Making the Most of What you Make, But Make ‘The Right Stuff’

I could take up this entire lecture reviewing the explosion of new channels that people use to consume weather information, but you already know this. We broadcasters are facing a conundrum. Our revenue is still largely coming from linear, but our audiences are stratified and getting weather information from new sources. Even worse, they’re relying on sources that aren’t even in the weather business. These are giants that measure revenue in the billions of dollars.

But let’s focus on what can help with the conundrum. I’m going to give you a pattern to think about. I’m going to take a complex situation and perhaps oversimplify it. At the highest level, the pattern is simple; there are two categories of users. I will give guidance on how to form a strategy around these user categories and not the fringe cases that represent a small amount of viewership in totality like Tik Tok.

So, the first category of weather consumers is someone that has the weather information given to them. Let’s call this the lean-back experience. They turn on their TVs, start cooking dinner or do the plethora of other things we all do when the tv is on. It’s a sit back in auto-pilot mode experience – “give me my weather information”. It’s okay and sometimes preferred that some of this information is repetitive or if you give them some information and tease them to stick around for more information in just a bit.

The second category of weather consumers is someone that is a more active participant. Let’s call this the lean-in experience. In this category, they want their information and then they want to move to the next thing. No teases, no build up. This is a plunge-in/plunge-out weather viewer. Now, we can convert the lean-in viewer to a lean-back viewer, but I will talk about that towards the end.

So, now I don’t need to think so much about creating content for a mobile viewer, someone on CTV, someone on web, my linear audience and so on. I just need to think about creating lean-in and lean-back content, which greatly simplifies this new complex world.

I’m not going to spend too much time on the lean-back weather consumer. This is the linear viewer and we already know how to create content for them. You add a lot of value to this viewer. You break the weather down for them and help them understand how and when the weather will impact them.

Let’s talk more about the lean-in weather consumer. Let me focus on CTV as my example, but it translates to mobile and web as well (social is a topic I will hit in just a minute). Lean-in weather is about being brief, direct and to the point. Like linear, the viewer wants your insights and a breakdown of the weather situation.

For everyday weather, you have 30 seconds per video. Since it’s everyday weather, make them a weather insider by giving them additional insights like how the weather has been comparing to normal.

For impactful weather, you have 45-60 seconds per video. Tell them how and when the weather will affect them. Give them insights that go beyond data in a mobile app, like ‘my concern will be around power outages for this event’.

For severe weather, you have a full minute per video, but you should be thinking about the lead-up to severe and post-severe. These could be shorter videos. I know, you are thinking, how can I cover a severe event in only a minute? It might need to be broken down into more than one video but get the main message of timing and impact into the first video. If the viewer wants more, they will roll over to the second video and you want that anyway.

Okay, just a quick note on social and then I will summarize. Other than maybe YouTube, there isn’t money to be made from posting to social, but you can and should draw audiences from there. So, the general rule when you post to social is that you can’t do a tease only post like ‘find out the weekend weather on our First Alert mobile app’ but you can and should tease. You just need to strike a balance. The basic recipe here is to inform and tease. ‘Expect 3-6” of snow tomorrow. Find out the timing on our First Alert mobile app.’

Okay, so the good news - don’t think about all of the channels you have to cover now. You have your normal linear coverage that you are used to (lean-back) and you need to create one or two short videos that get fired out to the lean-in weather consumers. Automation will help you augment content for the lean-in viewer. I have another lecture on how to do that. When you do it right, you keep the information to the point and the viewer will let the experience roll to the next video which is likely coming from automation. You can temporarily convert a lean-in viewer to a lean-back viewer (we have all been this person in our social video reels, admit it). Other than that, post to social to inform and build audiences for your more lucrative platforms.

I know, you already had a full-time job with linear, but we need to make time to get the one or two 30 second videos out to our lean-in consumers. It’s the job of people like me to arm you with tools like Max Engage, Max Social and Max Velocity to make the creation and distribution of that content easy and fast. And yes, this two-persona pattern is just a heuristic. It can break down in situations like severe, but those situations are when you ramp up more of your weather team.