A slide deck to accompany a talk delivered by Simon Hopkins to the Association of Cultural Enterprises on May 12th, 2016

1. “Creating a Digital Strategy”
Presentation to the Association for Cultural
Enterprises, May 2016

2. INTRODUCTION

3. Today’s talk
Our work & background
Why create a digital strategy… and what does that even mean?
A suggested process & formats/outputs
Typical themes to emerge
Caveats
Some thoughts on current trends in digital and culture
Parting thoughts

4. Simon Hopkins
arts, music and technology geek and strategist
• 10 years in the record industry
• Moved into digital media 1997
• 5 years as BBC’s Head of Music Interactive
• 6 years in independent digital media production
• Independent consultant for 8 years
• Musician, composer, digital label head, blogger and life-long
music student
• Passionate about young people and tech, impact of digital on
arts and culture

6. Broad and deep experience
• What we do:
• From high level digital strategy to detailed specifications for a
new website
• “Critical friend” strategic review
• Capacity building
• Training and mentoring
• Advisory
• For a wide variety of clients:
• Arts organisations
• Corporates and startups
• Local and national government

8. CONTEXT

9. A whole world of ambiguity… and this is a personal, subjective take
What we do we mean by “digital”?
Does “social” = “digital”?
Do we need digital strategy at all?
The pace of change is staggering…

11. PROCESS

12. 1. ESTABLISH
There must be clarity from the start of the process:
• Schedule (interviews, meetings, deadlines etc)
• Project scope
• Deliverables
• Costs and payment schedule
• Contingencies, key contacts
Summarise in a scope of work document
Above all, ensure widespread awareness of the project
Remember: this will be an iterative process

13. 2. ENQUIRE
• One-on-one interviews: all levels, open questions and conversations,
confidential (ie. Nothing attributed)
• Individuals drawn from
• Strategic/commercial (inc PR, marketing, sales, comms)
• Programming
• Learning/outreach
• Operations (inc HR, finance, IT)
• Partners/potential partners
• Audience
• External stakeholders/commentators
• Board

14. Some indicative questions
• Purpose What is the your organisation for and how does digital
contribute?
• Bums on seats How can you cater for an audience that never steps foot
through the door – and do you want to?
• Context Where does your digital work sit – locally, nationally,
internationally?
• Income Beyond ticketing, where else can digital activity generate
revenue?
• Priorities What are the most appropriate content, services and
distribution channels for you?
• Partnership Who could you be working with on digital projects – and
what benefit would this deliver?
• Resource What human, financial and technical resources do you need to
deliver relevant digital content and services?
• But mostly… what are the hidden organisational and digital drivers?

15. 3. EXPLORE
Use workshops to unpack the findings from the interviews
2-3 x workshops, c 10 attendees, c 3 hours
Keep them fun, fast, highly interactive
Benefits:
• Test your findings
• Create buy in
• Collaborative exploration has a different “texture” to private interviews –
but can be just as revealing
No set topics for these workshops, but we would recommend generally
starting with…

16. WORKSHOP: UNDERSTANDING YOUR AUDIENCE
What do you know about your audience and their digital life?
Persona exercises exploring
• A range of users/audience members
• Their relationship with your organisation
• Their use of media and technology
• Imagined user journeys
Why?
Test your assumptions
Make this stuff real (this in not market research!)

17. 4. REPORT
Exec summary:
• Background and process
• Overall findings
• 3-5 (and no more!) key themes/priorities
• Success measures
Deeper exploration of themes – but don’t overdo it!
Appendices:
• Personas
• User journeys
• Interviewees, workshop attendees
In general: 30 pages max!

18. THEMES

19. Team, structure, management
Skills, training, awareness raising
Digital first (or digital only) creative projects
Content: blogs, podcasts, streaming video
New/appropriate platforms: web, mobile, social
Routes to commercialisation
External partnerships
Embedding, APIs etc
Innovation
Measurement, support and review

20. CAVEATS

21. No-one’s getting this right across the board (although there are
some fine UK exemplars)
There is no consensus on where “digital” sits (Learning?
Marketing? It’s own dept?)…
... nor how much “status” it has
There’s still a lot of retrofitting
The future is uncertain, so long term planning, while essential, is
a hostage to fortune
Beware of fads and bandwagons!

22. TRENDS

23. The Creative Industries and tech: opportunities
Cloud-based solutions, SaaS
Metadata, ontologies, semantic web, discovery
Content (streaming, podcasts, apps, video, MOOCs)
Resource sharing

24. The Creative Industries and tech: pitfalls
Platform & service proliferation
Overwhelm, FOMO
“Fewer, bigger, better” vs “Doing more for less”
Massively uncertain future and wrong bets
Fragmented audiences

25. SIGN OFF