little bit of background to how we got here.
BBC iPlayer has been a huge success since it launched in 2007, under the banner of "making the unmissable, unmissable". At the time, the market for video-on-demand was in its infancy, and the challenge for us was to explain to a mainstream TV audience what BBC iPlayer was. It was a multiple award-winning campaign, and played a part in establishing BBC iPlayer as the best in its class.

But the world has changed since then. Video-on-demand services are everywhere and lots of people have digital video recorders. Social media went mainstream, and while we have attracted a large audience to BBC iPlayer there are plenty of people who don't use it.

The science - talking to people
So this is the challenge I inherited when I joined the BBC last year - and first you have to find out where BBC iPlayer sits in people's lives, through focus groups and research.

First, we found that while people love what BBC iPlayer can do, our marketing messages were beginning to have less impact. Until now we've focused on the functional "you can catch up on programmes" but it was clear that we needed to connect with people on an emotional level, rather than a functional level.

Second, while people love the programmes (the most important part of the BBC iPlayer experience, and what resonates with people more than anything else) using the programmes themselves to promote the BBC iPlayer experience wasn't really conveying what's so good about BBC iPlayer itself. Some people thought it was just another programme trail. This campaign needed to be about the experience.

Finally, we needed to move on from the tag of "catch-up". Three years ago it was a major selling point, but now it's a commodity in a crowded market. Nor does it really capture what BBC iPlayer has become. In a world of plus-one channels and PVRs, catching up isn't nearly as hard as it used to be.

So, while people are interested in the fact that you can access the last seven days' programmes through a website, it was the empowerment factor that really connected: creating a TV and radio experience on your own terms, and the ability to discover great programmes you may not have been looking for. And that's why this campaign feels very different to those that ran before - we are trying to tell people how using BBC iPlayer makes you feel, beyond simply what it does.

The campaign
We have created a theme (based on a portal) which is built to last.
It starts tomorrow with the first broadcast of the trailer above. At this stage, we're simply trying to attract a bit of attention to the fact that BBC iPlayer has changed. It picks up on the idea that if you've not yet seen BBC iPlayer, rather than just being a "catch-up service" - it's a complete entertainment destination. A whole new world, that's worth a look, if you like.

Two weeks later, we'll have some more TV trails and the start of the Radio campaign, that will start to explain what's on the other side of the portal, explaining the benefits of the features audiences told us they wanted the most - e.g. favourites, recommendations - as well as elements that are really important for parents (such as the parental lock). Soon after that, an online marketing campaign will start to complement what we're doing on air.

Of course we don't expect people to be able to judge a campaign on just one trail (that you can embed from here) and the team will be posting all the other trails on the BBC's YouTube channel in coming weeks. But we'd love to know what you think so far.

Simon Lloyd is Director of Marketing for the BBC's Future Media & Technology division

Editor's note - credits for the trail:

BBC Marketing - Simon Lloyd, Terry McGrath & Helen Weeks; Agency - RKCR/Y&R; Creative Director - Mark Roalfe; Creatives - Dan Hubert & Amber Casey; Director - Mario Zozin; Production Company - Red Bee Media; Producer - Louise Jones;

Production Manager - Emily Simpson; Editing House - The Quarry; Editor - Jonnie Scarlett;
Post Production - Framestore; Flame Op - Jude Roberts; Audio - Wave; Composer - Tam Nightingale.

You can read previous posts around BBC iPlayer on the BBC Internet Blog.