Media & Entertainment Consulting

In no other sector is digital disruption having more of an impact than in Media & Entertainment

For our Media Agency Holding Company (HoCo) clients, some of the key industry themes we are helping them address include:

• Their clients needing a more joined-up marketing solution offer – with connected creative, media, data and technology capabilities that span multiple agency brands. This is challenging traditional HoCo internal structures & operating models (requiring “de-siloing”, adopting one P&L, new CxO roles, etc).
• Responding to new competition, particularly from technology services / management consulting companies, which is leading to increased competition for talent as well as work. There is also increased competition from in-house and JV models.
• The traditional media revenue stream is still important but declining (and supply side income has potential client trust issues), so all companies are striving to work out how and when that will be replaced with other revenue streams.
• Data & Technology is increasingly key (to Customer Relationship Management, Loyalty, Customer Experience / personalised experience, Commerce, etc) but Creative is also still hugely important – and the sweet spot is the combination of the two: data/tech-driven creative solutions.
• Reducing cost base through consolidating back office services and technology (e.g. for HR, Finance, Tech Infrastructure) aligned with new operating models driven by the joined-up offer.
• Inorganic growth (M&A) is still important – but HoCo’s need to improve the joining-up and optimisation of these assets, both pre- and post- earn out.

Our content producer and publisher clients share a similar set of challenges, but some specifics of their drivers for change include:

• Advertising revenues through traditional channels are dwindling as fragmentation of media changes the landscape, and traditional media ownership models (both physical purchase and digital download) are replaced by subscription and streaming.
• Challenging or collaborating with the ‘Walled Gardens’ of the big tech companies as Facebook, Google, Apple and others continue to transform both advertising revenue and content consumption models.
• Quality over quantity. In a world of every increasing volumes of content, publishers need to focus increasingly on building their trusted brand, and investing more selectively in the highest quality, most engaging content that drives brand loyalty. This may take them into non-traditional areas that blur the historic lines between publishing, gaming and technology
• Customer Experience. Where expectations are high and only growing as Consumers want the super-slick, intuitive and personalised experience of their favourite app or on-line commerce experience to be replicated in all their media and entertainment interaction.
• Consolidating back office functions and services. As historically highly federated companies become more globalised through shared services, enterprise-wide systems, and group-level functions – to reduce cost and to drive a more integrated and holistic consumer offer despite the change management challenges this may bring.

All of this is causing a greater pace of change in the Media & Entertainment sector than ever before. Digital technology has largely moved from supporting the business to being the business, but the successful organisations are those that can combine this with great innovation, creativity and content expertise. To win in this environment requires a company footprint that keeps your finger on the global pulse and a business operations infrastructure flexible enough to change and adapt quickly to new opportunities and challenges.

Media and entertainment companies are challenged by whether to partner or acquire to gain access to the latest technology and expertise, both for their digital offerings and also for the infrastructure (such as cloud, security and data centres) to support their business operations. Extensive customer insight is the key to optimising content, delivery channels, and advertising revenues, but this requires a much greater focus - and more skills and expertise - in information, analytics and big data than companies have ever needed before.

The only certainty is that nothing is standing still. If you’re in this sector, transformational change is becoming a way of life rather than a oneoff. The challenge is to set direction and deliver more (and more quickly) than ever before; be constantly responsive to change and evolution; but all while maintaining enough consistency to avoid unconstructive churn.

Berkeley can help you succeed with all these challenges and opportunities through consulting services in the areas of:

Strategy – helping you set direction for the overall business, or for a specific function, or for a specific big decision. In this disrupted sector there are few advisors that can tell the agencies, producers and publishers what their strategy should be, so Berkeley can help you through a rigorous and data-driven approach that leverages the best of your own leaders and insights as well as injecting our expertise.

Operating Model – helping you understand the best target state for your capabilities, processes, people, organisation structure, governance, technology and data to all work together optimally in future to achieve your business strategy.

Transformation Leadership – managing complex programmes and portfolios of change in any of the areas above, be they primarily concerned with business change or technology change or both. We can help you define, mobilise, select the right suppliers and deliver as needed.

Digital Transformation – helping you harness technology to drive value in this much faster, tech-savvy and data-rich world, whether that is in innovative approaches to engage with your customers and consumers, or a fundamentally new mind-set and culture.

Data and Analytics – helping you with the data strategy, technology and operating model to really drive business value from information, and help you turn your organisation into a fundamentally data-led business.

Change Management – good change management is fundamental to any transformation, and involves a clear, well-articulated vision, a compelling business case, committed leadership, well-informed and involved stakeholders and an organisation ready and willing to make the change. Drawing on our experience and applying our distinctive approach to change management, we can help you realise the true business benefits of a transformation.