Media & Entertainment

With platforms and channels converging, media and entertainment companies must develop and execute strategies that take advantage of an integrated and expansive landscape.

Our experience working with players across the whole media value chain—from content providers and aggregators to advertisers, distribution players, and access providers—enables us to provide integrated insights to our clients on a global basis.

Our work spans broadcast television, cable networks and multiple system operators, satellite operators, radio, music, filmed entertainment, magazines and newspapers, B2B services and publishing, digital media, consumer internet, professional sports, video games, gaming and lotteries, outdoor media, theme parks, and many performing arts.

• We work on core strategic issues such as growth, international expansion, mergers and acquisitions, and digital strategy.
• We help deliver significant impact in ad sales, pricing, sales force effectiveness, CLM, digital marketing, and social media.
• We can help with operational improvements in supply chain management, distribution, production, vendor management, channel management, and newsroom operations.

We help develop digital media strategies that reach more customers and gain competitive advantage.

We help clients with the development of their digital businesses to enhance growth and drive sustainable revenue increases, across all media sectors. We help companies build a transformation roadmap to address the sometimes significant organizational and infrastructure challenges to becoming a digital leader.

We have dedicated digital media and digital marketing experts who offer clients comprehensive perspectives and hands-on support for a range of activities, including leveraging social media, conducting digital analytics, pursuing market research, and developing online strategies.

Digital media engagements frequently span several areas, including growth, capability building, ad sales improvement, brand extensions, operations, business technology, strategy, and organization.

We monitor global digital trends and work with our clients to help them rapidly respond to changing environments; we anticipate trends and help companies determine where, how, and when to compete.

Examples of our work:

• Helped a sports league that was seeing widely variable performance across its portfolio of web sites and digital channels. A comparison of league practices to best digital practices identified improvement opportunities, which when implemented, doubled and tripled visitor traffic.
• Developed and implemented a successful online strategy refocusing a directory services company’s digital efforts. After the launch of the new strategy, the team continued to help the company improve the performance of region-specific efforts.
• Developed a multiyear forecast of the growth in online video consumption to help a US multi-system cable provider refine its strategy, resulting in competitive outcomes and several potential acquisition candidates.

We help media and entertainment companies draw upon consumer insights and emerging technologies to create new products and services.

We help media and entertainment companies—sports leagues, movie studios, diversified media companies—with every phase of new product development. From process development, to ideation, to concept execution—we help senior executives adopt proven innovation processes. Our consultants share frameworks and develop in-house capabilities that enable efficient and abundant new product engines.

The keys to fostering innovation are often clear: finding the right talent, encouraging collaboration and risk taking, and organizing the innovation process from beginning to end. We help companies take on these challenges and build world-class innovation organizations to innovate successfully and at scale.

Examples of our work:

• Helped a leading US newspaper identify new products and services targeted to baby boomers. Building on proprietary research from the LAZAR Global Institute, we augmented consumer research, performed a series of consumer ethnographies, analyzed online content for high potential topics, and performed competitive scans and interviews with advertisers and marketers. We helped our client build these steps into the company’s existing product development process, making it more flexible and rigorous. Business cases for the new products that resulted identified up to $40 million in potential incremental revenue.
• Assisted a global information service provider looking to increase the effectiveness of its product development efforts and coordinate activity across decentralized business units. We supported the CEO in identifying new leadership for cross-divisional groups, identified several cross-divisional product concepts, and supported a new innovation council and a new product advisory panel. With these shifts, new product development costs fell by $150 million per year.
• Helped an international television production company to explore new service offerings in live events and branded retail products. We sized each market, reviewed competitors and profit pools, and developed a market-entry path and potential business models. We helped the company place these growth initiatives into a broader innovation and strategic framework and built best-in-class brand management capability to ensure the company could assess the performance of new products. We are now assisting as the client implements the new branding and licensing strategies that we helped define.

We help improve creative and distribution processes to help media and entertainment firms reduce operational costs.

Many media and entertainment companies manage complex creative and distribution processes with substantial operational costs. We help clients apply effective, tested techniques such as process redesign and supply-chain rationalization to achieve significant operational performance improvements.

We help clients put in place lean systems for production, editorial processes, and business support functions that maintain quality and improve efficiency while delivering cost savings. Our consultants help facilitate the transition to new operating processes throughout the organization.

Examples of our work:

• Redesigned the editorial workflow processes for a leading magazine publisher to capture efficiencies across titles and maximize editorial integration across products and platforms.
• Worked with a leading professional sports league to design new organizational and incentive structures. Efforts included developing an enhanced RFP process to help the league renegotiate vendor contracts and conducting benchmarking across clubs to identify specific savings opportunities.
• Helped an international public TV and radio broadcaster achieve a financial turnaround by capturing annual improvements from increased subscription fees, reduced support costs, and increased use of production facilities.

We help identify unmet customer needs and build the organizational capabilities required to meet them.

Media companies can boost performance by developing customer retention processes, skills, and tools. Identifying and targeting high value customers, reducing churn, and increasing revenues per subscriber can all have a positive impact on top line revenue.

We help clients master approaches to customer lifecycle management (CLM), pricing, and marketing analytics that can reduce subscriber acquisition and retention costs and improve margins and efficiency.

We provide clients with unique diagnostics, models, and direct support to build organizational capabilities that generate sustainable value. Our work includes:

• Performing in-depth diagnostics and benchmarking organizational performance to better help clients identify areas of improvement.
• Collaborating with management and frontline employees to collectively create solutions and devise metrics to track performance improvements.

Examples of our work:

• Helped a cable operator build skills and capabilities within its telesales force to focus more effectively on the product portfolio. We delivered training programs and tailored tools and resources, rolling out the approach across a distributed organization.
• Helped a leading casino improve its customer relationship management (CRM) by strengthening customer services processes; this project was part of a larger effort to reposition casino properties to appeal to more valuable customer segments. Customers are now staying longer and spending more on their visits.