Warner Bros. Discovery

Solution

For over 12 years, the Warner Bros. A-List Community has been a unique part of the family of insight communities within the WBD organization. Encompassing sub-communities based on detailed profile attributes and specific fandoms, members of the A-List can be segmented by viewing habits, audience demographics, and in-person experiences to get feedback from the right people at the right time.

Creative recruitment keeps the A-List Community healthy, with a steady stream of new voices that represent diverse, multi-generational fans. WBD attracts community members with activities on college campuses, events like Comic Con, and boosts GenZ recruitment through mobile integrations. Members are then often re-directed to their active Member Hub which aims to keep the conversation going outside of regular surveys to create a true community feel.

The WBD research team also fosters greater engagement with A-List members through the launch of their gamified Member Tier program. This leaderboard-system acts as an intrinsic incentive, fueling members' desire to rank higher, gain status, and be validated for their contribution; this leads to highly engaged fans and increased month over month participation. Additional transparency around member rewards and giveaways also contributes to the trust between members and the research team, leading to a highly active respondent base.

The team has prioritized standardizing their program to expand who can use the platform for activities and how these are scheduled and executed. This innovation has allowed the team to streamline the research intake process, simplify departmental access and speed up the request for activities. The team has made significant efforts to optimize their workflows to produce even faster results, including:

• Standardized processes for intake, recruitment, and member engagement
• Inclusion of new business units to expand value of community access and insights
• Standardization of Profile Variables to streamline reporting to increased stakeholders
• Investment to optimize usage and reduce admin effort by leveraging multiple Alida platform tools and community management services
  
  

WBD All Access Panel

The increased use of their unique All Access panel has been a key driver in ensuring community insights can be leveraged across multiple business units. This centralized panel helps sister WBD communities to share panelists, and supports seamless research across the entire WBD umbrella. Ensuring other business units can tap into the breadth and depth of feedback available through connecting with their highly engaged members.

Results

The feedback from the community is used to support and validate decisions from the micro to macro level. Through brand surveys and concept testing, WBD can get answers to future product and feature roadmaps and better understand fan expectations. In-store CSAT surveys and transactional feedback ensure stores and in-person experiences remain best in class. And the team's use of video focus groups and in-depth interviews allows them to dig deeper into the “why” behind audience feedback.

With their new Member Tier strategy in place, the WBD team has seen member engagement increase and created a new framework for success. Their commitment to overall member experience has increased trust and allowed members to feel more invested in their research participation, with one subcommunity having up to 90% response rates. Together with increased sharebacks and use of design best practices to differentiate activities, the A-List has become a standard for optimal community management. This focus on engagement has a direct impact on the quality of research the members volunteer to the A-List.

The program has continued to expand its number of stakeholders and now supports content, networks, brand, product/UX, innovation, gaming, and executive teams. With such high engagement, the WBD research team has significantly reduced time to insights and increased the level of access and awareness to feedback across the organization.