This case study interviews Jill Golick about Ruby Skye P.I., a Canadian web series targeting tweens and teens that uses transmedia mechanisms across multiple platforms. Golick developed the idea for the series, which follows a teenage girl detective, to entertain and educate audiences, particularly about media literacy. Golick outlines her transmedia strategy, which includes narrative components across different social media channels and websites. Her team focuses on audience engagement throughout the process from development to promotion between seasons.

1. caseStudy & Interview with Jill Golick

2. This case study was developed because Ruby Skye
P.I is a great Canadian example of a grassroots web
series that has used transmedia mechanisms to
connect to its audience through a variety of
platforms and techniques.

3. theOverview
A sassy teen detective and her friends
take over the web to solve mysteries
Ruby Skye P.I.
Ruby Skye P.I. is an award-winning kid-driven family-friendly multi-
platform detective series. Ruby Skye is a teenage girl who finds
mysteries wherever she looks – and she needs to solve them, no
matter what it costs her. Stubborn, smart, determined and a little
too quick to jump to conclusions, Ruby makes some unfortunate
choices in her pursuit of truth, justice and, well… personal curiosity.

4. Target Audience: Project Goals:
theOverview
Ruby Skye P.I.
+ Canadian tweens/teens 8-14
+ males and females
(40/60 split on YouTube & 60/40 on Facebook)
+ teachers
+ parents
+ non-Canadian tweens/teens 8-14 + to entertain
+ to educate
{specifically media literacy}
+ 20yr + general audience
+ families watching together

5. Ruby Skye P.I.
Why did you undertake this particular project?
I have long wanted to a show about a smart stubborn girl detective
who gets herself into a lot of trouble and the IPF funding gave me the
opportunity to start building it.
thecreative

6. Ruby Skye P.I.
How long did it take you to develop this idea?
I'm not sure how to answer this. My whole career? Julie Strassman
and I had been playing around with versions of the first season story
for a while. I was in love with the idea of a Nigerian scammer as a
villain because it's so relatable to kids -- who doesn't have those
scam emails in their inbox? I built the characters of Ruby and her
friends around that story and when the opportunity came to submit to
IPF, I did. After we made the second round, we took a couple more
months to develop the characters and story. After we knew we had
funding, we developed all the scripts. The IPF process by itself was
about 5 months. But we're still developing Ruby's world four years
later.
thecreative

7. Ruby Skye P.I.
What has been your biggest creative risk with this project?
The whole thing is risky. For a screenwriter, to finance and produce
a show -- even a web series -- is a huge risk. And to operate without
any input from anyone outside the creative team -- we were banking
on our creativity, that our choices as writers and director were best.
It was creators taking a chance on our own skills and taste. And as it
turned out, it was incredibly satisfying for us.
thecreative

8. Ruby Skye P.I.
Why was this the right time for this project?
The funding, technology and audience were all there. And social
media was just at the right stage where we could promote the hell
out of what we were doing cost effectively.
thecreative

9. Web series {tentpole} Diana’s Tumblr
Puzzles Bonus videos
theTransmedia
Ruby Skye P.I.
hailey’s Tumblr
Narrative components:
Library Website
clues Featured episode related
content
ie games, ghost stories,
causes,
the mint chip girls Tumblr

10. Ruby Skye P.I.
5592 likes
101 have RS in their circles
theTransmedia
Social Media Channels:
85 videos
205,822 views
1 million views
1 million+ views
4 Tumblrs
Koldcast
178 likes
1380 followers

11. transmediastrategy
Ruby Skye P.I.
What is your transmedia strategy for this project?
Our transmedia strategy is deeply worked out. We have a
transmedia bible for the series and one for each season that details
the plan and gets updated regularly.
How much did your demographic age group affect these decisions?
I think our target demo is open to this kind of thing and gets a real
thrill out of it. The interactivity and transmedia components also pull
in an older demographic. 20-somethings love the series, both
because it reminds them of a kind of TV they loved as kids and
because they find the interactivity very cool.

12. transmediastrategy
Ruby Skye P.I.
What were the effects of adding transmedia elements to a web series?
A web series is already a hard thing to make because of lack of
resources. Adding as many transmedia elements as we do makes it a
lot harder because we have that much more to coordinate. Also
teams who traditionally make tv or film have to change their normal
ways of working in order to also produce and collect the transmedia
assets. That said, the transmedia elements make the show a little
different, they attract attention and sometimes help us to build uber
fans.

13. transmediastrategy
Ruby Skye P.I.
Our core team has to include people who are thinking about and
interacting with the audience and creating and collecting the
transmedia assets: a transmedia lead and a social media manager
for example. We don't use complicated technology to achieve the
interactivity, but we do need need someone around with some tech
knowhow, plus we are always building websites so we have to have
a great designer for the sites.
Jill outlines her transmedia vision: http://rubyskyepi.com/blog/transmedia-vision-2/
How did this change the make up of your team?

14. themarketing
Ruby Skye P.I.
We had a multi-pronged strategy but I guess you could sum it up
as "get a lot of content out, use many channels, reach out to many
people personally."
What was your marketing strategy for this project?

