Media & Entertainment: Strategy Consulting Projects
Update: 3.16.14
Course number: B8213 section 1
Schedule: T/R - B-term, 2:45:00 PM to 4:45:00 PM
Room: Uris 306
Adjunct Associate Professor Ava Seave
Phone: 212 222 0025 (off campus office)
Office: Uris 315 (Greenwald’s office)
Office hours: By appointment
Email: as2486@columbia.edu
General Course Description
Prerequisite: One media course and/or one strategy course and/or professional experience at a media
company
In “Media & Entertainment: Strategy Consulting Projects,” the concepts and theories introduced in
previous media and strategy courses will be applied in a practical way to problems brought to the class as
projects from real companies and their managers.
The ultimate goal of this class is for students to have team experience in helping media companies
recognize and solve strategic problems.
Among the techniques the students will work on
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Industry mapping
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SCP: Structure/Conduct/Performance analysis

Market sizing

How to defining the goals of a project

Defining and understanding scope
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Value propositions and Value curves
Mapping Business Systems
The five- week course will introduce techniques to perform strategy consulting for media companies and
teach students how to apply these techniques to real projects from real companies. In the sixth week, the
teams will present their findings to the sponsoring companies.
To master these skills, each week students will be given templates to help with particular concepts and
will apply these concepts in several ways:

to case histories of well-known companies and industries


to a newly written case about an evolving media SaaS company
to the company project they have been assigned to
The class is limited to 24 students. There will be four teams of six members each. Team work and active
participation in each and every class will be required. Check in meetings (physical or by phone) with
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sponsor companies are required each week. Collaboration is expected and encouraged throughout the
course.
The textbook for this class is: Curse of the Mogul: What’s Wrong with the World’s Leading Media
Companies (Knee, Greenwald, Seave; Penguin 2009.) Please read the Intro – Chapter 11 (pages 1 to
201.) There may be additional articles assigned for each class.
The companies supplying projects this year will be confirmed in the coming weeks. However, they are
likely to be:
 Investment Bank that specializes in media
 Digital Research and Analytic Firm that is rapidly expanding
 Magnify.net, a video curation and distribution company
 Media Company that covers alternative investment vehicles.
Before the class begins
 Pre class reading: Introduction and Chapters 1 through 5 of Curse of the Mogul: What’s Wrong with
the World’s Leading Media Companies (Knee, Greenwald, Seave; Penguin 2009.)
 Read the new Contently: Evolution of a Media Start-up
Classroom expectations
 Attendance at first two classes is mandatory. Attendance to all classes is strongly encouraged, and is
is expected
Class Project
 Students will be assigned projects by the professor based as much as possible on student
preferences.
 Project assignment mechanics:
o Before class begins, I will send a detailed description of the class projects, students can
prioritize your preferences, and I will try to honor them as much as possible.
o Once assigned to a team, if a student would like to try to switch to another team, he/she
has 24 hours to convince someone on the desired team to switch. However, no one is
required to switch.
o Only contact me after the switch is made to let me know. Do not involve me in any kind
of discussion or negotiation.
 The presentation to the company will consist of a presentation deck or memo plus any back up
analysis and research that is appropriate
Grades
Grades will be based on class participation, weekly completion of assignments and the final presentation
(group, type A) to your company’s executives in the seventh week. That deliverable for the presentation
will consist of a presentation deck plus any back up analysis and research that is appropriate.
Class Dates
Class 1
Class 2
Class 3
Class 4
Class 5
Class 6
Class 7
Class 8
Class 9
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Tuesday
Thursday
Tuesday
Thursday
Tuesday
Thursday
Tuesday
Thursday
Tuesday
July 8
July 10
July 15
July 17
July 22
July 24
July 29
July 31
August 5
Class 10
Presentations
Thursday
August 7
August 11 -14
Descriptions of company projects from Spring semester, 2014 – WILL BE POSTED AS THEY ARE
CONFIRMED… in the meantime, here are the descriptions of the 3 projects FROM LAST YEAR,
AND JUST COMPLETED.
NBC/Universal
How should NBCUniversal participate in the creation of original digital video content -beyond extensions of existing network programming?
If NBCUniversal chooses to produce original content made-for the web, tablets and mobile and
connected devices,what should that content look like and how should it be monetized? Students
will consider:

How NBCUniversal currently deals with this across various parts of the corporation

How other large media companies are handling this challenge and success stories
amongst digital content brands

What would be the role of sponsored custom content/native advertising? How might
this be sold?

What are the possible distribution channels for new digital content?

What is a reasonable sized business in this area for NBCUniversal and how the P&L
would work?

Are there any benefits for the corporation beyond the P&L
To come up with recommendations, students will do deep literature research of industry research,
a competitive analysis, competitor case histories for companies that may be analogs for NBCU,
conduct interviews with internal staff and outside industry experts
Students will then work with client to present findings and make recommendations for course of
action.
eMarketer
Integration into the clients’ decision making routines
eMarketer's clients use multiple sources for information and numerous tools and SaaS in putting
together analyses that help them make decisions. How can eMarketer become integrated into
clients’ routines more deeply so their value is understood and they are "stickier"?
Students will focus on a particular industry or group (e.g., agencies or consumer packaged
goods) and talk to customers and eMarketer Sales and Marketing managers to find out what
decision making tools such as CRM, analytics, algorithms, SaaS and data sets are used for
budgeting, planning, pitching new clients, and general decision making. They will also establish
how eMarketer data and reports are used now for these activities.
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Students will then work on how to make eMarketer stickier and more integrated into these
processes, as well as how eMarketer’s business model of subscriptions would be challenged with
the integration – and potential solutions to those challenges. I suggest that the students will
choose 5 or so companies, such as Salesforce or Chatter, and some sample clients and make
recommendations combining the interviews with thought experiments
Magnify
What is the optimal commercial strategy for Magnify to remain on a growth trajectory, but also
take advantage of other trends in web video?
Magnify.net’s core competency rests on an enterprise SaaS business that has demonstrated
modest growth for the past three years, but how can we enhance the commercial strategy of the
business in order to achieve more market share and exponential growth?
Businesses operating in our market have various commercial strategies from traditional pay-forservice to advertising revenue shares to video-on-demand offerings. Students will need to
explore how video SaaS businesses are packaged and priced for three of the markets which
Magnify operates – online video player (OVP), content management system (CMS) and content
aggregation networks (i.e. AOL.On).
Other factors to consider in these markets include:

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Product offering segmentation – who uses web video and for what purposes
Market intelligence – competitive analysis
Cost of sales & cost of serving customers
Customer value proposition
Opportunity for customers to generate revenue
Students will be presenting to executive management a coherent commercial strategy and
underlying data to support their recommendations.
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