Warner Bros. Discovery

Business Challenge

WBD wanted to make sure their entertainment products and experiences reinforced the brand value of their movie franchises and lived up to the high expectations of fans. The innovation and production teams were always working on the next thing to surprise and delight customers in order to keep them engaged. They needed to stay in tune with what fandoms and loyal customers expect. Not to mention, productions and live experiences are extremely expensive to create; if they don’t hit the mark, the risk can be enormous.

Solution

To understand and improve the consumer experience, WBD’s research team has leveraged their 40,000 member insight community to tap into the massive fan base for their brands.

“With the community, people feel like they’re really having an influence on decisions, rather than just answering surveys, surveys, surveys,” says Sofia Gomez Garcia, Executive Director of Innovation, Special Projects and Global Community Management. 

Creative recruitment keeps the customer community healthy, with a steady stream of new voices that represent diverse, multi-generational fans. WBD attracts community members through a variety of methods including partnering with college and university student organizations, at large in-person events, through owned and operated flagship stores and tour experiences, and via social media by leveraging the wide appeal of WBD franchise channels. Mobile integrations have also “chatified” the recruitment process, helping to boost GenZ recruitment and giving consumers the ability to share immediate feedback and further opt-in to the community. At the point of recruitment, members can also be enrolled directly into dedicated sub-communities for more targeted research.

With over 12 years of historical data, WBD can tailor their research to sub-communities based on profile attributes. For example, they segment at-home watchers, parents, and customers of specific tours and in-person experiences to create a more detailed view of their feedback. Using their sub-community targeting, the Insights team is able to get focused answers to questions that have direct impact on a number of campaigns and initiatives across the organization. Sofia and team have put a lot of strategic effort into developing these niche communities to ensure they can always tap on the right consumers needed for speedy action.

The WBD Insights team conducts surveys, in-depth interviews, and focus groups with community members. Participants weigh in on new movie concepts, game development, marketing campaigns,  giveaways, and other digital products. 

Results

Response rates for research done through the subcommunities, Sofia says, are “off the charts.” Community members truly feel and understand they are influencers of change and their insights are impacting decisions within the organization. By providing a space for community members to “peek behind the curtain”, WBD has successfully fostered a collaborative and engaged community ready to collaborate.

In the 12 years the community has been in place, the WBD team has conducted over 1000 studies inclusive of members from the US, Canada, the UK, and Japan. The speed to insights and reduction in need for more traditional external research has led to a projected $2M in research savings in 2023.