It was one of those truly gorgeous spring weeks last week in Cannes in the Côte d’Azur. You know the ones where the breeze runs warm for the first time that year, even in the shade, and you have to dress in layers in order to peel them off during the day and put them back on once the sun starts to set? 🙂

It’s just one of my most favourite times of year! It was also Seriously Fresh Media’s first official attendance of MIPTV!

My colleague Mila and I had scoped out MIPCOM last October. We didn’t buy tickets. They are 1,300€ each – which in our opinion is expensive in relation to conferences like Mobile World Congress who charge much less at 799€ per ticket, but bring together over 100,000 international mobile executives and offer a city-sized exhibition area.

Instead, we had arranged meetings in the famous New York, New York and Caffe Roma with clients and prospects who had specifically requested to meet with us. It gave us a great chance to absorb the general vibe and get some tips and recommendations from people we knew there.

For MIPTV however, we had a specific mission. We wanted to expand our library of content to fulfil various new client requests, as well as expedite our expansion into areas such as multi-channel VOD. So tickets were a must this time round!

Despite reports of attendee numbers being considerably less compared to previous years (only around 15,000 attendees apparently), for Seriously Fresh, it turned out to be an extremely time-efficient and effective way to put in place a big proportion of our content requirements for 2017.

Based on the contacts, genres, languages and catalogues we have returned home with, we have probably saved ourselves 6 months of work trying to achieve the same result from the SFM offices in Barcelona!

Seriously Fresh works as a video library specialist, consultant and agent for companies who already have or who want to launch VOD based entertainment services.

From OTT and WebTV through to mobile, marketing and social channels, our USP is to ‘design’ and manage the RIGHT library of content to capture and retain subscribers whilst effectively addressing any and all environmental or local factors, such as hardware, networks and platforms.

MIPTV 2017 turned out to be the perfect place to do this. It not only provided us with a pretty comprehensive scope of specific language content via localised pavilions, but also allowed us to target in on some specific genres of content AND have first-hand access to the bigger branded content (for some of our clients who require that).

What DID surprise us both was that many of stands still appeared to be ‘broadcast-first’, with digital and emerging services appearing to be a second consideration in their distribution plans. That said, everyone we spoke to was open to digital distribution opportunities and were aware that their audiences were migrating to these kind of platforms more and more. 🙂

From a selfish perspective, the great thing about this MIPTV being slightly quieter was that in almost every instant, we were able to stop by a stand we were interested in and get to speak to a representative immediately without having a pre-booked meeting. That was extremely helpful in terms of time!

As first time MIPTVers, we were invited to the opening party, which I have to say was AMAZING! Huge buffet with an amazing selection of food, free wine and beer and casino tables all based around local wines!

Among our favourites around town: I would recommend a pit stop in ‘Au Pays Du Citron’, which specialises in citrus products from the town, Menton on the French/Italian border. They have an amazing selection of limoncello as well as vodka, soaps, olive oil and essential oils.

It was the free tasting session that really sold me and after about 8 samples of different flavoured limoncello’s and vodkas, I was more than happy to by a few bottles to take home! I was also decidedly merry when I left the shop! 🙂

If you’re like me and all the ‘health and diet’ rules go straight out of the window the minute you get on a plane (what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas type of mentality – and terrible for the waistline!), and your body is screaming out for some fresh produce after a few days of abuse, then I heartily recommend ’Salsamenteria Di Parma’, who serve a creative range of genuine Italian fare and focus on quality, natural ingredients with bursts of flavour. They also have a lovely tradition that comes from the original town where your wine is served in a big ceramic cup with no handle instead of the usual wine glass!

See I can still get my ‘Vegas vices’ in there somewhere! 🙂

Mila and I are back in sunny Barcelona now and both insistant that we shall be living on lettuce leaves until the Easter weekend to try and redeem ourselves! :)))

Overall a highly enjoyable and productive week and our apartment is already booked for October’s MIPCOM (in the wonderfully picturesque Le Suquet area of Cannes). Our focus then will be new client VOD partnerships, utilising our great database of specialist producers and studios from around the world.

Hope to see you there!

Juls