nitchCraft: Lesbian online dating and some digital strategy on the side with Seeking Simone

In this installment, nitchCraft switches gears from beer-swilling hockey card nuts to… well… lesbians.  Today we’re talking to the co-creators of the now-internationally renowned web series for the lesbian community, Seeking Simone.  In an exciting twist, Simone (the star of the show if you couldn’t put that together) is actually played by co-creator, Renée Olbert.  Along with her creative cohort, Rosemary Rowe, they’re going to give us insights into engaging an under-served niche with new technology.  Let’s get to it!

Brand: Seeking Simone
Key Mediums: Web series / blog, twitter (@SeekingSimone), facebook
URL: http://www.SeekingSimone.com
Niche: “Homos”

nitch*: Both of you are creative people who work in media, but you both have day jobs.  What was the reason that you decided the best way to spend your ‘free time’ was to spend countless hours creating an online dating comedy series for lesbians?

Renée Olbert: Well, firstly, when self-funding a web series it really doesn’t feel like anything about your time or resources are free!  As you well know, there is an adage that new media never sleeps.  I believe that to be true.  In order to grow an audience, you have to be vigilant in cultivating that audience.  It takes a lot of time, energy and focus.  So although we are not at a point where we can call producing Seeking Simone our day job, we take our work on the series very seriously and I must say, it has been an incredibly gratifying experience.  The creative arts are a challenging business- most artists have to create work in a vacuum or worse still, wait to be given permission to create.  Rosemary and I were no longer content to wait for someone else to approve our creative pursuits.  As an artist, you often have little control over your future.  Creating Seeking Simone was way for us to gain some control over the direction of our careers as well as having the series serve as an excellent showcase for our creative talents.  In many fundamental ways, the Internet has leveled the playing field and gives artists a degree of exposure that could only have been dreamed about 15 years ago.  For those reasons, it is a very exciting time to be creating scripted content on the web.

nitch*: Your points about the time and commitment needed to cultivate a niche audience are very well taken.  Congrats for taking that step!  That said, you’ve certainly narrowed your focus with this series – how would you define your core target audience?

Rosemary Rowe: Homos!

RO: Thanks, Rose. Yes, the LGBT community would certainly be our core target audience. It is perhaps difficult for some to understand how isolating it can feel to RARELY see portrayals of your community represented in mainstream entertainment.  Rosemary and I wanted to create a show that we would want to watch which centered on characters that we could identify with.

However, we were also determined to create a show that had a broad appeal – ’cause the search for Ms. Right or Ms. Right Now is a pretty universal human experience, regardless of your sexual orientation. We want to create a show that would be enjoyed by anyone who has ever been on a date and by anyone who likes a good laugh.  And I have to say, I think we accomplished our goal.

nitch*: Another great point about the universal nature of great stories and great characters.  That said, in watching the series, it becomes clear that there are also some “moments”, let’s say, that also appeal to the heterosexual male crowd… Can you explain how the existence of that secondary audience plays into your creative choices in the series?

RO: HAHA! Oh my darling Andrew, you make Seeking Simone sound like the web series equivalent of a Dear Penthouse letter!!!  We of course welcome our straight brothers with open arms and are thrilled that they enjoy our show, but lest your lovely readers get the wrong impression of our series, let me say that our main goal has always been to make people laugh… generally at the expense of my character, but laugh none the less!  I feel that Rosemary and I have always approached the series from the perspective of asking ourselves what makes us laugh and then going from there.  We also have been given a lot of great feedback from our friends, colleagues and our audience that we try to incorporate to make our series stronger.

RR: What Renée said. Also, we made sure that the featured video on our YouTube page has a still of Simone, shirtless, making out with another woman and we also promise a little girl-on-girl action, to keep pervs of all sexual orientations interested. Because, why be coy? Sex sells.

nitch*: I can always count on you to be the less diplomatic on, Rosemary!  Carrying on from that question, it’s time to get strategic.  Because Seeking Simone is a 5-9 venture for you, production isn’t always easy and as a result you’ve had a very staggered release schedule for your episodes.  In an ideal world, how often would you release new episodes?

RR: Ah, the vagaries of no-budget production! I suppose that IDEALLY we’d love to be able to release an episode every week. We’ve been so fortunate in our crew, both pre- and post-production, but we are working around both our day jobs and theirs, which definitely keeps us from releasing episodes quickly. That said, we knew we’d have these bigger gaps between release dates and I think that actually sparked a lot of ideas around how to keep our audience engaged between episodes.

nitch*: There are definite challenges but kudos for putting your series out there and building an audience before things could be IDEAL!  That said, you’re creating a lot more content than just episodes – how are content pieces like your blog, twitter, and more playing into your strategy for the brand?

