Experience Manifesto

Creating the Right Experience Post Covid19

 

A few days ago, I posted What will Retailers Do Post #Covid19? and started the conversation about what we need to do as an industry to recover when the coronavirus threat is over. It reminded me of a previous piece I wrote almost 20 years ago.

Back in 2001, I was on deadline to turn in an article that would be of interest to the theme park industry the week of 9-11. Needless to say, that deadline passed and it was another few weeks before I was able to write again. The challenge was that I couldn't figure out what was important about our industry in a world upside down post 9-11. Like today, we were asking the same questions:

In the weeks after the attacks, I spoke to many colleagues in the entertainment marketing field who all asked the same question: How do we go back to our business in the face of such a tragedy? What we do seems so trivial in the face of such tragedy…so unimportant. I, too, asked the same questions and wondered how I would get back to "business as usual" after these events.

Thanks to encouragement from industry friends and a great editor, Pat Esgate, I wrote a piece entitled The Great Good Places, where I talked about the important need to create fun. I wrote then:

As I thought more about it, the need for fun is a global experience. We may have fun in different ways, but we all like to have fun. Fun is one of the greatest tools we have to create a world of understanding and -- potentially -- peace. Hate can’t thrive in an atmosphere of fun.

Let’s ask how can we create experiences that bring people together to share a common, joyous activity. What we need today is more ways for people to come together and share joy—and that’s what we do. So celebrate the joy that you create.

Now that we're all forced to do most, if not all of our shopping online, what will stores do to change that behavior once this is over? While big sales may help in the short term, that's not a long term plan. Retailers and brands not planning right now for what happens when this is all over, will be far behind the curve and may not be able to catch up.

Are you thinking through the design changes that will be needed to recreate your shopping experience? Will you be merchandising the same way you've already done it?  Jim Ackerman, CEO of Unified was pretty clear on what we need - 

“Consumers after a quarantine and lockdown are going to be looking for one particular experience----FUN. It will be important for brands and retailers to make shopping fun again. Ask any Gen Zer what they will be looking for after being cooped up for weeks—it isn’t even close.”

We’ve already seen one change within the grocery industry this week. Retailers around the globe, including Stop & Shop here in the US and Woolworth’s in Australia are opening up early to give the elderly a chance to shop before the general crowds come in. In addition to protecting them since they are more susceptible to serious issues, it also means they won’t be in as crowded and stressful an environment. Wonder if that will continue when this is all over.

Additionally, Morrisons grocery stores has announced food boxes, including a selection of everyday items based on current availability, including food and essential household goods. These boxes have been designed for the audience that now can't go to the store, but that has difficulty in making online ordering work.

Companies like Two Bit Circus (pictured above) and Meow Wolf have received a great deal of press over the last few years for creating a better experience than other companies in their respective spaces have in the past. ARTECHOUSE (pictured below) has been creating unique pop-up experiences for the last year. And Showfields, which bills itself as the "most interesting store in the world,"has created a theatrical experience around retail, with actors portraying different members of the Showfields team.

I've been speaking with Jim Wiemer, head of Design for both Unified and the Brand Experience Lab, about his 25+ years of design experience and his thoughts on what retailers and brands should be doing next. He outlined some of his key ideas for me:

Connect in-home, on-line shopping with re-tooled retail experiences

Retailers will need to build on consumer’s on-line habits when they return to brick and mortar stores. We've been talking to brands, retailers, consumers and students from some of our college partners and many of them have told us that they will be looking for experiences that build on their current on-line shopping, browsing and dreaming. Retailers have a chance of delivering relevant content, products in a way that adds clarity, curated by what was “trending”, “top sellers” and offer original experiences not found on-line.

