Data at the Speed of Funny – the Currency of South Park

Jeff McDonald, CEO Americas

I guess I’m a kid at heart. One thing I still love is laughing hard at animated comedy. And my favorite of all is South Park. Now in its 24th year, the show has always had its finger on the pulse. It knows its audience and it’s constantly pushing boundaries to grab attention. And the reason for its success? Real time data.

Staying relevant

Okay, let’s back up a bit. In the 90s adult targeted animated comedy was in boom times. The Simpsons led the way and there were plenty of others that followed. Beavis and Butthead, Family Guy, and later Bob’s Burgers. But while these shows are funny as all hell, they have one big flaw: they can’t tell jokes about what’s happening right now. Now, sure some of them don’t want to. But that inability to stay relevant means that many of them have now left our screens.

Not South Park. That show’s already been renewed through 2022!

So how do they do it? What makes South Park run at speed and maintain its social currency?

It starts with a data point

An episode of South Park takes a mere five days to make. Five days! From idea to finished article. At the helm are its creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. They’re the creative center of a team that initiates, develops, writes, storyboards, voices, draws and produces a half hour of TV in real time.

It starts with a data point. Something that’s happened to Matt and Trey that week, or something that’s happening in the news or wider culture. They bring that point to their team and begin to build. They’re able to take that point and assess what else is out there right now. What’s the context? What’s the environment this data point sits in? And how does that context impact the data? They start from a single truth, that informs their work as it then gets developed in the coming days.

Next comes insight. The so what? What does all this mean and why does this matter to our audience? What’s going to grab their attention and keep them satisfied in the South Park world? From this the team are able to build out their story, addressing character problems and reactions. And all the while, as the five day creating cycle moves on, they’re able to shift and evolve their position because they’re working and responding in real time.

But here’s the thing. This isn’t just some flight of creative fancy that can go anywhere (although it often does go pretty far!) The team are actually operating within some pretty robust parameters. They have broadcast standards and practices to meet and any violation of those standards can mean serious fines and censure.

Rapid response

There’s a great documentary from Comedy Central called Six Days to Air, which shows the full five day production cycle of an episode. Watching this, what became apparent to me is that data and insight alone is not enough. It’s how the team around it are able to respond that makes it work.

The South Park team, like the data itself, have to be agile. They don’t work in the same silos as a traditional production team. There is no waiting for one element to be finished before starting the next. They overlap their specialist skills, incorporating elements of generalists. This enables them to get things done fast and change on the fly as the five day cycle evolves. There is trust in the team and trust in the data.

Embrace the tech

Interestingly, none of this would be possible if South Park hadn’t embraced technology. When they started they were building the animation using traditional stop-motion techniques. Now they use cutting edge software that runs on off-the-shelf Macs. By embracing advances in tech they’re able to build and re-build the episodes in-flight. At the speed of funny!

Moving at speed, responding to a constantly changing environment, and meeting the needs of your audience? Sounds like marketing to me. So how come we’re still happy to create work that isn’t built on strong data? And how come, when we do decide that we need to qualify our approach with robust insights, it’s gathered in a way that makes it a month out of date?

If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that rapid change in consumer behaviors and environment is to be expected. And the only way to be ahead of curve is to be ready to respond to what’s next. Real time data can help you be more South Park – not the humor (that’s not for everyone) but by seizing the present moment to make people pay attention.