10 Back to an in-person market after a two-year COVID-related hiatus, the ATF went “green”, and in the process, for some participants at least, themarket became“grim”due to some eco-friendly “innovations.” Plus, participants VideoAge spoke with had not yet seen any “greenbacks” (a nickname for money due to the color of U.S. dollars). Still, many attendees were hopeful that sales would happen when they followed up with buyers they’d met with at the market. “Very few Asian buyers respond to my repeated e-mails”, said one American distributor walking the ATF floor since he didn’t have a stand. “That’s understandable, though. They get hundreds of requests for meetings like mine, and at certainpoints, they click the delete button, without reading any of them.” “The market is good”, reported a studio executive who wished to remain anonymous, “however we will not know until we begin follow-ups.” Echoed Electric’s Nolan Pielak: “It’s true that we do not yet know what the results will be. But we already know who the good potentials are.” Then there were comments like those from Global Agency’s Isil Turksen: “I’m so happy to be back at ATF andmeeting old and new clients. Virtual meetings kept us going, but it’s never like sitting down face-to-face with clients.” For the aforementioned “green” part of ATF, out went the plastic that used to cover the badges (so now the front part that shows names and photos tends to turn inward). And out went the printed guide that used to list the exhibiting companies — there wasn’t even a flyer anywhere with this much-needed info. These days, in order to find a participating company’s stand, visitors had to scan a QR code, scroll down a list on their phones, and while avoiding bumping into people, make sure to enlarge it fast enough that the screen didn’t go dark in that short amount of time. To say that it was time-consuming and/or annoying would be an understatement. Naturally, the in-house printed daily didn’t list the exhibitors’ stands either since it focused mainly on the seminar portion of the event. Similarly, the list of exhibitors was not posted on any wall panels, like the conference program was. (At MIP Cancun, which was organized by the same group, RX, there wasn’t a guide, but company tables were posted on a large self-standing panel). But being resourceful, ATF organizers had human billboards (a.k.a. people wearing sandwich boards) serving as walking “help desks” that dispensed useful information to attendees in need of data regarding the 400 exhibitor stands (a number found by painstakingly counting all companies indicated in the above-mentioned QR code). However, the ATF press office could not confirm the exact number of stands, and reported only that the “total number of sales companies was 637”, leading us to assume that the additional 237 were companies without stands. In any case, the ATF staff in Singapore was out in full force promoting the yearly TV event, and this time they were reinforced by an outside PR agency (Finn Partners) that helped with promotional efforts. However, very little info was dispensed about the market portion of ATF as most of the fireworks were reserved for the numerous conferences and seminars. Nonetheless, after two years with virtualonly ATF markets, the organizers, the supporting staff, and the local participants seemed to be very excited to finally be able to meet in person again, especially considering that Singapore is so far away from so many. Even the galleria at the Convention Center was more festive and better Christmasdecorated than the pre-pandemic era, and the sparse consumer crowd that walked the corridors during previous ATF events wasn’t so sparse anymore. In fact, this time, the number of people seemed to multiply each day. The market started on Wednesday, December 7, 2022, with a busy flow of people. Participants without stands were asked to show up five minute before meetings to find tables at the Buyer Lounge. Parts of the conference portion started on Tuesday, and the event ended on December 9, after four days at the Marina Bay Sands Convention Center. The market’s second day started slow, and some exhibitors went home early, skipping day three, in effect making it a two-day market for them. On the other hand, other exhibitors stayed longer, taking the opportunity to walk around the market floor, something that they couldn’t do during the back-to-back meetings of the first two days. Back-in-Business ATF Has Gone Green, But No Greenbacks Yet January 2023 ATF 2022 Report Mustafa Ilbeyli and Gokce Aydogdu of Turkey’s TRT posed at their stand. Mehmet Burcin Gonenli, the Turkish Ambassador to Singapore (third from right), visited all Turkish companies and stopped at the ATV stand with his entourage for a group photo (ATV’s Müge Akar is pictured on his right). One of the human billboards serving as walking “help desks” that dispensed useful information to attendees looking for the exhibitors’ stands The Inter Medya team included Neset Ersoy, Hasret Ozcan, Pelin Koray. (Continued on Page 12)
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