 Enhance desired lifestyle or activity

Items that complement featured products or enhance the desired activity/lifestyle will instantly connect with the consumer who has been waiting to move forward with life and the activities that they enjoy. Let’s remember a large population has been closed in for weeks, some months on end, and need an outlet to feel real again. Retail experiences, designed right, can be that outlet for them to reconnect and build relationships with retailers, their products, and the newly created purchase path. Many GenZ consumers have spent considerable funds on cell phone technology. How can that technology be used in an engaging way for them to make purchase decisions? How can they be entertained and build memories as they reconnect through physical interaction with products at retail?

Mitch Edelman, President of Unified and Principal in Brand Experience Lab, a third generation in-store marketing expert, also had some thoughts on what retailers could do next:

Re-format the display 

• Using the right material palette for display theme and proper configurations that allow for best practices like organization, segmentation and focal points that deliver engaging presentations that will connect with consumers.
• Removing clutter and focusing on featured, trending products with a connection to relevant information in video format, which will enhance and connect their experience when at home in their fuzzy slippers.

In fact, looking through the vastness that is the internet, I came across a piece from 1999 and honestly, much of the advice Mitch and his fellow experts gave in that article back then, stands true today!

Get floor space. That’s the name of the game. If you build it or show it, they will buy. It’s not an easy task. In the case of floor and counter displays, marketers for the most part pay for the display space.

Make it dramatic. The display or program must be dynamic in every element. The offer must be clear and succinct. The "shelf impact" must be arresting.

Marry product and display. The display only has three tenths of a second to do its job so product packaging and display must be inter-twined.

Seek non-traditional channels. Marketers generally focus their P-O-P guns on high volume channels like department stores, supermarkets, discount stores and category-busters, e.g., Home Depot. But the smaller, less visible specialty stores and boutiques such as salons, home craft stores, liquor stores and independent bookstores can be equally important P-O-P environments.

Be a trend watcher. Before designing the program, analyze the market and the customer. Keep an ear to the ground. Look for what turns them on.

The truth is that many of the things that have been true before are true today, but even more so. The coronavirus crisis will end, as these things always do, and retailers need to be ready to respond to consumer needs when it does.

If you're waiting until this all passes to begin planning what you're going to do and how you can get your consumers back into your store, you're going to be that much further behind.

Media, Marketing, and Gen Z - It's All About the Experience

Don't forget to join us this Thursday for a fun talk about media, marketing and #GenZ. Sydney Polinchock & I will be talking about:

• The relationship between Gen Z and technology. What media are they consuming? How is this influencing the way they spend your time and money?
• What is the biggest challenge in marketing to Gen Z right now? What are marketers getting wrong?
• Who is getting it right? What marketing campaigns are resonating right now?
• What trends are you most excited about moving forward? * What trends are you not excited about?

Hit the link here for additional information and registration. Looking forward to a fun and informative conversation!

One Season Attention Disorder

I've noticed something lately as it relates to my content viewing habits. I watch a lot of shows for one season, but rarely have I watched beyond that. Even shows I really like, it just seems to be very hard to keep going into multiple seasons. I have one season attention disorder!

Now, clearly, part of the problem is me and my normal ADHD, but I also think the way content works today is part of the problem. One I was growing up, there were two TV seasons, the fall and the spring. You knew that shows generally started in September and ending maybe around May. It some ways, it was a much easier time to plan and watch TV. I mean, there were really only 6 or so channels, so there were a lot less options available. I think about how much time I scroll through Netflix/Amazon/Prime/Disney+/Hulu looking for something that catches my eye. I think of the number of times where I've watched an episode (or less!) of something, before bagging on it as it wasn't keeping my interest.

Plus, I have to spend so much time trying to figure out where the shows are that I want to watch, when there are so many options available. I wrote about that challenge here. There are days that it's been easier to not watching anything than to try and find something I want to watch.

I know that all of this content and all of the many ways we can now watch that content was supposed to be good for consumers, but sometimes I do miss the days of knowing which days I watch which shows. It was much easier on us!

What will Retailers Do Post #Covid19?

