Nicholas Lising-White is a behavioural analyst at Canvas8. With a degree in human geography from UCL, he is interested in the impact of differing cultural conditions on human behaviour. Outside of work, he can be found meandering between cafes on his bike, testing his culinary skills, and intermittently pottering around a rugby pitch.

The Game of Thrones prequel series House of the Dragon premiered on the 21st of August 2022, and by the end of the month, the show’s 

 had over 200,00 subscribers while TikTok posts tagged with #houseofthedragon had gained over 

Insider

 generation, there are numerous ways in which viewers engage with the show beyond the broadcast that the creators have little control over.

These digital interactions highlight how media consumption habits are vastly different from the heyday of appointment TV. Although shows like House of the Dragon and Marvel’s 

 have stoked a mini-renaissance, Dr. Cristel Russell, a professor of marketing at Pepperdine University’s Graziadio Business School, much less attention has been paid to understanding how social and digital media have extended the audience’s experience of entertainment. That shift is important considering how integrated these platforms are within the viewing experience – according to US-based data from Twitter, six tweets about TV are published every second. 

Twitter

As the media ecosystem evolves, the way in which TV shows are consumed is splintering faster than ever before. To find out how people are shaping their entertainment experiences, Dr. Russell and colleagues Dr. Stephanie Feiereisen, Dr. Dina Rasolofoarison, and Professor Hope Jensen Schau published a paper titled ‘

One Brand, Many Trajectories: Narrative Navigation in Transmedia

’. Canvas8 spoke to Dr. Russell to better understand the ‘narrative positions’ that viewers move between within their consumption experience and what this means for brands.

Why is this topic important to understand?

On one hand, there’s a lot of research on entertainment audiences, and on the other, there’s a huge body of research on branding – how people relate to brands, engage in relationships with brands, and think about brands as friends. But there wasn’t much research at the intersection of these notions. So, we wanted to think about how brands’ fans navigate the brand world in a way that’s similar to an audience navigating a book or a movie or a celebrity. The idea was not so much new as it was intersectional.

The focal topic at the beginning of this project was how people watch television. Television series are, of course, brand narratives, but before we thought about brands per se, we thought about the way people consume entertainment and stories. I’ve been interested in this my whole career, and when I first started, people were tuning into the new episode of their favourite series – Seinfeld, Friends, or Frasier, for example – and it would be delivered to them on a weekly basis at a particular time. Everybody would watch live, then talk about it the next morning at the water cooler. But that’s no longer relevant.

Now, people consume these shows on demand and there is the brand transmedia element because TV series and brands now generally have many more contact points than the story as it’s delivered on an audiovisual medium. People go on a website for the TV show and they look at fan forums. So, that’s what prompted this research – we wanted to understand the way people consume brand narratives in a world where there is a plethora of interconnected touchpoints that exist in concert with the main narrative or show.

How did you go about conducting your study?

The research started in a classic way – by interviewing people in their own environment, often in their homes. We did this through what’s called a snowball sample. We started with people in our networks who were TV watchers and had something to say, and then we snowballed from there where each of the interviewees said something along the lines of ‘oh, you should talk to my friend – she also watches such and such’ or ‘my neighbour is also really into this’.

As the project evolved, we were invited to think about getting deeper into this phenomenon, and that’s what prompted us to wonder ‘what if we also included ethnographic in-home recordings?’ So, we reached back out to some of the interviewees from the first phase, offering to compensate them for the second phase, and 11 of them (five couples and one person who lives alone) agreed. Of course, this was just for data collection and analysis purposes, so was completely confidential – none of these recordings would ever see the light of day.

We started out thinking that we’d be observing the way people binge-watch TV, but that behaviour turned out not to be universal. We have evidence of people tuning in and doing other things like ironing clothes or texting. Some people were skipping scenes that featured characters they disliked and others were using two screens to engage with the show. So, they might be watching Game of Thrones then pausing to book a trip to an area where the show was filmed.

