10 ways entertainment capitalised on COVID

1. Curzon brings the cinema home

Cin­e­mas have strug­gled over the course of the pan­dem­ic. Yet while titans like Cineworld face per­ma­nent clo­sure, small­er brands have fared bet­ter thanks to a lean­er busi­ness mod­el and an abil­i­ty to under­stand their own audi­ence nich­es. When Cur­zon was forced to close tem­porar­i­ly their 13 cin­e­ma sites, the brand fun­nelled mon­ey into improv­ing the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence of their on-demand Cur­zon Home Cin­e­ma stream­ing plat­form. As an art­house alter­na­tive to the likes of Net­flix, sev­er­al inde­pen­dent films skipped cin­e­mas to debut on the plat­form. Con­se­quent­ly, Cur­zon saw its high­est view­ing fig­ures on the plat­form by the third week­end of March, up 89 per cent on its pre­vi­ous record.

2. Fortnite hosts a gaming headliner

While com­pet­i­tive gam­ing and rap music might not seem like the most obvi­ous com­pan­ions, the devel­op­ers behind online mul­ti­play­er phe­nom­e­non Fort­nite struck gold when they decid­ed to host a sell-out con­cert with­in the con­fines of their game’s vir­tu­al uni­verse. Rap­per Travis Scott, who was due to be star­ring at California’s Coachel­la fes­ti­val at the time, instead head­lined a spec­tac­u­lar, psy­che­del­ic show for gamers, with per­for­mances stag­gered for dif­fer­ent time zones. At 12.3 mil­lion view­ers, Scott’s con­cert set an all-time record for vir­tu­al atten­dance of an in-game event and may have for­ev­er changed the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence of live music fans in the process.

3. Cards Against Humanity targets a new market

If the mil­lions it spent on a Super Bowl ad of an uncooked pota­to is any­thing to go by, Amer­i­can game man­u­fac­tur­er Cards Against Human­i­ty is adept at mak­ing risky busi­ness deci­sions. When it became clear COVID-19 would be con­fin­ing cus­tomers togeth­er in their homes, the com­pa­ny saw an oppor­tu­ni­ty to fast-track the launch of its game’s new, fam­i­ly-friend­ly iter­a­tion. Bypass­ing the pro­duc­tion-line issues pre­sent­ed by such a deci­sion, they decid­ed to make a beta ver­sion of the game avail­able to down­load and print for free, not only cre­at­ing pos­i­tive cus­tomer feed­back, but act­ing as an effec­tive road test for the real game’s phys­i­cal launch.

4. FA Cup taps into sporting nostalgia

Fans weren’t the only ones who suf­fered when live sports were sus­pend­ed. Sports mag­a­zines, pod­cast­ers, broad­cast­ers and beyond were all devoid of fresh con­tent, and the enter­tain­ment indus­try was left with a gap­ing hole where sports cov­er­age would nor­mal­ly be. The Emi­rates FA Cup faced down this nev­er-before-seen sit­u­a­tion with a warm­ing dose of nos­tal­gia, cour­tesy of con­tent cre­ator Lit­tle Dot Stu­dios. The Foot­ball Association’s social media feed was turned into a plat­form for fans to stream FA Cup games from the 1990s and 2000s, lead­ing to a notable jump in view­ers, sub­scribers and aver­age time spent watch­ing videos.

5. Quercus slashes publishing lead times

Despite shut­tered book­shops and stalled print­ing press­es, the pan­dem­ic saw UK book sales rise by a third. Cap­i­tal­is­ing on cur­rent events, pub­lish­ing house Quer­cus obtained the rights to Lock­down, a nov­el set in a pan­dem­ic, which Scot­tish crime writer Peter May had writ­ten, and not sold, 15 years ago. An ebook ver­sion was pub­lished with­in two weeks, with the paper­back a week lat­er, which was an almost unprece­dent­ed lead time in an indus­try where years can pass between book deal and pub­li­ca­tion. The book quick­ly became a best­seller, in no small part due to the pub­lic rela­tions around its pre­scient plot and the speed with which Quer­cus was able to deliv­er it.

