This year was huge for Blue Ant Media, the little media company that could. Not only did it add Bold and High Fidelity HDTV to its stable—bringing its digital specialty channel count to seven—it also proved its multiplatform prowess and ability to monetize niches with branded entertainment.
The Toronto-based independent isn’t shackled to the old status quo, says CEO Michael MacMillan, former head of Alliance Atlantis. Take Aux Magazine, a tablet music magazine that launched in June and is inspired by Blue Ant’s specialty music station. The magazine quickly became the top music and movies app in the App Store newsstand in Canada and the U.S. “We haven’t got decades or billions sunk into an old way of doing stuff,” says MacMillan. “Which is a good thing.”
Blue Ant specializes in creating and delivering content in a small selection of narrow niches—music, comedy, lifestyle, travel and documentary, mainly. Its specialty channels include Oasis HD, eqhd, HIFI HD, radX (its series Alpine Adventurer is pictured), Travel + Escape, Bite TV and Aux TV. It’s the opposite of a generalist, “department store” approach, says MacMillan. “We’re a handful of specialty stores.” Blue Ant Media’s properties in the digital landscape offer an alternative to the top-tier specialty stations and, as Christopher Walton, senior broadcaster buyer at Media Experts, puts it, “allow you to maximize your dollars by whispering in the ear of your core target instead of shouting at the masses.”
Part of the reason Blue Ant specializes in laser-focused categories is because, as MacMillan sees it, Blue Ant is really in the business of content marketing. “Those relationships with our advertisers are most fertile and interesting when you’re dealing with a specific audience who might have a specific relationship with the content and with the advertiser.”
One of Blue Ant’s successful branded content offerings in the past year was “Aux Scion Sessions,” a video series produced for Scion Canada to boost the launch of the car company’s “Scion Sessions” music platform.
The “Aux Scion Sessions” series was backed by an extensive cross-platform media campaign that ran across Aux’s network and included a custom tab on Aux TV’s Facebook page, online display on the Aux network, a dynamic content hub on Aux’s website (which was nominated for a Digi Award in the “Best in Digital Lifestyle and Entertainment Publishing” category in Nov. 2011) and blogger outreach through music blogs with which Aux partners.
Blue Ant was also a finalist at the 2012 Banff World Media Festival in the “Branded Entertainment” category for Aux Bacardi Together Tour, a documentary that showcases five global music festivals.
Propelling all of this work is a nimble team of 108 full-time employees that MacMillan says will remain small “for some time.” The team is led by a seasoned senior management team, bolstered by several hires this year, including Vanessa Case as EVP programming and marketing and Ryan Fuss as VP digital sales.
What’s next for Blue Ant? MacMillan wants to get further into its existing categories and make each available on more platforms. “We want to be all things ‘cottage’ to people, for example,” he says (Blue Ant bought a stake in the company that owns Cottage Life in July 2011). But he also wants the company to make its first foray into exporting content internationally in 2013.
In the meantime, it did an impressive job of expanding the overall reach of its digital channels within Canada this year. One deal with Shaw boosted Travel + Escape’s reach from 300,000 to 1.8 million homes; another deal completed with Bell TV got the channel into nearly one million new homes, and also expanded distribution for comedy-focused channel Bite TV and secured carriage for Aux TV.
Then there was Blue Ant’s move to purchase digital specialty channel Bold from CBC in August. The transaction is awaiting CRTC approval. While Bold isn’t currently an advertising-supported channel, MacMillan believes its subscriber base of 2.7 million is broad enough that it can become one. “We’ll be refreshing the brand and changing the focus like anybody would, and it’ll have one eye very clearly focused on what the advertisers want,” he says. As for other plans for Bold, MacMillan simply says, “Stay tuned.” Given Blue Ant Media’s growing momentum and ambitious plans, consumers and the media industry alike most definitely will.
To read the full version of this story and more about the companies that made the Media Players of the Year and Marketers of the Year shortlists, check out Marketing’s Nov. 19 issue, which is on newsstands now.
