Plan – BBC stakeholder and user research

The first round of stakeholder research was conducted in June 2007 with ten senior managers from a mixture of BBC programme making and online technology teams.

The findings were grouped into four broad categories, summarised in the report as follows:

Strategy

 The site needs to explain Creative Futures (the BBC initiative of that time period)

 Senior management connecting with staff around creativity

 Vision are planning a series of events around the country and need a mechanism for sharing the learning

Commissioning

 The site needs to open up and humanise the commissioning process

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 Vision want the site to communicate changes to commissioning coming in the Autumn

 Audience insight and narrative

Creativity Cycle

 The Creativity Cycle (the BBC process used by the Creative Network) supports the site content and architecture…

 … but it is not explicitly mentioned, except where used as a diagnostic

 Masterclasses from top talent on how they work their magic – use the archive

 Interpretation and context of audience data – but not the data itself

Social Networking

 The site is about SHARING not TELLING

 A place where people can build on each other’s ideas – the Corporation does NOT have all the answers

 Favourite clips, promos, pilots, lists being shared the way people share and email clips from You Tube (BBC 2007)

I then spoke with eight facilitators from the Creative Network; the eight interviewees were a mix of experienced middle managers with programme making and journalism backgrounds.

Here is the summary of those interviews taken from the research report:

Focus

 Creative Futures is a big turn-off – it has damaged the word ‘Creative’

 Staff don’t know or care what it means – creativity needs a humanist context

 Focus should be on execution of ideas rather than turning ‘thoughts’ into ideas, they do not think people will share programme ideas (at first) Commissioning

 Help in forming the inarguable argument

 People will not be comfortable about asking for help initially

 Commissioners are uncomfortable talking about the reality – too polite – this needs to become more honest

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 Needs to be “more interesting than an A4 document”

Social Networking

 Use site to find out what others are doing – mechanism for talking to normal people

 How do people get round the bureaucracy?

 Celebration of small things

 Stuff to share – eavesdropping, fly on the wall, giggly, fun

Tone and Design

 unPC

 Graphic design must be strong

 Honest, human, authentic

 Counter-cultural (!!!)

 Low-key, viral (BBC 2007)

The reactions from each group to each of four broad content ideas can be summarised in tabular form as follows:

Content Idea Senior

Managers

Facilitators

Senior Management explaining Creative Futures

YES NO

Facebook style social networking YES YES

Tips from talent, colleagues & external sources

YES YES

Humanising commissioning process and audience data

YES YES

(BBC, 2007) While there was broad agreement in most areas, and a basis for taking the research further, there was disagreement between the facilitators and senior managers over the ‘Creative Futures’ content and the facilitator’s claim that the word ‘creative’ had been damaged by association with the Creative Futures initiative was problematic.

In particular, the facilitators felt that the staff associated the ‘Creative Future’

initiative with cost cutting and possible redundancies. This could be considered an example of Foucault’s concept of resistance – how when a group seeks to exercise

Page 152 of 258 power through the use of language, it then creates resistance to the effects of

power, and interestingly in the context of this case study, that can be a creative and productive force (Foucault 1982). At the time though, the managers supporting the BBC Creative Network website concept found themselves in a situation where they were trying to build a website about ‘creativity’ in an organisation with aspirations to be “the most creative in the world” (BBC 2006) and yet it was felt staff would react badly to use of the word ‘creative’. This could be seen to be the BBC staff acting, or reacting to power, in a way which Foucault would recognise:

“Discourse transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, but also undermines and exposes it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart” (Foucault 1998, p.100)

Given the broad consensus in a number of areas, it was agreed to conduct more research with potential end users among the BBC staff.

