Impact snapshotOpen VRT and VRT Start-up cultivated a lean and youth-centred product culture within a traditional broadcasting organisation
VRT
Moulding a scratch innovation team for Belgium’s top broadcaster
Collaborating with over 200 editors, journalists and producers in supersized workshops, the project kickstarted a digital first strategy sponsored by the VRT Board and implemented by a dedicated start-up team. We agreed a brief to steer clear of legacy programmes, channels or systems and build products free of the constraint of traditional broadcast thinking.
We incubated VRT Start-up, collaboratively prototyping new product ideas informed by primary research into the media habits of young people in Flanders, and identified key opportunities in new formats for news content and distribution.
Open VRT, a project conceived by Made by Many and Start-up to identify and support young digital talent in Flanders, achieved political and stakeholder recognition for an innovative, open approach to redefining the role of a public service broadcaster; it encouraged a new generation to participate in content creation and restored value in the VRT brand.
VRT Start-up is now a 100 strong organisation focusing on new product development; the group has established a genuine culture of product experimentation and digital creativity in VRT's legacy channel brands as well as opening up entirely new opportunities in web, mobile and ipTV.
Made By Many made the difference for us, many times. Starting with a small group of people at our internal startup they helped us ramp up and scale rapidly, giving us the means and methods to spread the change throughout VRT. They opened our eyes and had a huge impact on the way VRT organised itself and shaped the way we see digital: solutions shouldn’t always be content or products, but can also be systems like OpenVRT. Made By Many did not give us fish, they taught us how to fish.
Lesley Demuynck
Head of VRT Creative Lab
