Copying Netflix? Standup, Sports & Korea Data Might Change Your Mind
How rival streamers go astray mimicking the biggie's genre-defining hits. Plus: 3 strategies everyone SHOULD imitate immediately
ESG’s data-driven analysis for paid subscribers appears every other Thursday. He recently wrote about the audience chart every exec should obsess over; Tubi’s move into scripted originals; and content libraries’ unsung role in streaming success.
An ongoing pastime of NBA junkies like myself is debating past NBA drafts and redrafting each one five, 10, or even 15 years later to figure out which player “should have” gone earlier.
One of the funniest parts of this discourse is how often NBA general managers claim — years later and mostly anonymously — that they knew the player they were drafting was going to be a bust. For example, in 2013 allegedly every GM wanted to draft Giannis Antetokounmpo, an MVP for the Milwaukee Bucks in case you don’t follow the sport, even though he got drafted 15th. That leads to the somewhat obvious question:
If you knew the player you drafted would be a bust, why did you draft him?
The answer? Because that player was the “consensus pick”! GMs will pick a player they like less because they fear that others know something they don’t, and you don’t get fired for making the choice that everyone expects. You only lose your job if you make an unexpected choice and that player becomes a bust. Don’t buck the consensus!
This is bad strategy in basketball, but more important for us, it’s been bad strategy in the Streaming Wars.
During Netflix’s meteoric rise in the late 2010s — when it grew from 62.3 million subscribers in Q1 of 2015 to 182.9 million in Q1 of 2020 — you wouldn’t get fired if you just copied Netflix’s programming strategy. Its rivals, both traditional studios and Amazon and Apple, often sought to mimic Netflix’s idiosyncratic choices because they represented the decisions you made as a streaming service.
While recently digging through the weekly streaming ratings, I couldn’t help but notice that streamers released a lot of derivative shows meant to chase Netflix in several niches where it’s established a beachhead: standup specials, South Korean dramas and sports docuseries.
That’s when I realized: Everyone is still copying Netflix way too much.
Strategy is a topic that has been written about in, what, thousands of books? But you can boil it down to this:
Start by understanding what a customer wants/needs . . .
Identify how competitors are or aren’t filling that need . . .
Know what your company can and can’t do, its strengths and weaknesses and . . .
Figure out a strategy that combines all three.
It’s simple to say, but actually tough to pull off! Unfortunately, a shortcut is merely to ask, “What are our competitors doing?” and simply copy them.
With the Streaming Wars, more than a few companies saw Netflix’s success and said, “Hey, let’s do that” rather than going through this exercise.
The ultimate example has been putting films straight-to-streaming. Studios gave up their theatrical film marketing expertise and bypassed multiplexes and the revenue and marketing boost they offered because Netflix was doing it — and also because they thought Wall Street would reward them for copying Netflix!
This is but one instance and Netflix’s rivals have pulled back in some of their mimicry, but the programming imitation remains sincere flattery but poor strategy.
In this issue, I’ll tell you:
The data around three big programming areas where following Netflix’s success has been a mistake: Standup specials, South Korean content and sports docs
How to counter-position yourself against Netflix in these subgenres
Three Netflix moves actually worth emulating — including one thing Netflix never does that the industry should embrace
Why copying Netflix creates mini-bubbles that destroy any possible ROI
The cheap broadcast and cable TV formats that could be workhorses for streamers — and one that’s not
How streamers can tighten up the time between seasons of their hits
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