Polestar on Experimenting with Streaming, EV Experience Design and the Future of In-Car Media

(upbeat music) - You're listening to Inside Content, the TV Industry Podcast. This show is brought to you by Three Vision, a global TV industry consultancy specializing in content acquisition, strategy, research and business development. Each episode we give you VIP access to the views and experiences of senior TV executives and discuss the latest TV industry trends and insights. - Hello and welcome to Inside Content. I'm Haley Bull, VP at Three Vision. And today I'm joined by Anya Ernest, who leads app ecosystem initiatives at Pollstar. We explore how Pollstar is using the Google Play Store to deliver entertainment experiences to drivers, as well as partnering with broadcasters like SVT and Sweden, the BBC and TV2 in Norway. And you also shares her perspectives on how EVs change the expectations for content in the car and gives us a hint of what's coming next. - Stay informed on what's shaping the future of TV. Download the 2025 Trends and Predictions Report at ThreeVision.TV. Now on to the episode. - Well, welcome Anya to this bonus episode of Inside Content Focusing on Incar Entertainment. It's super to have you join us. And I'm looking forward to learning about how you are delivering entertainment experiences at Pollstar. Perhaps we can start with you telling us a bit more about your role and Pollstar for audiences that are not too familiar with the brand. - Yeah, so Pollstar is a performance electric vehicle brand. And we launched in October 2017. And it feels like yesterday, but it's, I mean, eight years ago now, it's incredible. And I mean, we delivered our first cars in the middle of the pandemic in 2020. And now we have three models out. Pollstar two, three and four. And I think it's in 27 countries worldwide. And of course, what I'm most excited about is that Pollstar was the first brand to launch with Google built-in, and which is Google Maps, Google Assistant, and Google Play Store. And at Pollstar, I have different responsibilities. I work within R&D, but the area or the kind of, yeah, the area that I've been working with mostly since 2019, actually is Google Play Store and the apps in there. - I think we first caught up about a year after you had launched, the first Pollstar cars were on the road. And I think it was about the time of the pandemic or we were just coming out of the pandemic and you were speaking about having launched Google, but also you were talking at the time about video, a player. You were kind of experimenting with a video player, testing some content. So perhaps we can talk about kind of what you've got today in terms of entertainment experiences and what perhaps you previously have and kind of some learnings and how you've been evolving the product based on that, because of course, at the end of the day, what the audience wants is really what matters. - Yeah, I mean, when we first launched our cars with Google built-in in 2020, the expectation from our customers. So I mean, you often talk about value expectation and value proposition and the value expectation from the customers were like, okay, Google Play Store, we have a fully pledged Play Store in the car. And I think I've told this story many times before. I don't know if we talked about it last time as well, but it is such a great story, but I had my two nephews sitting in my Pollstar. And then after they left, I could see their search history and they were still like looking for TikTok and Instagram and YouTube, but you know, when we launched it, it only had media apps and media apps, meaning radio, podcasts, music and audio books. And I mean, that's not so exciting since we've had radio in cars since about a hundred years already. But I think what we have with the electric vehicle is that of course, and this everyone knows now, there is charging time. You can sit in the car to past time. You don't need to feel guilty about keeping the engine running and the climate on. There are situations when you are charging the car and you want to have entertainment and so on. But anyways, having Google Play Store in the car, not so exciting from a user perspective in 2020, but from a take perspective, super, super exciting. And of course, because of this, we had the kind of technical capability. Our management was eager to get more stuff into it. Like what can, let's do something more. And I had the contact with the Easy Park and they were also quite eager to explore this new territory because of course, the difference between, for example, Android Auto projected compared to Android AutoMotive or Google Automotive Services is that you have a deeper connection with the car. This is Google built in, which means that the apps can actually access different signals in the car. I don't know, again, I mean, I keep using the same stories, but you know the first app called iBear. Well, you could kind of drink a beer through your phone and it's like, yeah, it was funny, but it was also showing that you can connect to the gyro on the accelerometer and have an impact on the graphics as you were moving the phone. And it's the same thing here. Of course, the Easy Park was much more productive. Well, it depends on what you were producing, of course, but what they did was to build this app that connected with the gear so that when you put the car in drive, it would stop the parking. I mean, how many times have you paid for parking and one day afterwards, you realize that you're still paying for it. And here you could start it and when you left, you could, it stopped automatically. - Fantastic. - Which was a big thing, yeah, it was quite exciting. But, yeah, so, but of course, they built the app. What we did was to kind of build a team, artifacts, artifacts like, how do we do this? How do we validate and publish to secure, I mean, keep the user experience so that we don't intervene with the person driving. I mean, there's so many things that we