MIPCOM’s Lucy Smith on listening, evolving & creating a ‘co-production destination’

MIPCOM 2019

MIPCOM is in many ways a mirror to the industry, so it’s little surprise that a natural evolution away from straight distribution is well under way. But as event director Lucy Smith prepares for the first “full strength” market since the pandemic – and the first under her full control – there has been some introspection too.

The numbers still seem to stack up: around 10,000 delegates from 101 countries are expected to land in Cannes for MIPCOM next week, with 3,000 buyers among that contingent, of which the majority are from the US.

There are also 320 exhibitor stands being dusted down and making their way into France from 49 countries, supporting RX France’s director of MIPTV & MIPCOM’s assertion that the October market remains the must-attend event for most in the global content business.

But crikey, it’s faced some challenges. The events business was pummelled by the pandemic and RX Media – fka Reed Midem – did not escape unscathed. It is now emerging leaner and, with Smith in sole charge, promising to offer a slightly different experience to what came before.

Lucy Smith

Riding the rollercoaster

Part of that of course is because the industry has gone about-face and then some over the past three years. US studios, so often the driver of global trends, slashed third-party sales as they prepped DTC streamers, but with sums seemingly not stacking up, have more recently been re-embracing the potential of global buyers for new tranches of their product.

The rest of the world has been adapting in its own ways to these changes, but for Smith, such turbulent market conditions have to be simply ridden out.

“We will see how it all continues to evolve,” she tells TBI. “This rollercoaster of watching the news will continue – what they’re doing with their platforms and what they’ll hold back and what they’ll sell. It is a hugely dynamic content market.”

For those wondering what to expect, Disney’s beachside tent will of course be missing – “they will have a new stand, a smaller presence than before,” says Smith – but the other US majors are back. Warner Bros. Discovery is retaining the enviable position held by WarnerMedia, Paramount is in attendance and NBCUniversal is “back in full force”, Smith says.

Fox Entertainment will also be making its first appearance at the market, a neat example of the consolidation in the industry but also the emergence of new shoots. Smith points to the fact that there are 50 other companies exhibiting that weren’t in Cannes in 2019, while attendees will be able to visit pavilions from counties such as Iran.

“Consolidation is always going to impact the overall footprint and size of the show, but there are also many execs who leave the groups and start their own smaller shops who then come back with their own companies,” she says. “It will always be a never ending cycle and circle. We have 50 new exhibitors this year, so what’s happened there over the past few years?”

Attempting to explaining some of the changes will be a raft of heavy hitters including Candle media’s Kevin Mayer, Fremantle’s Jennifer Mullin and Andrea Scrosati, Banijay’s CEO Marco Bassetti and Amazon Studios topper Jennifer Salke.

Talent is on show too: Fremantle is bringing Cara Delevingne and her Milkshake Productions to push docuseries Planet Sex, Alyssa Milano will be in town to keynote the annual Women in Global Entertainment (WGE) Power Lunch, and Emily Blunt will provide an “iconic moment” as she pushes The English with All3Media on the red carpet.

Cara Delevingne

Coproduction callling

A key area of focus for Smith and RX Media, however, is increasing MIPCOM’s calling card as a place to talk shop, and probably more importantly, business models. Few deals have been signed at the market itself for years but as distributors look for steady product supply, getting involved early has never been more important.

The Seaview Producers Hub is MIPCOM’s answer to this evolution, consisting of a 10,673sqft networking lounge and event space, designed “to accommodate hundreds of daily meetings prioritised for creators, producers, commissioners, and development executives.”

“We felt we needed to create a real true destination for that community of producers who need creative and commercial conversations to talk about partnerships,” Smith says.

“MIPCOM is so huge that it could have got lost before – it’s not just conference sessions, we needed to offer a real venue and meeting point destination for all the different parts of the community to come together.”

And there seems little chance that this trend will reverse, as Smith points out. “We’ll always be the core market for distribution but the funding and finance will become more and more important, we will continue to evolve with the industry.

“We reflect the industry and will pivot MIPCOM to reflect the market’s needs. And we need our clients to tell us what we need and that’s what we’ll do.”

Listening & MIPTV

TBI is talking to Smith just a week after NATPE revealed it was entering bankruptcy protection measures and the Edinburgh International Film Festival confirmed it was bringing the curtain down, so what does Smith make of the event circuit at present and how will it change?

“Regarding what’s happened to organisations like NATPE, the takeaway is that the pandemic was extremely hard for the events business. The events business came to a bit of a standstill for a couple of years,” she says.

“There is room for lots of events and different formats and companies to do their own shows. But we own the two big dates in the calendar though – October for MIPCOM for the international market of that size and April for the first international market of the year, with MIPTV.”

Smith adds, however, that under her tenure, the organisation is listening more than it once did to its distributor clients.

“We certainly listened to market needs when we relaunched MIPTV this year, it was totally transformed. We changed the exhibition floorpan gave companies opportunity to attend MIPTV how they wanted to attend at the scale they wanted to, and all of that was totally different from before. We are absolutely listening to the industry.

“We had an increase in satisfaction that we hadn’t had for five or six years and we really believe what we have done now is create the new model MIPTV and we’re really excited what we have planned for 2023. It’ll be the 60th anniversary so we will build on that and there will be new innovations to come.”

The 38th iteration of MIPCOM takes place 17-20 October 2022, with MIPJUNIOR returning to its pre-market weekend schedule 15-16 October at the JW Marriott Cannes.