RR: First off, in the spirit of full disclosure, I have to say that we really had a leg up on the online strategy for Simone – my wife Kate Trgovac (http://katetrgovac.com) and I have a social media marketing company called LintBucket Media (http://lintbucket.com) that specializes in helping brands create conversations with their audience. So once we actually had a product to flog, we were able to hit the interwebs running, as it were, which was really helpful.

To begin with, there’s a channel strategy component.  We know that our audience isn’t always sitting in front of a desktop computer hardwired to a T1 line.  We need to have content about our brand that will be easy to consume no matter what device or access method you’re using.  So, if you’re on your phone, your laptop at a café, at home or at work – we want you to be able to access our content.  So we try to deliver across multiple channels, even to the point where we use multiple video services.

However, more importantly, we know that that different fans form attachments to different aspects of the show.  Some like the characters (major and minor), some want to see everything that has to do with the actors, some want more from the writer.  So – we’d like to be able to meet that demand in a way that isn’t as costly as producing a series.  So, we blog and twitter – in some cases as real people and in some cases as the characters.  We post behind the scenes content and extras for fans who a) want to jump Renée and/or other cast members and b) are interested in production aspects.  And we’ll be releasing a new off-shoot of content based on the Audrey character that will be consumable in multiple formats.

We want to create and evolve characters with whom our audience wants to spend time.  That evolution is multi-channel and multi-faceted.  All of our content pieces enhance the richness of the character development and the space they inhabit.

The best thing about distributing our series on the internet is that we can take advantage of the interactive nature of media.  But not in the way that TV execs think of interactive – when they say it, it seems like they mean that our series can be a “choose your own adventure” property – letting the audience choose whether Simone sleeps with the musician or not.  But I think that does a disservice to both our creative process as well as the creative process of the audience.

nitch*: It’s clear from a visit to the site that you’ve done a lot to create content to engage beyond just your episodes – I’m loving the “Ask Audrey” video blogs… might need some tips there myself!  Can you tell us about some of the other strategies off-portal that you’ve employed for building audience/awareness at this early stage of growing your audience?

RR: We’ve implemented some basic digital marketing strategies.  For example, we pay attention to search engine optimization when we post content – ensuring that content is tagged properly, that we’re consistent in language and use of brand.  We make sure our content is easy to share.  You can’t worry about the few bad apples who might rip you off. (It drives me crazy when brands lock up their content because they think they have control over it. Argh).  But we also know that it is our audience, our fans who will drive our success.  So we reach out to influencers and say “hey, we think this is something you might be interested in.”

It’s also important to reach out to other content creators.  There’s room for all of us on the internet (and a pent-up desire for good content).  Good cross-pollination can increase everyone’s audience – so we want to keep introducing new people to the mix.

And we want to make sure we do some offline work.  Right now that has just been having buttons, business cards and a couple of episodes on USB keys to hand out – but that kind of offline promotion will need to continue. You know – subway posters, Times Square billboards, sky-writing, that kind of thing…

nitch*: The offline is very important within niche communities (though not sure how effective skywriting might be!) so it’s good you’re paying attention to that as well. You’ve also done a lot of working reaching out to very niche press.  Can you talk a bit about that strategy, and the benefits it has reaped?

RR: I think it’s exciting that web series are becoming more and more common, but the sheer volume of content makes it harder to stand out.

Then again, Ms. Olbert and I know from our own personal experience that if a show is good and funny AND lesbonic, we will tell everyone we know about it. Twice.

So our primary goal was to find an audience that would be as excited about the show as we were – and who would find the show relevant to them. And once we figured out where that audience was hanging out online, that’s where we started spreading the word!

Fortunately for us, there are more and more great sites out there that offer LGBT news and entertainment and they have all been very generous with their support in helping us promote the show (and translating it into other languages!).

The payoff is that many of the folks who tuned in early dig the show enough to keep sharing it with their wider circle of friends. And family! Like our one viewer who saw the show on AfterEllen.com – she just joined our Facebook fan page and her dad became our friend on MySpace. Which is AWESOME.

nitch*: Another great point on the word of mouth opportunities.  Let’s switch gears.  You’ve chosen to go with a relatively high production value for a web-based series (it’s scripted, lit, shot in a multiple camera format, etc).  Why did you choose this format over something that might be quicker/easier/cheaper to create?