With #Covid19 closing everything around us, we're all either in a lock down or panic mode. In the NY metro area, everything has been closed. My daughter is home from college for the rest of the semester and everyone is trying to figure out how long this will last. Lauren Thomas, writing about the industry at CNBC, had an article indicating that retail closures could top 15,000 this year. On top of everything that's happened in previous years, I'm sure this was not the year retailers wanted.

Here at the Lab, we've been talking about the importance of creating authentic, relevant and compelling brand experiences for quite some time. What will physical stores need to do post #COVID19 to bring shoppers back in? We're currently dealing with the global shutdown these days, with almost every country having some sort of shutdown in place. We're looking at the possibilities with members of our team and will talk about them in part two of this piece.

There was some looming good news for retailers. Most studies point to the fact that Gen Z loves to shop in store. According to a study by A.T. Kearny last fall, 81% if Gen Z like to buy in-store and 73% of Gen Z like to discover new products in store.

But, their newfound desire to come into stores creates challenges for many traditional retailers. They are brand promiscuous, shopping for good deals and good service. As my daughter wrote a few years back, they are also looking for experiences, both in terms of what they’re buying and how they’re buying. She concluded:

Gen Z has the world at their fingertips and won't hesitate to change shopping patterns if a brand does not support their interests. With a few Google searches, we can find out whether or not a brand uses child labor, their pollution levels, and anything else we might be interested in. Brands need to consider their brand morality and the unique experiences they offer if they want to keep us as consumers. How can their products create experiences that transform me and the world around me? Yes, Adidas is still selling me a shoe, but the experience they created around that shoe gives me a reason to buy them over other sneaker brands, even if they cost more.

Echoing her thoughts, a study by ubimo, they stated:

Gen Z still shops online, but they’re being increasingly driven to physical storefronts by their desire for personalization in shopping, preference for experiencing products, and an expectation that brands engage with them in a meaningful, authentic way. They also want to know what they’re buying before they shell out — just shy of two thirds of Gen Zers want to touch, feel, and experience products before making a purchase.

But #Covid19 is putting a huge hold on all of this optimism. As I write this, the market is down almost 2,000 points (it was down 2,700 at one point) and the CDC here in the States is recommending no crowds bigger than 50 people for at least the next two months. The vast majority of people are now working from home - my commute has been almost empty the last few days. Grocery stores have been cleaned out. Curfews have closed restaurants all around me and, if they're still open, they are for take out only. Hourly workers are not spending money as they're afraid they won't have an income for the next few weeks. That is likely to trigger a recession, even a brief one, which will further slow spending.

Check out part 2 to see what we and others are thinking we need to do when this is all over!

Euroshop 2020

We'll be at Euroshop next week, looking for new companies to join us at the Lab. If you'll be there as well, let us know, we'd love to meet! You can reach out to Jim Ackerman or Mitch Edelman to schedule a time to meet. We'll be at the show all day Monday - Wednesday and available after hours as well. Looking forward to meeting in Dusseldorf!

You can click here to learn more about what we offer to members, including:

• Shared Space working with BEL design team
• Access to tech member network spaces while in NY
• Client support for hosted meetings
• Desks & office furniture
• Conference room facilities
• Use of the shared space to host up to 4 events per year
• Demonstration area to present products and technology
• Kitchen for your staff and guests
• Wi-fi connectivity throughout premises

Our space is just across the river from NYC, a short PATH train ride away in Jersey City. With 14,000 sf (and another 14,000 available if needed!), we have plenty of room to grow; set up your technology for live demos, meetings, seminars and getting work done in a living, breathing, future factory. It allows for you to go from concept to a real-world testing environment and get instantaneous data and feedback. This also allows our members from outside of the United States to have a US office location. We even provide staffing to present your products when you are away.

Parallel Reality at CES

Over two years ago, Paul Dietz, an old friend who used to run the Mitsubishi Electronics Research Lab, reached out about a new company who was developing with some technology that he said would blow me away. He showed me some videos and they were pretty damn cool, I had to admit, but I'm not sure I knew what they were showing me.

