Travel & Entertainment

Case Study: Top Media and Entertainment Company

Situation
Financial goals for a major media and entertainment company required leveraging important properties in TV, radio, movies, etc. via synergy, defined by them as increased sales of related (licensed, manufactured, flanker, etc.) products. Each business unit within the company was developing its own database and customer relationship marketing effort. There was no coordination, so each unit pursued its own specific objectives at its own pace. This resulted in significant duplication of effort on the company’s part and duplication of communications received by consumers – these consumers received offers and communications with the same well-known and powerful overall brand, but provided by the movie, video, licensing, education, etc. divisions. Such offers were often overlapping and in conflict, resulting in considerable consumer confusion and dissatisfaction. These relationship marketing efforts were uncoordinated and ad hoc, tactical rather than strategic, inefficient, and widely diverse in format, list quality, etc. More broadly, the opportunity to achieve cross-BU synergy was utterly lacking.

Solution
We completed an extensive array of internal and external best practices interviews and analyses, identifying and prioritizing each business unit’s set of customer relationship marketing objectives. These objectives were rank ordered according to payback to the firm as well as a scorecard aimed at achieving increased consumer spending WITHIN unit, increased spending ACROSS units, and increased DURATION of consumer relationship with the company. A Relationship Marketing Vision was defined and socialized throughout the company worldwide.

Specific recommendations included development of a database marketing Service Center to facilitate company-wide access to the company’s consumers, centralized resources to afford state-of-the art hardware and software technology, and, importantly, overall monitoring of consumer communications, minimizing confusion, over-communicating, etc.

Results
With the establishment of the centralized database marketing service center, the company was able to evolve relationship marketing from a cost to proactive business-building capability. The company has been able to leverage the popularity of its most visible and powerful equities in TV, radio, sports marketing, movies, etc. to significantly increase both revenue from sales of related (licensed, manufactured, etc.) products while simultaneously increasing consumer loyalty, as documented in market research.

Contact John Rosen for more information.