Tribeca Shortlist is a movie streaming service backed by people who love movies, not an algorithm. TSL’s core belief is that movies can transport and connect us, whether through loved favorites or new discoveries.
The streaming movie service from Lionsgate and Tribeca Enterprises (the organization behind the Tribeca Film Festival), which launched in 2015, has just launched its first branding campaign, called “ROBOTS.”
Funny and tongue-in-cheek, the spots feature narration by Alec Baldwin, produced by RSA Films and directed by internationally renowned creative Henrik Hansen who is known for gorgeous automotive commercials.
Led by SVP/GM Monica Bloom—formerly SVP Marketing at Sundance Channel, CMO at Getty Images and head of brand strategy at (RED)—the team at TSL consider themselves movie lovers who handpick their movies and offer as “shortlists”—less than 200 titles each month, and not selected by algorithms and robots. Instead, movie-lovers pick the titles for movie-lovers.
Helping create loyal users, the service offers curated playlists
from actors, directors and industry insiders on their movie recommendations. “We choose our movies with you in mind so it’s easy to find what to watch. With a manageable, rotating selection, there’s always something new to see. From blockbusters to breakouts, our titles are sure to spark great conversation.”
Bloom told us more below:
How has Tribeca Shortlist grown in the two years since launch?
We are actively growing our distribution to make it as easy as possible for our members to access our ever-changing line up of movies. We are available on the web at tribecashortlist.com, AppleTV, Apple iOS, Android, Roku, and as an Amazon channel. We recently launched SlingTV and AndroidTV and soon we will announce even more ways to find us.
What are you learning from how people are using the service that is informing how you’re evolving it?
We tap into the data we have from our current members—the most popular movies, the most trusted recommendations, what they watch, how long they watch, the themes that resonate. We also look at external data. There are so many sites that capture both critics and user reviews of movies. We take those into consideration in our curation process as well.
We want critically acclaimed, award-winning films as well as those movies that people just love. There are certain movies that just capture a time and place, define a cultural moment (pop or otherwise) or help give us a language to connect with others. We love Glengarry Glen Ross, but we also celebrate Clueless.
Given your background in marketing and branding—SundanceTV, Getty Images, (RED)—how do you build a brand in the crowded world of digital, OTT, nonlinear programming services these days?
First, understand what you stand for as a brand and how you fit into the current landscape. We are a complementary service to giants like Netflix or Hulu. We recognize and embrace that for a reason. We make it easy for viewers to find movies they’ve seen, movies they always wanted to see, or movies they’ll wish they had seen sooner.
We deliver familiar favorites and new discoveries in an easy to manage package and provide personal recommendations from our famous friends. If a viewer doesn’t want the daunting task of searching endlessly for a good movie or just the right movie at the time—we provide a wide breadth of films that are organized in a smaller focused curated delivery. And when we say we handpick our movies—our team truly does handpick the movies!
What is your brand positioning?
I like to say that our service is personal, not personalized. We want our members to know that we are movie lovers just like them. We choose a diverse selection each month with them in mind and we want it to feel like they are getting a movie recommendation from a trusted friend.
Our target audience is entertainment lovers—they love movies, TV, music, art, and all things pop culture. They like to be in the know and are active participants in the broader cultural conversation. The movies we offer are classic, iconic, influential, and quotable. We arm them with fun reference points that round out their entertainment experience.
The new campaign is a sly comment on services that use algorithms to recommend films. Talk about the creative choices in this campaign and how you’re distributing it?
Don’t get us wrong. We love algorithms. There is power in machine learning. We all use these new tools in a myriad of ways in our everyday lives. However, machines are still learning and we recognize that humans, our emotions and our connection over storytelling are very complicated things. We can’t expect an algorithm to feel what a human feels when they watch a movie.
People connect over movies – from the iconic scene, the quotable quote or the character that we can identify with. We take the human approach in an effort to not leave these important ideas behind. We launched our plucky robot creative with a targeted digital and mobile campaign to deliver two things: awareness of Tribeca Shortlist and trials of the service.
We believe our unique approach and offering will resonate with the fans of sites that deliver pop culture experiences, movie related and otherwise. We are aligning our creative with brands such as Pandora and ESPN as well as targeted content on YouTube and through Vox Media.
A key differentiator for Tribeca Shortlist, is our many influential friends who share of our love of movies. We invite them to talk about and share with our members their favorite movies, favorite memories and to have a little fun while they are at it.
We have over 75 different “shortlister” interviews that rotate in and out of our service on a regular basis. Some of our personal recommendations, among many others, include: Alec Baldwin, Gary Oldman, Terry Crews, Rachel Ray, Taika Waititi, Lynn Whitfield and Phoebe Robinson. New recommendations are posted every month.
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The post The Cinephile: 5 Questions With Tribeca Shortlist SVP/GM Monica Bloom appeared first on brandchannel:.
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