The next phase of the research took place in September 2007. It was carried out with a group of programme-making staff spread across the following roles and BBC departments:

 Researchers

 Assistant Producers

 Producers

 Senior Producers

 CBBC

 Natural History Unit

 BBC Wales (BBC 2007)

These staff were considered to be younger than average for the BBC (77% under the age of 35) and with shorter than average service (66% less than 5 years’

service) (BBC 2007). It is also fair to say that the CBBC, Natural History Unit and BBC Wales, were considered to be departments with a strong reputation for

innovative and quality programming (Jones and Goffee 2009). Regular use of social networking sites was 77% at a time when only 17% of UK citizens were looking at social media on a weekly basis (Statista 2015). Of the social media sites visited, Facebook was by far the dominant platform, with all the regular social media users in the survey group having a Facebook profile.

Page 153 of 258 The users were shown a number of concept boards based on the outcomes of the first phase of the research and their reactions were recorded and discussed. The first of these is shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6: Creative network concept 1

This concept was liked by all of the majority respondents who reacted positively to the “fun”, “informal”, “cool” and “different” tone and design of the website concept.

They indicated that the intended purpose of the site was clear, understood and useful. The more social aspects of the design, e.g. “Who’s said what” were more easily understood by interviewees who were more frequent users of consumer social media such as Facebook. The interviewees’ only negative reaction was to any jargon around ‘creativity’ and they preferred language which was more

straightforward here such as ‘How not to pitch’ and ‘Confessions of a commissioner’.

This was assumed to be because it was a more straightforward fit with the language of their everyday lives, and as we have seen already in this section there was a deep suspicion of how words to do with ‘creativity’ might be being used by management to disguise other business activity (BBC 2007).

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Figure 7: Creative network concept 2

Research participants were then shown a concept which more explicitly integrated the creative network content in their existing social media (see Figure 7). The concept included a number of creative network Facebook ‘apps’ which could be included directly in the user’s Facebook page such as ‘Instant focus group’, ‘Meet the commissioners’, ‘Big Brainstorm’ and ‘How are you feeling?’.

Interviewees expressed concerns over privacy with this concept. They did not want their social lives being exposed to BBC management, even if this was a remote possibility. The ‘How are you feeling?’ mood app was universally disliked whereas the ‘Instant focus group’ app was universally liked. Interviewees indicated that ‘fun’

need not be frivolous and that any content needed to be directly related to their work at the BBC. Their responses indicated a clear line between work and non-work socialising and content that was from work, but not about directly about their work was clearly perceived to get in the way of making programmes (BBC 2007).

Younger users were generally less concerned about sharing their ideas in the open (and therefore risking others ‘stealing’ their ideas) than older users, but on further investigation this was shown to be more of a tribal viewpoint. There were

Page 155 of 258 departments in the BBC which were less concerned about sharing than others, and younger staff working in an area more concerned about the risk of ideas being

‘stolen’ would take on that point of view (BBC 2007). This contradicts the ‘digital natives’ rhetoric which assumes that all ‘millennials/generation Y/etc.’ users are comfortable sharing their ideas online (Prensky 2001).

Figure 8: Creative network concept 3

The third concept shown to potential users of the proposed site was a viral

marketing concept based on parody of the BBC staff newspaper ‘Ariel’ (see Figure 8). This was treated with more suspicion by the interviewees who felt it would only be received positively if it was very funny and was at considerable risk of appearing

‘lame’. Any attempt at viral marketing would also need to be honest about its origin and not try to disguise where it was coming from – this view was held about any large corporation trying to use social media, not just the BBC (BBC 2007).

This finding echoes the research of Burgess and Green, which showed that while big corporations generate many views for their content on YouTube, their channels do not attract many subscribers compared to the ‘YouTube stars’ – participants whose personal brands developed within YouTube’s social network. This suggests that big media corporations are not seen as participants in YouTube when it is considered as a bone fide social network rather than a digital broadcasting channel (Burgess and Green 2009).

My analysis of the feedback led me to make the following recommendations to the sponsors of the potential site:

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 The homepage of the site should be simple and clear with a focus on sharing useful programme-making content from the BBC and from across the wider