There’s a growing trend within the tech industry to create entertaining and artful content to engage audiences, or shall we say subscribers. Perhaps it was Netflix that set off the revolution of attracting millions of subscribers through film content accessible through an app. Amazon, of course, never shy to dabble in potentially new massive business lines, jumped into the entertainment arena. And now unlikely SaaS companies such as Shopify and Mailchimp are jumping in as well.
Turns out with the advent of greater bandwidth of video streaming, came the realization that to capture the most value, one would have to move upstream to content creation. AT&T realized this and thus acquired Time Warner for $85 billion in June of 2018. According to AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, soon 5G will be ubiquitous and so will the ability to continuously tap into large amounts of data. With the millions of customers AT&T already has through its mobile networks, why not extend their value proposition to streaming content.
Mailchimp recently announced its own production company of sorts dubbed Mailchimp Presents and so far, the content looks just as professional and engaging as one would see on Netflix or HBO. Maybe it’s because the producers formerly worked for Netflix. The content will be centered around business and entrepreneurship but told in a creative way where the protagonists are not in your run of the mill industry nor may they be directly considered entrepreneurs in the traditional sense.
Shopify is also in the film game. Earlier this year in January, the company announced its own TV and film production house called Shopify Studios. Perhaps it’s even more fitting in this case to focus on entrepreneurship given it’s the exact use case for Shopify software. Their inaugural series which was shown all over the world and released through YouTube included 20 to 30 minute movies featuring entrepreneurs across the globe.
One can’t blame a software company for getting into the content game, it’s simply good business to offer new products and services to keep your existing customer base highly engaged.