needed to get in place being the first ones out with this. Yes, so you asked about the video player and here I am talking about a parking app. But. - It's all about specific use cases for car driving. We're not just trying to replicate the video experience that we might have in a residential environment. This is about what can we do for automators specifically? So it's fabulous contacts and I love a good nickname date, so continue. - And it was the first thing that we built as well. It was the first thing that we built, the first thing that we got out and there was no risk for us. It was all easy part doing their prototyping, our kind of parking. And once we got it out, then we had the knowledge, we had the team and we had the process of getting apps into Google Play Store, like OEM apps as we call them. So not these templated apps, but a bit more freedom. So the next thing we did was of course that, we wanted to have a way and our customers, I mean, we kept hearing, why can't we have video in the current? So then we built this app and it's a super simple app, the video player and it was also just to explore. So we did like a framework where we could get different streams into the car. My main job there was to get, because of course we are not video producers, we are not content producers. - Yeah. - So my main work there was to find partnerships with content producers because the app itself was very technically, very simple. - What was interesting though, was like this app we built ourselves, we published it, and now we could see the kind of usage data. - And that was all right. - Because now you have that return half data with your customer, so you actually get different sounds, how they're using and engaging with it, and then you can kind of amend your strategy or thoughts behind kind of this new experience. - Yes, and I think also, yeah, it was interesting to see, not focusing so much on the tech, but really on the user experience, because this is what it's all about, I think, it's the tech should only be kind of building the capability. And after Easy Park, we knew the kind of how, but now we wanted to explore the what, what do people want? - Yeah, so this allowed for our customers to then sit in the car and watch these different streams. We were focusing on public service, like Swedish television, the BBC, but also some news channels like Togeshau in Germany, but looking for like one content provider for each market that we were living at the time. And I guess that's significant, isn't it, because of the nature of the automotive industry, it's cross-border, right? So when you're thinking about content that's going to appeal, what can you do? So using some local broadcaster providers, that's really interesting. And can you talk about any of those case studies and you're kind of what, what audience is doing with that content, how are they interacting and how is that informed what you've done next? - Yeah, I mean, again, being able to look at the data and explore the data, I mean, we don't go into detail like who is watching what and so on. It was more about, I mean, this was launched in, I think it was like December, or no, but it was probably during the spring 2021. It's all a blur, these kind of pandemic years, right? We spent most of the time locked inside a car or locked inside a home. And I think this is actually valuable to reflect the bond. We spent much more or much less time in the car during these years. Much more, if there were too many people in the home working from home, then someone had to go out and sit in the car. If you had an electric car, you could actually do that. I mean, you don't want to kind of start the engine. But the same thing was, I mean, the lockdown in Sweden, or there was no lockdown in Sweden, so we had a kind of different situation. However, we were not allowed to go in and watch the kind of basketball practice for the kids. Then we had like an hour or 90 minutes to sit and wait in the car while they were doing it. So the data was super exciting for us, but perhaps not as valid after the pandemic. But what we could see was that a lot of people were engaging in the app. And also that some markets were where we knew there was a higher maturity to E.V.s, they were watching more. So for example, in Sweden, we could see like an average usage time was about, I think it was like 23 minutes per week. And that's a lot, in my opinion. But also what we did because we could not see what people were looking at. But since this was an explorative project, we had these reoccurring meetings with the content providers to talk about, okay, we know how much they're watching. Can you tell us like categories of what they are watching? And it was quite evenly spread. I mean, Swedish television were the ones who had the kind of most detailed data. Because yeah, since we are Swedish brand, we, it was so much easier for us to work with, have this collaboration up and running. So we, it was a lot of children's programs, a lot of drivers like children's programs. No, but obviously that was about, okay, how do you entertain your kids when you have to stay in the car? Another anecdote, actually, I went to dinner at a friend's place and my son at the time, I think, was like 12 or turning 13 and he's like, mom, can I go and sit in the car? (laughing) - I'm not serious, I'm not serious, yeah. - And I think suddenly the car is something else, right? - Yeah. - You have extended the home, you have extended the living room or the work place or whatever. So quite interesting, and I think it is actually these tangible experiences or the stories that we all can relate to that kind of make us realize, okay, what can we use the car for? What is the value that we can bring to it beyond a kind of amazing driver experience? So, but they were saying that children's programs also like sports and in Sweden we have this kind of Christmas programs for children which is like 10 minutes per day and it goes up all