In the autumn of 2020, I became interested in how the agent industry for actors worked. I thought the business model was bad for the actors as they gave away between 10-20% of their salary without clear effort from the agent. In addition, the services provided by the agents were of low quality. Here I saw an opening to both design a new business model and create a service that users, actors, directors and producers would love.
Problem
The problem was twofold as the actors got low and unclear value for the percentage of the gig they had to give their agent. At the same time, the existing services were not perceived as user-friendly with a low level of service for industry players. This meant that there was an interesting possibility for developing both a new kind of service and also create a website that really worked as a tool for the industry when they needed to find new talent.
Method
The basis was an industry review of what existing services looked like. Then I did a mapping of the biggest shortcomings based on Jakob Nielsen’s “10 herusitics for user interface design”. Based on them, I produced sketches that I tested against the target group. After adjustments and with a first number of actors on board, I launched the service.
The idea was to have the first version up and running as soon as possible in order to get live insights. This was super important since I wasn’t a part of the business from before and needed new contacts and something to exhibit for producers and directors. My ideas was that it was easier to show how a new version of an agency could look like and work instead of talking about it. When going live I also pushed the site via email to a lot of the business in Sweden asking for feedback. All the feedback I gained was the rapidly added to the website which decreased ambiguity of the functions on the website.
Result
The welcoming of swedishactors.se has exceeded all expectations. New actors get in touch daily and want to be part of the agency and the new service. All without marketing. Fully relying on word-of-mouth and organic growth and individual post on social media by our actors and actresses.
The industry appreciates the clarity of the service and that it is so user-friendly. In addition, I get good feedback on the changed business model where the actor himself decides how he wants to set aside funds to develop his career.
The SEO part have been a huge success. After only two months the brand search swedish actors have made it into the first page. A true victory since it is a very common search term with competition from sites like imdb, pinterest and wikipedia.