{"id":289,"date":"2011-03-14T22:46:52","date_gmt":"2011-03-14T22:46:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aberth.com\/blog\/?p=289"},"modified":"2011-03-14T22:46:52","modified_gmt":"2011-03-14T22:46:52","slug":"the-secret-of-cows-success-six-lessons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aberth.com\/digitalstorytelling\/the-secret-of-cows-success-six-lessons\/","title":{"rendered":"The secret of COW’s success – six lessons."},"content":{"rendered":"

Half a million views across TV and online – I wrote about COW in my last post <\/a>and, since then, I’ve been pondering: how come it did so well?<\/p>\n

When I think about what made this film so successful, I’d say:<\/p>\n

– the people who originated, developed and delivered the idea were the very people the film was aimed at. Lesson 1: consult and collaborate with your target audience<\/p>\n

– it was a surprising subject which hadn’t had much coverage. Lesson 2: be fresh<\/p>\n

– no punches were pulled in portraying the crash, so people who saw the film talked about it afterward. Lesson 3: be memorable<\/p>\n

– the producer\/director Peter befitted from many years of experience in the social action \/ public service field and he has strong interpersonal skills. Lesson 4: the key talent counts – that’s you.<\/p>\n

– the ‘point’ of the film can be shown and grasped in one hard-hitting 30 second sequence. Lesson 5: build out from the point by adapting press-release and news story writing skills when making a fact-based short like this<\/p>\n

– great title: COW. Lesson 6: choose a good title <\/p>\n

That’s just half a dozen; if you want to add more, feel free to use the Comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No punches were pulled in portraying the crash, so people who saw the film talked about it afterward. Lesson 3: be memorable<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[15,23,25,26],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe secret of COW's success - six lessons. - Aberth Digital Storytelling<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.aberth.com\/digitalstorytelling\/the-secret-of-cows-success-six-lessons\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The secret of COW's success - six lessons. - Aberth Digital Storytelling\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"No punches were pulled in portraying the crash, so people who saw the film talked about it afterward. 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There's a Wales category and winner too.","rel":"","context":"In "digital storytelling"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":123,"url":"https:\/\/www.aberth.com\/digitalstorytelling\/ds4-festival-of-digital-storytelling-2009-cribsheet\/","url_meta":{"origin":289,"position":5},"title":"DS4 Festival of Digital Storytelling 2009 cribsheet","date":"June 18, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Telling stories of Llanberis slate and Hollywood features, more than a hundred digital storytellers gathered for the annual digital storytelling festival in Aberystwyth. Here's my illustrated story of the day... L to R: Annette Mees, Dai Evans (holding the new-technology version of a teaspoon) and Bonnie Shaw. 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