So Jim Ackerman and I went to visit their space in Redmond and we were just blown away. Parallel Reality was one of those technologies that was really just magic to me. This technology innovation allows a hundred or more viewers to simultaneously share a digital display, sign, or light and each see something different. From their website:

PARALLEL REALITY™ Displays are enabled by
a new pixel that has unprecedented capabilities.

These pixels can simultaneously project up to millions of light rays of different colors and brightness. Each ray can then be software-directed to a specific person.

CONVENTIONAL PIXEL               PARALLEL REALITY™ PIXEL

Outputs only a single color        Can simultaneously output up to millions
at any moment.                        of controllable rays of different colors and brightness.

 

I was really excited to see them at CES this year, showing off their tech with Delta Airlines. I took one of my tour groups there and we scheduled a time to see them. Wasn't sure they were looking forward to coming back but once they had a chance to see it, they were blown away too. In fact, a great deal of the CES press called this either the best tech or one of the best techs of the show.

The possibilities for this technology are endless. With Parallel Reality, we can create personalized experiences at retail (Jim & I saw a demo of this already) and better connect with the shoppers in a store. Or while at a sporting event in a stadium, we can all see tailored content on the Jumbotrons. Later this year, they'll be testing the tech at the Detroit airport, delivering personalized boarding information to travelers. The possibilities are endless.

Check out the video I took below and reach out to find out more about what they're doing. We hope to be able to showcase them at the Lab in the future!

TikTok and Music Discovery

Unlike most folks my age (60), I'm actually on TikTok quite a lot these days. Started as research for a client and frankly, was pretty addicting for me. In fact, I recognized Charli D'Amelio before I recognized Boomer Esiason in the Sabra hummus Super Bowl ad. She has about 1.7 billion view of TikTok, far more than most brand views I've tracked on the site.

Yes, there are a lot of things that are just silly and yes, most of what's happening on TikTok isn't fundamentally different than what's come before it. Frankly, many of the things I watch on TikTok are sort of things we did when I was in high school, we didn't record it. To be fair, according to my daughter, we just barely had electricity when I was in high school.

But one thing I've really liked is the amount of new music I've discovered on TikTok. Not surprising, given where it started, But they've made it very easy to find the songs used in the various videos and that's made it very easy to find new artists. For example, even though Roisin Murphy has been around for a good number of years, I had not heard of her until her song Ramalama (Bang Bang) became part of a dance challenge on TikTok. Once I created a Ramalama station on Pandora, that led me to a variety of artists that I had not heard of before.

I know that TikTok has issues related to privacy, but the teens who spend an average of 52 minutes/day on the site don't seem to be worried. And honestly, what SM site these days doesn't have a privacy issue? I have seen some inappropriate material and a few fake news pieces, but I'm still on the surface even though I watch a lot. And I've only posted twice, both times about dogs we have that are looking for their forever homes.

According to a recent article in Forbes, TikTok was downloaded 123 million times in the US, about a third of our population. And we're far behind both India and China in total number of users. The average time spent per day is just under an hour, and most videos are under a minute. They've had some controversies around the monetization of the music on the site and they will need to address that as they continue to grow.

You don't need an account to watch videos on TikTok, so if you haven't checked it out, you should. I've posted some of the music I've discovered though TikTok below in case you need some new artists to follow. I might start posting more, so say hi to Old Fart if you actually have an account.

Ready for Members!

Excited to announce that after a few months of working on the infrastructure of the space, we're ready to open our doors to members! We are creating a word-class accelerator for companies working in retail, VR/AR and out-of-home (OOH). As we looked for our own space, we quickly realized that many coworking spaces are great for working, they are usually not very good if you need to do demonstrations of physical technologies.

Our space is just across the river from NYC, a short PATH train ride away in Jersey City. With 14,000 sf (and another 14,000 available if needed!), we have plenty of room to grow; set up your technology for live demos, meetings, seminars and getting work done in a living, breathing, future factory. It allows for you to go from concept to a real-world testing environment and get instantaneous data and feedback. This also allows our members from outside of the United States to have a US office location. We even provide staffing to present your products when you are away. And did I mention that the Cake Boss bakery is in the building too?