6. National Theatre turns to streaming

The entire enter­tain­ment indus­try suf­fered adap­ta­tion dif­fi­cul­ties dur­ing lock­down, but piv­ot­ing to an online-first envi­ron­ment was espe­cial­ly tough for the­atres whose entire rai­son d’être was an in-per­son audi­ence. While unable to stage shows, the Nation­al The­atre turned its efforts to cre­at­ing a vir­tu­al cus­tomer expe­ri­ence to reach far more peo­ple than the aver­age the­atre audi­ence. It did this by releas­ing week­ly shows to watch live on its YouTube chan­nel, each one at a set time, as a stage show would be. The screen­ing of One Man Two Guvnors gar­nered almost three mil­lion view­ers and saw a sub­se­quent surge in dona­tions totalling tens of thou­sands of pounds.

7. Encore’s music messaging service

The ban on live music proved a prob­lem for Lon­don-based start­up Encore, a busi­ness cre­at­ed for the easy book­ing of musi­cians for events. Yet the ben­e­fit of size meant the busi­ness was able to adapt quick­ly, piv­ot­ing to become a per­son­alised music mes­sag­ing ser­vice with pro­ceeds split between the com­pa­ny, the musi­cians involved and dona­tions to the NHS. As an ear­ly adapter, Encore received plen­ty of press cov­er­age for the move and, by focus­ing on a sim­ple inter­face and cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion, the result­ing word of mouth meant it was able to stay afloat at a time when the enter­tain­ment indus­try was sink­ing.

8. STX Entertainment skips the cinema

In the age of the Mar­vel Cin­e­mat­ic Uni­verse, “non-event” block­busters increas­ing­ly strug­gle to sell tick­ets. So, when the pan­dem­ic struck, film pro­duc­tion com­pa­nies were offered a unique oppor­tu­ni­ty to test new ways of releas­ing movies. Take STX Entertainment’s action com­e­dy My Spy, star­ring Dave Bautista, which “would have almost cer­tain­ly died a bad death in the­atres”, accord­ing to Dead­line. After sell­ing the US rights to Ama­zon Prime, the film saw such suc­cess on stream­ing that it’s being con­sid­ered for a sequel, while STX’s Ger­ard But­ler film Green­land has already been pulled from US cin­e­ma sched­ules in favour of a Prime debut.

9. Time Out becomes ‘Time In’

Lon­don list­ings mag­a­zine Time Out relies heav­i­ly on dis­tri­b­u­tion to com­muters. So, with offices closed and tubes emp­ty, the free sheet was forced to think fast to retain audi­ence and adver­tis­ers. The answer? A total, albeit tem­po­rary, rebrand to Time In. While the mag­a­zine stopped print­ing, Time In utilised Insta­gram and live stream­ing to pro­vide view­ers with every­thing from sour­dough lessons with mas­ter Lon­don bak­ers to vir­tu­al dis­cos cour­tesy of the capital’s best DJs. By putting social media first, Time In was still able to pro­vide the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence expect­ed of London’s pre­mier list­ings out­let, as well as build brand aware­ness ahead of the print edition’s relaunch.

10. BBC plays with customer expectations

Despite the under­stand­able upswing in TV view­ing fig­ures, the COVID-19 shut­down of pro­duc­tion cre­at­ed a scarci­ty of new shows to keep view­ers inter­est­ed. BBC One took a nov­el approach to the issue with Staged, a com­e­dy set dur­ing lock­down and filmed almost entire­ly in the form of remote video con­ver­sa­tions. Trad­ing on pre-estab­lished chem­istry between stars David Ten­nant and Michael Sheen, the show’s nature meant it could be pro­duced safe­ly and cheap­ly while offer­ing big-name cameos from the likes of Dame Judi Dench and Samuel L. Jack­son. The show’s pop­u­lar­i­ty ensured a prime-time repeat run just a fort­night after fin­ish­ing and has since been bought by stream­ing giant Net­flix.

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