A new survey on the Canadian interactive media industry will set the stage for important industry hearings on the nature and the future of digital media in Canada planned for the New Year.
The Canadian Interactive Alliance/L’Alliance interactive canadienne (CIAIC) is now profiling Canada’s interactive media industry, including all companies that work in or provide services to the interactive media industry, either completely or partially.
The 2008 Canadian Interactive Industry Profile (CIIP) is designed to assist the CIAIC in strengthening the Canadian interactive industry by increasing investment and partnering opportunities and improving the business climate for interactive media, describes CIAIC executive director James Lewis.
Nordicity has been contracted by the association to conduct the survey, analyze the results and then report on its findings.
The survey will probably close in mid-January, Lewis said, and the aim is to do qualitative and quantitative analysis and then release the report at the end of February.
This dovetails perfectly with scheduled plans for hearings into the New Media Industry in Canada.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has completed its public submission phase, and is heading to public hearing to be held in early 2009.
“It is an important time, there’s state of flux out there with the economic turmoil we’ve seen recently - all kinds of industries asking for subsidies, support or investment,” says Lewis.
“In our case, unlike forestry or automotive where there may be an end in sight to the growth rate they are used to, we see interactive digital media as still untapped. It has a potentially limitless capacity for growth as an industry.
Many people think ‘games’ when they think of this industry, but we know it goes a lot further. Interactive media is very much a business tool, not just an entertainment tool.”
Lewis describes a core message that industry associations developed for National Digital Media Day (held this past October) that helps position the industry in that vein, nicknamed ‘Triple E’:
Interactive digital media enables, he says, in that it does go beyond entertainment to contribute to personal and professional development. It is embedded, as interactivity is found in almost everything from mobile phones to stuffed animals to networked refrigerators. And it great economic potential as a new high growth industry (as opposed to older, maxed out industries).
“The projections for growth in markets like filmed entertainment, fine arts or performing arts are fairly fixed,” Lewis explains. “We have a good sense of what the markets there are. But interactive media’s growth potential is like a hockey stick. We may be already at the kink in the stick, where the bottom of the blade begins to turn in to the long stick handle.”
The interactive industry is not routinely tracked by government agencies such as Statistics Canada, so it falls to the industry itself to produce a comprehensive economic and operational profile to present to relevant decision makers.
National and regional profiles of other creative industries, such as film and television production and the performing arts, have existed for some time. They have aided provincial and federal government agencies and private investors in making public policy and funding decisions to help stimulate these industries.
Similarly, the CIIP will bolster lobbying efforts to achieve the CIAIC’s three stated target priorities:
Increasing Access to Capital;
Increasing Access to Human Resources; and
Increasing Access to Markets.
The questions in the 2008 CIIP survey can be completed online by company principals in a position to comment on overall operations of their company (CEO, CFO, COO, etc.). The survey asks for detailed financial and staffing information needed to form an inclusive profile of the industry, including:
Financial information from the last reporting year; and
Staffing information from the last reporting year.
CIAC notes that all responses will be kept strictly confidential, and data will be reported in aggregate. Nothing identifying individual respondents or their companies will be disseminated or published, it says, adding that additional measures to ensure anonymity will be taken in those jurisdictions with small sample sizes.
CIAIC’s membership consists of seven provincial digital media or interactive new media industry associations, describes Lewis.
“We’ll be working with those organizations to get the survey out. The provincial members will be doing some communication, e-newsletters, word of mouth at events, making sure that companies and individuals are participating in the survey. We also plan specific telephone follow-up interviews with targeted companies.”
CIAIC was formed in June 2005. It previously published a Canadian Interactive Media Survey in 2006.
For more information, visit www.ciaic.ca.