RO: Because our mothers taught us if you’re going to do something do it right! Also, as more people turn to the web as a means of creative expression, the competition becomes more intense.  We wanted to ensure that we were able to give viewers the highest production value we could afford on our shoestring budget!  Which meant asking a lot of very talented folks to lend their skills to our production.  We love the series that we have created and believe that Seeking Simone has a lot of potential so naturally we wanted to do everything in our power to ensure that the series has the greatest opportunity to grow its audience.

nitch*: Your mothers taught you well!  Let’s delve a little deeper into the production choices – How did you come to decide on the online-dating related storyline?

RO: Well, we WERE going to set it during a NASCAR race but we decided that the exhaust fumes would wreak havoc on my coif… And the first rule of this biz is don’t get between an actor and her ‘do… well, granted that may only be my rule but we all have lines we won’t cross!

In truth, we believed that it was a premise that not only had limitless story potential but would also tie in really well with our series which we had already decided would be web-based.

nitch*: And another great point about suiting your storytelling to your medium.  An underrated plus.  Curious- did the potential for sponsorship from a dating service play into the decision?

RO: Oh Andrew, are you questioning our artistic integrity? Surely we wouldn’t so calculated in our pursuit of sponsorship… or would we??? HAHA! In all seriousness, it really didn’t.  We came up with a concept that we felt would speak to us and hopefully would speak to our audience.  Our focus has been and continues to be, generating quality content that viewers want to see. I believe if we stick to that model, sponsorship will come.

nitch*: Again you show your commitment to your audience, which is a key lesson to adhere to for anyone looking to try and commercialize a targeted group.  And that commitment has paid off lately as you’ve had fans actually subtitle the series into other languages!  Tell us a little more about your experience of going international.

RO: Well Andrew, it is becoming increasingly clear to Rosemary and I that we have the most fabulous fans in the world. Literally. We have been so fortunate to have had a really, really positive international response to our series.  The subtitling of our series into other languages has been the direct result of some really wonderful websites contacting us and offering their time and resources to make it possible.  We particularly have to thank the websites www.kweens.de and www.lesbicanarias.es for generously subtitling Seeking Simone.  The support of the website EurOut has also been instrumental to Seeking Simone growing its international audience. Of course, we think we are hilarious in English and it has been wonderful to discover that we are apparently equally funny in German and Spanish and soon to be hilarious in French!  So, for all your readers who want to brush up on their high school Spanish or German, they need not look any further than Seeking Simone!  I mean, if I had a nickel for every time I’ve needed to use the phrase “Do friends take restraining orders out on you” in Spanish… well, you get the idea….  And to think Andrew, you just thought our show was a lot of fun… who knew it was educational too?!?

nitch*: Now the multi-lingual, educational lesbian comedy market – that’s quite the niche!  Congrats!  Let’s wrap up with a fun one. If you were to go online to look for a partner, what would be the first thing you’d look for (either as a turn-on or a definite turn-off)?

RO: hmmm… what’s the first thing I would look for in a partner?? Boobs.  Umm is this thing on?!?! What I meant to say was a great sense of humour.

RR: Yeah, my biggest turn off would have to be penis. Penis-breath would be a close second. Third would be poor spelling.

nitch*: Glad we could go out on such a classy note, ladies…. Thanks for your time and all the best in continuing the early successes of Seeking Simone!

***

The nitch* Analysis: Seeking Simone is such a great example of content creators putting something out there and growing an audience even when all the conditions might not be perfect.  We’re in the wild west of media again and it’s important to remember that you can’t wait for the stars to align – there’s no time like the present!  Kudos to Rosemary and Renée for acting when they could’ve waited, and for putting together blogs and bonus video vignettes to supplement the fact that they’re unable to sustain a regular episodic release schedule.  At least not yet. The fact that international audiences are already reaching out to them shows that day is coming.
That said, because this content is so niche, it could be time very soon for Rosemary and Renée to begin talking to brands interested in speaking to their community about sponsorship.  The growth that they’re experiencing makes a compelling brand story for niche sponsors looking to get in on the ground floor of content that is inspiring a community.
Keep it up and soon viewers and sponsors everywhere will be “Seeking Simone”!  Sorry, that joke was terrible…

If you have any thoughts on Seeking Simone, the finer points of our conversation or ideas around creating content on a shoe-string budget with literally no time at all, you’re welcome to use the field below:

Tweet this! Or... Facebook it!

blog comments powered by Disqus