From these findings, we make an analogy between how people eat and how people ‘consume’ shows. Some people nibble – they watch a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Some people kind of gorge – they watch a show until they can no longer stomach it. Some people are very picky eaters and some like to adorn their plate with little fancy things that are there for decoration but won’t be eaten. So, our map of nine narrative positions uses terminology and verbs that we usually use for food consumption because that’s really what we saw.

We established that people consume media in different ways, but the main finding was really this notion of people making their own journey. Sometimes, when they just want to be transported or float through a story, people are passive. But much of the time, people are doing things like skipping scenes or engaging in fan fiction. They create their own journeys. Not only do they take different paths, but their mode of transport might change. We argue that any brand needs to be aware of this idea of consumer navigation.

People rarely devote their full attention to one media experience – they’re often engaging in other activities at the same time. For example, one study conducted in 2021 found that 84% of Americans use a second screen at least sometimes while watching TV. 

Big Village

Although second screening is not a novel concept, the desire for transmedia interaction is on the rise. From subreddits to behind-the-scenes podcasts, people’s engagement with entertainment extends well beyond what’s just on the main screen. Tapping into this growing transmedia ecosystem is Heat. Despite having a legacy firmly rooted in print, the magazine launched a daily podcast aimed at adding greater context to published content. 

Bauer Media Group

 With people enjoying the ability to interact with entertainment brands in a multitude of ways, the challenge is to appear in places where people might not be accustomed to their presence. Gucci’s Discord server stands out as a prime example of a brand stepping out of its comfort zone and into a place where fans may not expect them. 

Laurent Francois | Medium

People are increasingly frustrated with advertising and its steady encroachment on all parts of their lives – 69% of US adults think ads on streaming services are repetitive and 64% find targeted ads to be invasive. 

Morning Consult

 These attitudes are reflected in the way that people experience content – skipping it, augmenting it, or just paying attention to the bits they deem important. As this desire for control is realised, marketers may find themselves pressed into providing people with more dynamic options around how they experience and interact with adverts. This is especially true given that Gen Zers are spread across so many platforms. The challenge for brands is not only to show up in these spaces but acknowledge the nuanced behaviours across platforms. The growth of non-mainstream social channels like 

 further broadens the options for brands looking to connect with audiences in specific niches, but attempting to apply a one-size-fits-all strategy is likely to annoy rather than inspire. Recognising that many of these platforms now inspire collaborative communication formats, 

 is rewarding users for their attention by paying them to watch ads.

Despite some streaming services bringing back weekly releases, people are still binge-watching their favourite shows – when asked how they prefer to watch TV episodes on streaming services, 19% of Americans claimed to watch a minimum of three per day and 34% said they watch two to three. 

 But as Dr. Russell’s research demonstrates, there’s much more nuance to binge-watching behaviours than previously thought. For brands, the study highlights the importance of understanding how to cater to different narrative journeys in ways that keep viewers engaged. For example, the GroupWatch feature on Disney+ caters to what Dr. Russell terms ‘garnishers’, some of whom like to augment the media experience, perhaps by talking about background information with others while watching a show.

 of Americans use a second screen at least sometimes while watching TV

 of US adults think ads on streaming services are repetitive and 

When asked how they prefer to watch TV episodes on streaming services, 

 of Americans claimed to watch a minimum of three per day

People’s binge-watching behaviours vary, with some gorging on multiple episodes and bonus content in one go while others will watch while getting on with other tasks

The balance of power is moving away from media platforms as viewers can skip content and use second screens to expand their understanding of a narrative

These individualised experiences of media open up new potential touchpoints for brands and creators to connect with audiences across platforms

Dr. Cristel Russell is a professor of marketing at Pepperdine University’s Graziadio Business School. Her research centres on the intersection of entertainment and marketing, and her academic work has been published more than 72 times in several business journals.

TV, film, and social media video

Social networking

Social media and binge-watching are not new by any means, but hybridised forms of media consumption have transformed how audiences experience film and TV beyond simply watching. Canvas8 spoke to Dr. Cristel Russell to find out how people chart their own courses through entertainment narratives.

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