15. themarketing
Ruby Skye P.I.
What were the MOST effective marketing strategies and why?
One of the most effective strategies was targeting specific niche
audiences. For example, in The Haunted LIbrary (Season 2), we
targeted an online community who are fans of the vlog brother
channel on Youtube. We did a number of things to appeal to them
including building imagery into the video that we knew that they
would recognize and that they would love. We then turned those
images into GIFs and released them on Tumblr. The community
found them, re-blogged them and then searched out the source of
those GIFs and became fans of our show.

16. themarketing
Ruby Skye P.I.
What were the LEAST effective marketing strategies and why?
For more information Jay Fergusen Interviews Jill about money and marketing here:
http://www.jillgolick.com/2014/01/talking-ruby-with-jay-fergusen/
Some of the paid advertising channels were very disappointing.
Advertising on StumbleUpon, for example, can send a lot of
traffic, but it bounces. And we worked very closely with
specialists at YouTube's video ad department and they helped
us build campaigns, but we found that they resulted in a lot of
views to the trailers, but not the volume of subs we were hoping
for.

17. audiencedevelopment
Ruby Skye P.I.
Absolutely everything we do is audience focused. From the first
development thoughts through production, post, rollout and
between seasons social media activity, audience is at the heart
of everything. We try to get to know our audience well and give
them great entertainment that will be meaningful to them.
What was your strategy for building audience?

18. audiencedevelopment
Ruby Skye P.I.
Building great creative that respects the audience is our most
effective audience development strategy. We work with the
strongest creative minds we can find and give them the room to do
their best work. We know that will result in a great product that will
connect to the audience on an emotional way.
I am both a student of and a proud card carrying member of fan
culture.We try to give our audience everything they need to be fans
and build a fandom.
What were the MOST effective audience development strategies
and why?

19. audiencedevelopment
Ruby Skye P.I.
Nothing is wasted. Any attempt to connect with the audience is a
good one.
What were the LEAST effective audience development strategies
and why?

20. themoney
Ruby Skye P.I.
Funding:
Ruby Skye P.I. has successfully grown its funding contributions with each
progressive season. The break down is as follows:
SEASON ONE: The Haunted Library
+ IPF and creative contributions
SEASON TWO: The Spam Scam
+ IPF, OMDC IDM, tax credits
SEASON THREE: The Maltese Puppy
+ IPF / CBC / Shaw Rocket Fund / CMF / Bell Fund / Tax Credits

21. themoney
Ruby Skye P.I.
Where was the best place to get funding for a project of this type?
We love all of our funders equally. The IPF has supported us
through three seasons and got us started.
What was the most challenging part of funding this project?
My lack of experience with financing. I had a steep learning curve.
What is your monitization strategy?
We are building a franchise that we can exploit on multiple platforms.

22. themoney
Ruby Skye P.I.
Did funding opportunities change over the course of the project?
Was it easier/ harder to get funding as the project progressed?
Once we had a TV license, there were more possibilities open to us.
But on the other hand, six of us spent 5 solid weeks on funding
applications for Season 3. Not all the funds play nicely together in
the sense that the terminology and expectations are different. And
none of the funds are set up for a truly integrated interactive
narrative project. They expect a TV component and an interactive/
convergent/digital component. We have to rethink our creative to
make it fit with what the funders are looking for. Nonetheless we are
incredibly grateful to all of our funders for the amazing opportunity
that they provide us with. It took some work to get the financing, but
it has allowed us to experiment, innovate and create.

23. theprocess
Ruby Skye P.I.
We use transmedia bibles (2 different kinds), annotated
scripts, excel files, editorial calendars, text documents, post it
notes.... I'm also fond of an iPad app called Index Cards, which
I use for brainstorming.
How did you plan for this project? Did you use any tools or
systems such as the Transmedia Bible?

24. theprocess
Ruby Skye P.I.
I haven't done any planning for change. But I try to approach it
as a creative opportunity. Any time you make a change you
have the opportunity to make it better. Disaster can lead to
inspiration.
How did you plan for changes within this project?

25. theprocess
Ruby Skye P.I.
With enthusiasm and lots of planning. When there are traditional
media people involved -- like film crews -- it's important to get
everyone's buy in from the start and make everyone in every
department aware that you're going to be doing things slightly
differently this time. And then just take it step by step. And enjoy
the process.
How would you prepare for a multiplatform project like this
in the future?

26. Ruby Skye P.I www.rubyskyepi.com
LinksResources
Ruby Skye P.I. Links
Production Links
Story 2 Oh www.story2oh.com
mintchipgirl.tumblr.com
Haileyʼs Tumblr haileyskye.com
OʼDeary Puzzles www.odearypuzzles.com/
The Mint Chip Girls themintchipgirls.com/
OʼDeary Library odearylibrary.com/
Twitter twitter.com/rubyskyepi
Facebook www.facebook.com/RubySkyePI
Google Plus plus.google.com/106416427627376738445
YouTube www.youtube.com/rubyskyepi
Tumblr rubyskyepi.tumblr.com
Pinterest www.pinterest.com/rubyskyepi
Flickr www.flickr.com/photos/rubyskyepi

27. Get in Touch
Ruby Skye P.I. Case Study was prepared by:
anthea foyer
antheafoyer.com @antheafoyer
with help from Zan Chandler
zanchandler.com
contactus
TMC Resource Kit
info@tmcresourcekit.com
tmcresourcekit.com

28. THANKS to...
tmcrkpartners

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