What we offer:

• Shared Space working with BEL design team
• Access to tech member network spaces while in NY
• Client support for hosted meetings
• Desks & office furniture 
• Conference room facilities
• Use of the shared space to host up to 4 events per year
• Demonstration area to present products and technology
• Kitchen for your staff and guests
• Wi-fi connectivity throughout premises

In addition, all members can participate in all events hosted on the premises including (based on availability and suitability) client presentations, industry specific events, meet-ups with other entrepreneurs, workshops about general business topics; demonstration events.

For members, BEL is your brand accelerator, helping you grow your business by:

• Demonstrating your technology to key retailers and clients.
• Presenting your technology to Unified/BEL clients and contacts.
• Working with Unified Merchandising LLC for manufacturing support, from prototype through final product.

Lastly, for companies outside of NYC, the BEL staff can act as your local business development staff. We can represent you in all client presentations that are necessary, acting as your staff on the ground in NYC and in the States. This allows you to be able to react quickly to client requests, without incurring last minute travel expenses.

Julian Fisher, CEO of our first member company, jisp said, "We are thrilled to be the first to take our place inside the Brand Experience Lab showing how the simplest, fastest and most seamless route to outstanding customer service lies in the hands of every shopper, their cell phone. And with jisp it is an experience once tried you’ll never want to shop any other way. It maybe a small step for shoppers but it’s a giant leap for retail."

Want to learn more about what we're doing? If you're developing innovative, new tech for the retail industry, click here to learn about our membership program.

If you're looking for space for your company, you can email David or Jim and we can give you additional information. You can also click here to download our full presentation.

Here are a few pictures of the space, come visit and see what it looks like in person! You can go to Brand Experience Lab for directions to our space. Hope to see you soon.

ETC 20TH Anniversary

Last weekend, Jim Ackerman and I had the chance to go down and help the Entertainment Technology Center at CMU celebrate their 20th anniversary. The Brand Experience Lab is starting to work with them on a number of initiatives and hope to have some of their most exciting technologies here in our space in Jersey City early next year.

Some 20+ years ago, I had the great fortune to meet Don Marinelli, then the Associate head of the drama department at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh and and Scott Stevens, then with the computer sciences department at CMU. At the time, he and other CMU colleagues were working to develop a new program there, combining theater and tech into one program, the Entertainment Technology Center. As described on their website:

The Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) was founded in 1998, and admitted its first class of graduate students in the fall of 1999. The ETC is an interdisciplinary research center offering a Master of Entertainment Technology (MET) that is a joint venture between Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science and College of Fine Arts. In the spirit of the ETC’s interdisciplinary focus, the center had two co-directors; Randy Pausch, a CS professor (who later delivered his inspirational Last Lecture), and Don Marinelli, a Drama Professor.

To this day, the ETC looks to continue being one of the most inventive and impactful programs in the world. Randy Pausch liked to say that the ETC is the world’s best playground, with an electric fence. Or in other words, the ETC provides the contexts, processes and best practices for the design and development of creative experiences. Since our first class, we have graduated a substantial and successful group of over 700 alumni, that help illustrate the solid basis of the ETC’s curriculum, which balances educational goals, professional development, and engaging experiences, or learn, work and play.

As always, we saw some great projects from the students, both full semester work as well as projects done in just one or two weeks. We were particularly drawn to experiences like Face2Face, where two people have to create one face and then follow a series of patterns by raising an eyebrow or puffing up a cheek. The fact that two people had to work together made it fun, as you can see by the short video below.

Another favorite was Goal in the Wall, a Kinect-based game with the twist of telling you the body part you needed to use for that specific round. Although Jim beat me all three games, we both had a fun time.

