Make it Personal: How tailored customer experiences helped entertainment media brands adapt to a new digital reality

In our Biglight Briefing on 7th October, we were joined by Simone Barsky Nili, Product Director at Discovery Inc. Together, we explored the strategies entertainment media brands are employing to adapt to rapidly changing customer needs during the COVID-19 pandemic - and identified a number of lessons retailers can learn along the way.

Lockdowns and stay-at-home orders worldwide accelerated structural change in the media industry, with media brands increasingly focused on driving digital content revenues through subscription on demand services (SVOD) - to offset plummeting TV and online advertising income and the closure of traditional distribution channels.

Like retailers, they have been forced to adapt quickly - to both rapidly changing customer needs and behaviours, and a commercial reality in which acquiring highly engaged, loyal customers is vital to success.

Simone drew on her own experiences in launching and growing video on demand services, to explore the customer experience innovations that have enabled media brands to turn adversity into opportunity - powering an unprecedented 55% growth in video on demand revenues during 2020[i].

She pointed to a number of key focus areas for these media brands, and the accompanying lessons for retailers seeking to reimagine the online customer experience:

• Prioritise first party data profiling: Media brands know that the ability to collect, analyse and act on rich first party data is a vital competitive advantage in a crowded market where relevant, satisfying customer experiences underpin subscriber loyalty and lifetime value.
• Bring personalised experience to the home: They also recognise that digital audiences exhibit diverse customer needs, preferences and behaviours - and are working hard to satisfy them through purposeful, useful personalisation.
• Communicate a unique value proposition: Similarly, entertainment media brands understand that customers commonly subscribe to a number of video streaming services to satisfy a range of interests - from entertainment and escapism to special interest and education. As a result, brands are increasingly focused on what they can do differently to meet all or part of quite specific sets of needs.
• Offer escapism: During the pandemic, media brands have offered bored, stressed out customers some welcome escapism. Retailers can follow suit by refocusing on the basics of retail theatre - injecting fun and escapism into the online experience to offer some much-needed retail therapy.

If you couldn't make the session, you don't have to miss out on these insights and more. You can watch the whole session here - and we hope you find it as interesting and enjoyable as we did.

A big thank you to Simone for taking part and to our partners Tech Circus for their support.