Challenge:
A Fortune 500 media company wanted to better understand the impact that its partners’ brands would have on attracting viewers to its new streaming media platform. The client wanted to determine how to optimize its partners’ communications on and off the streaming platform and identify which partners were most effective in attracting viewers.
Solution:
To address the client’s business questions, Rockbridge designed a research solution based on our brand development model to evaluate its partners’ brand equity and the potential impact it would have on the client’s streaming service. The underlying framework for the survey included the following measures:
Partner Equity: Awareness and viewership of partners.
Compatibility: Expectation of the client’s brand being associated with various partners.
Motivation: Whether being associated with the partners’ brands motivated viewing of the show.
Impact: Change in interest of watching a show when a partner was featured in the show description.
Channel Confusion: Incidence of choosing partner as the viewing venue instead of the streaming platform.
Using this framework, the client learned that including its partners’ branding in conjunction with its own branding did not necessarily motivate the general audience to choose it as a viewing destination; in fact, it increased viewers’ confusion about where to watch the show.
Result:
Based on the findings, the client decided to shift its strategy to focus on creating a clear distinction between its streaming service and its partners’ offerings. Thereby enabling them to effectively manage viewer expectations and deliver a consistent streaming experience, and ultimately build viewer trust and brand equity of its own streaming service.