the way to Christmas, a story that goes to Christmas. And that was also seen a lot and also what was called the Winter Studio which is sports. And sometimes, I mean these are really good programs, these sports and news channels but you don't always need the visual and of course you can't watch these things while you're driving obviously. So the screen is blocked but what we did decide to do was to keep the audio running and a customer wrote like feedback, yeah, a really great app and this bug that the audio stays on after you drive off, I really love it, don't fix it. And we're like, yeah, bug or feature, you know. So that was really great experience but we only had the video player for a year because we wanted to learn and we wanted to and we're not a content provider, we should not be building like video apps. So in the end we decommissioned the app and now there is kind of an exploration or yeah, I mean it's not fully rolled out but we have native apps in the car such as Prime and Max I think are the two which are live right now. But also at the time in Norway we had a content provider that was very eager and they actually within a week rebuilt their native app, they are TV2 and they are still there. They rebuilt their native app and published it so that people could watch their channel in the car. - That's really interesting. I assume they are eager as a provider to be in car because there are lots of government incentives in Norway right for EVs and therefore they see a big opportunity in getting in front of audiences in vehicle. - But also I met your market already. I mean they already know that their customers are there and that their customers are interested. And I mean if we had the 23 minutes I'm recalling from memory now if it was 23 or 25 I don't know. But they had less, they had like 19 minutes in Norway but this was only video player because they were also watching the TV2 native app and I expect they were watching that more. So and I think we got some numbers at some point. I mean again we were not oversharing. It was very high level. We learned to what I'm sharing with you now. But super, super exciting and of course it kind of opened up the ideas. I mean the discussions I have had with BBC afterwards. I think yeah it is quite exciting because we are always thinking about the audio because we're always talking about the car as a tool for transportation. Okay so what apps do we want to build in? It's mostly like productive apps or audio apps. Something that will help you go from one place to another. But with this whole EV world suddenly we have the charging time. We have a kind of comfortable chair with an amazing audio system. I mean stick around and enjoy it. Yeah, it's become a kind of unique entertainment device and you've got the exciting job of exploring and shaping what that experience is. And I guess probably you know my sort of last question to ask you is kind of how is this space going to develop Anya. I mean we've talked a little bit about the product you have and what you've explored previously. But with things like regulations for autonomous driving, changing kind of more screens, seamless integration and the technology side making it easier for content providers to come in car. Where is this going and what a poll start looking for from kind of future partners. Yeah, and I think that is a kind of key here. We don't want to create the content ourselves, right? We have partnered with Google so that they can secure that the Google Play Store is packed with interesting and relevant apps. And then I mean what we did since we were the first ones and coming back to where we started, the value expectations and the value proposition. I mean there was a mismatch and what we did then was to kind of overarge it. And I mean of course in close relationship with Google they were really supporting us here. But now we have that kind of understanding and we have been able to talk about it, I mean for about four years. And now we are seeing that the store is getting populated. And I'm not sure if, I mean we don't have access to their usage data. So I'm super curious about these learnings. I mean I would like to see them in these kind of podcasts to conferences where I usually go and talk. What we are looking at now is like okay we have, now we have the kind of baseline. What do I want to focus on? And I would love to tell you. But I mean we have something fun coming up. And I will be excited to tell you all about it when it's time. But for now I want to keep it to myself. But in parallel I'm working very much with the journey log app and through that also exploring some data points anonymized data points that are relevant and interesting for our R&D. - What's the journey log app? - So basically that is an app recording trips so that you can account for your trips. But of course that also means securing data for the customers on the energy consumption and so on. And of course this can help us improve the user experience in the car for their trips. - Yeah fascinating. There's a number of things you could do with that data on the entertainment side as well. I'm sure. Well you've left it on a cliffhanger there. So we'll have to get you back and soon and talk to us about this new exciting initiative. I'm eager to learn more. But this has been really interesting and it's been fantastic to learn kind of how you started out on this journey, the things that you did to kind of test the environment and what you're doing now. And we're excited to see what comes next. So thank you very much for joining us on Inside Content and I look forward to speaking to you again soon. - Thank you so much. And yeah, let's speak soon. - Thanks for listening to this episode of Inside Content. The TV industry podcast brought to you by Three Vision. With decades of TV industry experience and real world success, we know the ins and outs of the market to let nobody else. 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