Uyen Tieu: Great Big Story (Full Interview)

We really believe in cinematic storytelling and we really believe in an emotional narrative in which at the end of the day, like social media has made it super easy for you to reach as many people in the world as you want, but unless you have something to really offer up, if there's an emotional connection, if there's like a payoff, a surprise, a curiosity, and you don't have that, then you're not really the next big people. I really believe in creative cultural in that all of our producers, we have about 40 producers that we send all around the world. We've done over 1,500 micro docs in over 80 countries. And the producer that interested, that goes out and books the subjects that we interview and actually like figures out the camera shots and everything is the same person. And this sort of creative ownership shows up in the video because when you watch a great big story, you feel like there's a soul to it. I really think of, you have to think of every single platform of what makes sense for the user. Like, so even though we post the same videos on YouTube and on Facebook, on Facebook we know it's sort of a little bit of a drive by, like scrolling. On YouTube, we really focus on our subscribers and really looking at their comments. On our website, it's usually a link. A lot of our heard media, so a lot of people, a lot of press outlets write stories about great big stories. And so we needed a home for that so that you can discover that and people who really want to rabbit hole and search can search on it. And then on our Apple TV apps, that's a different format in which people, when they turn on a great big story app on Apple TV, they spend every session on average 30 minutes. So they are all about like lean back and I am going to rabbit hole on 10 of your videos right now. So, and then on Apple News, where it's left at home, so if you're on your iPhone and you just like on the home page, the home screen, you swipe left, you will see great big story there. And that's because Apple News editorially were really great fans of great big story and felt that that really filled the niche. So it's really about understanding what the platforms are, the behaviors that that platform has trained people, and then really making sure that your content shows up the right way. People want more great big stories and they want it longer and they want it like in front of them, they want to touch it, they want to like really like sit back and like watch it on the big screen and you need to give it to them.