Back in the late 90's, when I first met Don and Scott Stevens, I was working with an agency and building one of my first experience environments and they work that they were doing at the ETC fit in quite well with what I was building. One of the first things I showed was a Synthetic Interview, a technology developed in the late 90's and we pretty quickly ended up doing a Synthetic Interview for GSK's Nicorette brand, letting you talk to Arnold Palmer and asking him questions both about why you should stop smoking and about his long experience golfing.

When we opened our first playground in NYC, technologies from the ETC were front and center in our experience. One of the first things we brought to our space was a very cool, audience interactive experience. The very first game I saw was the Baby Game, but we knew it would be something we could do a lot with.

We eventually turned it into a successful product that I called AudienceGames. We did very successful programs for Orange, Volvo, which won a Bronze Lion at Cannes and, it all started with msnbc and a program called Newsbreaker Live. That program traveled for the summer of 2007 and was called one of the best marketing ideas in the world. We had a great deal of fun working on this program and it was really great to bring one of the ETC technologies into the world.

We also had a Jam-O-Drum in our space, really one of my favorite experiences from the ETC. I loved that it was multiplayer experience that required 4 players to make the game work. Now that we're spending so much time in our individual worlds, this very social game experience is much more relevant if you're building physical spaces than it was when it was first introduced.

Lastly, the ETC created Quasi, an interactive robot that became the mascot for Give Kids the World that my daughter absolutely loved at the time. He came to NYC several times and traveled quite frequently, even making an appearance at the Super Bowl.

Toys R Us is Back!

Had a chance to visit the brand new, Toys R Us at the Garden State Plaza on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, the first of their new physical stores.

Not surprisingly, the first thing you can notice is how small the store is compared to their previous stores. They are currently opening up two locations, the one we have here in NJ and a second one in Houston. While a traditional store from the first version would've been around 40,000 sf, the store I visited was about 6,500 sf according to reports I've read. Also understand that future stores will be about 10,000 sf, still much smaller than their older stores.

The other thing that you see right away is that it is much more experiential than the previous version of the stores. Although they had a few flagship stores (like the one in Times Square), most of their stores were really just large warehouse buildings with a lot of merchandise in them. They were pretty unfun places for a company dedicated to sell toys to children. Now, each area of the store is designed to let people actually play. My favorite was the Nerf shooting range, which I thought was pretty cool.

In order to keep the the number of SKU's down in the physical store, they've partnered with Target to deliver additional products through digital screens placed throughout the store. These screens are located throughout the store and allow you to find a broader range of toys than they can stock in the stores. Not sure how partnering with Target will help them build their own brand identity, so it will be interesting to see how this works out for them.

The good news is that the store was pretty crowded (I deliberately took pictures without people as much as possible) and kids certainly seemed to be having a good time. The store had a great deal of staff working the day we visited, so it will also be interesting to see if that continues after the holiday season.

I'll do some additional visits throughout the holiday season and see how it continues and will report back here when I do. For me, creating smaller stores, designed to let children actually play, is what they should've done years ago.

To Bundle or Unbundle, That is the Question

[This is a repost from this article that we wrote MediaVillage.]

For several years, I gave most of the presentations at the AT&T AdWorks Lab and of course, the entire discussion of un-bundling and cord-cutting was always part of the discussion. At the time, I used to say that I thought that cord-cutting was potentially more of a point in life thing and less of a generational issue. When you're single and loving alone or with roommates, you don't want to be the one stuck wit that monthly bill, so it makes sense. As you get older and have a family, you start to realize how much all of the channels cost to deliver all of the content you really want. Just take a look at this piece from last month about the costs for various streaming services.

I asked my wonderful daughter Sydney what she thought about all of this, and here's how she replied:

"What do you think about all the new subscription services?" That’s what my dad asked during our 2.5 hour car ride to CT. I answered sarcastically, “It means bad news for Netflix!" But more than that, it means bad news for consumers. Having everyone take back their piece of the pie means it will be harder for consumers to find and watch what they want, when they want.

