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Watch the Hypes
However, once you realize that private broadcasters and streaming services, in particular, depend on catering to their audience’s tastes as effectively as possible, it quickly becomes clear that these providers are certainly conducting very thorough market research behind the scenes. Ultimately, movies and series with potentially interesting themes and storylines are selected or, in the case of Netflix or Amazon, produced in-house.
So if you’re looking for a good product idea, for example, it might be worth paying a little more attention to which series are currently being heavily “hyped” and whether that hype could be reflected in a specific product.
The Queen’s Gambit—Chess as a Trend
A good example of such hype is the Netflix series “The Queen’s Gambit” (Fig. 1). Set in the 1950s, the series follows an orphaned girl’s journey to the World Chess Championship in what was then a heavily male-dominated world of chess. From a product perspective, the chessboard is clearly the focal point here. The series premiered worldwide on October 23, 2020.
From the start of the premiere, a significant increase in search volume for the term “chess game” was observed on Google Trends in Germany (as well as, for example, in the U.S.) (see Fig. 2).
Further research also reveals a demand for chess sets—already boosted by the COVID-19 pandemic—as well as increased membership numbers in chess clubs.
How can we put this knowledge to use now? If you think about how to connect the product “chessboard” with the interesting topics of our time, you’ll quickly come up with the idea of “digitizing” the product in some way.
This was exactly the idea a team of founders had in March 2021, and they launched a campaign on the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter with a corresponding product (which includes a training AI, an accompanying app, etc.).
The funding goal was $30,000. This amount was reached just 25 minutes after the campaign launched. The campaign ended a few weeks later with a total of $1.7 million raised (see Fig. 3). Delivery of the product is scheduled to begin in November 2021.
Harnessing the Netflix effect
Consequently, this founding team did a lot of things right: they observed the market (in this case, the "series market"), identified the opportunity for a product idea, then used the technical means available today to make this product idea more attractive compared to competing products, and then tested the actual market demand with a prototype using the Kickstarter campaign. A successful path from "Netflixing" to business.
I'm going to watch some TV now ...
Published on July 14
, 2021 Author: Daniela Stürmer