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 A Member Profile by Chris Davison, chris@lthmedia.com
Kent Steffen is Vice President and General Manager of CSG Interactive. Kent began his career as a consultant and has since worked in many areas of the business, from finance to telecom to new media. I recently had a chance to interview Kent to discuss Hollywood, personalization, and the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem.
Q: Can you tell us about your background and what made you want to work in entertainment? how did you get involved with the HRTS?
-I worked for Andersen Consulting in the financial services industry during the banking self care transformation in the late 80’s/early 90's when banks were moving from “brick and mortar” to the Internet. During this time, banks were expanding their consumer offerings to include a broad portfolio of products that put their consumers in the driver’s seat. In the mid 90’s when the telecommunication industry’s regulatory climate ushered in a similar transformation, I started an infrastructure company to help telecommunication providers bring new voice, video and data services to their customers. The name of the game was “personalization and bundling” and new technology coupled with an open regulatory environment enabled many new entrants to bring innovation into a pretty monolithic establishment.
A couple years back, we looked at the entertainment industry and saw similar trends emerging that were going to put the consumer in the driver’s seat – broadband technology everywhere, standards driven innovation to speed adoption, a strong but declining revenue base for entertainment companies and an insatiable consumer appetite to be informed and entertained. These were some of the key drivers that are helping to usher in an era of “intertainment” (information and entertainment). What we are trying to create with the Content Direct platform and partner ecosystem is a mechanism to allow both established entertainment brands with global reach, as well as new entrants, a way to interact directly with their consumers in ways that have not been possible previously. Content Direct’s sole purpose is to extend their brand and create incremental revenue streams.
We got involved with HRTS because the organization brings together all the major entertainment brands and has an expanding presence on how technology is being used to help evolve the entertainment industry.
Q: What is a typical day for you at CSG Interactive?
-usually involves an airplane trip and meetings with customers to help better understand their expansion strategies.
Q: The million dollar question: how can Hollywood monetize digital content?
-Hollywood has an incredible anchor product – great stories told by expert story tellers that engage people of every age and demographic. Digital distribution gives Hollywood and Sports Networks the ability to create incremental revenue streams to create great companion products that leverage their existing anchor video offerings and distribution channels, while they build their own trusted consumer brands and two-way interactivity between the brand and the consumer.
Digital copy, cross-brand promotion/vouchers and exclusive digital content are an excellent starting point to build incremental revenue streams while starting to build trust in the brand. Over time, broadband ubiquity, the next generation of mobile devices, instant community participation and distribution interoperability will make the dream of having digital access to a growing catalog of core video and innovative companion assets a reality – a reality that will give Hollywood brands more control than they have ever had in relation to how they interact with their consumers and monetize their content.
Q: What are your thoughts on Hulu? TV Everywhere?
-a required step forward for the industry. Platforms like Hulu, iTunes and the promise of TV Everywhere continue to increase consumer expectations and move digital distribution into the main stream. One of the great differentiators of digital distribution over the Internet is it gives the entertainment brands much more control over a two-way dialog with consumers and how they present and leverage their assets. The current digital distribution platforms will be a mechanism to reach the masses, but the entertainment brands will also want to possess a direct mechanism to take each of their assets deep into their fan base to drive targeted monetization opportunities.
Q: Will Twitter-like interfaces and services stay with us going forward and if so, how might they help generate revenues and build brands?
-sure. People love to be entertained by professional content creators and editors, but they also love to be engaged in the here and now, and keep track of their personal influencers, friends and potential looming controversy. Micro blogging and community widgets allow for instant access and interactivity that can take on a life of its own. Sports, music, as well as short form and long form video entertainment, can all leverage this integrated real-time conversation to increase the two-way interactivity around the development of the entertainment brands. Authenticity is key just as it is in any brand development.
Q: What do you think about the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem?
-this is a great initiative that is really trying to bring together not just standards but real world solutions so that digital distribution can rapidly progress from niche projects to a scalable and interoperable infrastructure to drive mainstream adoption.
At the moment, the world of digital media delivery is like the Wild West. There are many different devices that consumers can watch content on, different options for obtaining or purchasing content and different ways to protect content. And we have to remember that buying and watching content online is a relatively new experience for most consumers. The lack of standards in our industry leads to a non-optimal consumer experience and is one of the central issues that DECE and CSG are working to resolve. For example, content purchased on one device may not be able to be viewed on another device, or content bought from one retailer may not be easily viewed on another retailer’s player. This makes consumer’s experience more difficult, less enjoyable and ultimately slows the adoption of online media by consumers. What’s amazing about the DECE is that it’s comprised of the majority of the big players in the digital media, including the Hollywood studios, major content distributors such as the big box players and technology providers like CSG. We’re all working together to develop industry standards and ultimately enable better ways to purchase, access and play digital entertainment.
Q: Anything you would like to add?
-it is a great time to be a consumer and a great time to be an enabler of the evolution of entertainment.
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