People flocked to sites like Netflix because it made their lives easier. They are able to access a multitude of shows and movies from several genres. Everything is made readily available and the setup is easy to navigate. You can watch Thor: Ragnarok one moment, a Nat Geo special the next, and then move onto binging a new show all in one place.

Consumers don’t like sifting through multiple layers to find what they’re looking for. While new streaming services such as DC Universe and Disney+ may seem like a good idea to wealthy business men looking to get wealthier, I don’t think consumers will be as excited about this trend. For them, it just means their favorite shows and movies are being removed from the sites they already pay for. They will have to pay for multiple streaming services in order to get the assortment of movies and shows they want. I can easily see this causing strife between consumers and streaming services. Personally, I am very upset that the new season of Young Justice is only available on DC Universe when I watched the first two seasons on Netflix.

As a member of Gen Z, I can assure you we find ways to watch what we want, even if it’s not through conventional channels. Whether on Youtube or another less than legal website, Gen Z would rather find their own way to get the content they desire then pay for something they don’t want. However, there is a point where the desire for good content overpowers pride. In order to appeal to consumers, these new services need to keep their prices down and their options open. Users are more likely to switch if they believe the transition will be easy and painless. It is clear the decision to make individual streaming services was based on a desire to make more money, so streaming services will need to work hard to prove that they care about the customer’s experience too.

Good luck to Netflix when you go toe to toe with Disney +, to new companies trying to find a niche, and to consumers who will have to navigate the sea of streaming services. Honestly good luck to everyone involved in this shift, you’ll need it!

I share her frustration. Sadly, this had been going on for some time now. I wrote this back in 2015. During our SXSW presentation, William, one of our speakers, made an excellent point about content and Gen Z:

If the experience of free is better than the experience of paid, then they won't be paying!

While content providers and cable companies do everything they can to generate additional revenue, they continue to make it more difficult for consumers. It's not enough any more to have a full cable subscription, now you also have to subscribe to individual channels to get certain content. Want to see any of the new Star Trek shows? CBS All Access. Impulse? Youtube Premium. Handmaidens Tale? Hulu. Well, you get the idea. Suddenly, I'm spending $100/month for these services and I don't have premium cable channels yet.

I've now started seeing people asking who will start bundling all of these channels back together again. For example, in this piece in FierceVideo, Barclays analyst Kannan Venkateshwar wrote:

In our opinion, however, ISPs that can create product bundles will be a lot more effective than those creating price bundles but the only company which has invested in this among ISPs is Comcast.

So, we're back to looking at who will bundle all of the streaming sites back together again. In a piece in Vox from March, wrote:

The streaming revolution, which promised to break down lots of barriers in the TV industry, is beginning to morph into something else. And what it’s morphing into looks a lot more like ... traditional television.

With Apple having music & TV bundles, BGR reports that they're now thinking about creating a super-bundle. From that report:

Apple has priced Apple TV+ aggressively on a standalone basis. It only costs about $5 a month, which is a testament both to the newness of the service and to the fact that there won’t be a lot of content available at the beginning — just a handful of shows, compared to the hundreds and hundreds of TV series and movies available on something like Netflix.

What Apple seems to be working on with this new proposed bundle offers some interesting possibilities, such as an opportunity to include the company’s subscription news service Apple News+. Depending on where Apple prices such a mega-bundle, it might be less of an ask to encourage consumers to sign up for it than to try and convince those same consumers that they need another standalone news app or something like Apple TV+.

The real question for everyone involved - consumers, content providers, networks, etc. - is how many of these will the consumers want and pay for. How will we discover shows if I have to pay for a channel to see a single show. Will consumers pay for one month of a service and binge everything (like I've been thinking about with CBS All Access).

TV would've failed at the very start if I needed to pay differently for each channel. I don't think we'll see these established channels failing, but there's no doubt that in a few years, we'll be back to paying someone to bundle everything again and complaining about how much it all costs.