ETC Unveils New Website, Social Media Plans
Director, Marketing & Strategic Communications
The Entertainment Technology Center launched a strategic marketing and communication initiative this year to reimagine its brand, industry interaction, online presence, and knowledge-sharing efforts. The first step involved shuttering the ETCentric daily news portal and designing a new website with a focus on ETC film projects, research, special events, and related news.
The team set out to design an informative new site with a modern, intuitive interface and cost-effective, streamlined publishing workflow. Ultimately, the site is meant to reflect ETC’s mission by serving as a compelling visual platform for the entertainment community, while emphasizing its ties to USC and the School of Cinematic Arts, and proving flexible enough for editors to easily maintain over time.
Following the design phase and experimentation with various plug-and-play publishing solutions, the team opted to build its own framework from the ground up while implementing AI tools for assistance. Additional testing across an array of platforms and screens led to fine-tuning the publishing backend, site navigation, and overall design. This process was followed by content migration and implementation, leading to this week’s official launch.
ETC’s team has created what it believes is an ideal framework for helpful features and appropriate sections teamed with simple and intuitive navigation. It should now be quick and easy for members to access research project updates, white papers and related reports, and ETC news and announcements regarding special events. The site also includes a new calendar section that visually distinguishes between industry and ETC events and the homepage will regularly feature the latest headlines in M&E news.
The next step is to transform the organization’s social media presence in concert with the revamped site. ETC plans to streamline its social activity with a renewed focus on LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram. That means we will soon be shuttering our accounts on other platforms we've used in the past — such as X, Facebook, and SoundCloud — to ramp up more efficient communication across the three most popular platforms of our members and working groups.
ETC will continue to experiment with new uses of social platforms, video tools, and other communication formats while making upgrades based on what works best for our community members. As always, any feedback from our members will help foster our success with this new direction.
Please feel free to contact Rob Scott with any suggestions or comments.
