Background and Challenge
A digitally native media and entertainment company catering to the Gen Z audience had quickly grown to be one of the leading players. L.E.K. Consulting was brought in to develop a robust three-to-five-year business plan that would allow for a step change in growth. Specifically, the strategic business plan will focus on three growth areas: OTT, international and direct-to-consumer.
Across all growth vectors, we were tasked with understanding the capabilities and assets required for success. We needed to identify both the investment required to fill these gaps and how the client could best mitigate the risks. The client was also keen on understanding the overlaps and synergies across the growth areas to collectively maximize the audience value.
Approach and Recommendations
Our team worked closely with the client throughout the project, with team members spanning the U.S. and Europe to ensure the global nature of the opportunity was fully validated. To support the development of the overarching strategic growth plan, we had to first start with initiative-specific issues:
- In the OTT growth segment, we defined the client’s positioning, how it could be differentiated, and which mix of models the client should consider (AVOD vs. SVOD vs. TVOD vs. other)
- In the international growth segment, we prioritized the international markets for expansion, based on relevant metrics such as scale of Gen Z digital population, and outlined the optimal business models to successfully deploy across key countries
- For the direct-to-consumer growth segment, we benchmarked best practices for how to best target the client’s key demographics and then outlined the vision for content and feature sets the DTC platforms should offer
With the in-depth research and analyses across all project modules, we created a strategic three-to-five-year business plan for each growth vector that included a P&L and framework for synergies and dependencies.
Results
The client was able to further understand what resonates with its core audience and how to better engage with them. With the help of our work, the client was also able to prioritize long-term strategic initiatives appropriately — and ultimately pare back tens of millions of proposed high-risk investments.
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