Exclusive Interview: Time Warner’s Kristen O’Hara

September 21, 2012 World Screen Top Stories

PREMIUM: Kristen O’Hara, the chief marketing officer at Time Warner Global Media Group, talks to World Screen about the recently opened state-of-the-art MediaLab, created in an effort to better understand rapidly evolving consumer behaviors.

 

WS: What is the mission of the Time Warner Global Media Group?
O’HARA: We are a strategic and creative marketing group that focuses on delivering revenue growth for Time Warner by partnering with top advertisers. We look for innovative ways that we can leverage the company’s scale and well-loved brands in highly customized ways that really address marketers’ specific brand and business challenges.
 
WS: Would you give some examples of the integrated marketing solutions Time Warner has offered its advertisers?
O’HARA: Right now we are in production on a very exciting project for General Motors for the launch of their Chevy Malibu. We have created much more than a media experience. We’ve partnered with Isaac Mizrahi to create a Malibu-inspired fashion collection and we are going to sell that collection exclusively on LivingSocial, the digital commerce platform. The whole story of the connection will unfold across many of our brands in print, on television in digital and in social.
 
It was important for GM to really make a lifestyle connection with the fashion-conscious consumer.
 
We are also working with some of our largest global marketers to expand the success we have had in the U.S. into other regions. For instance, we have been working with Unilever in Latin America and Asia Pacific to leverage Cartoon Network and its well-loved characters across their shows to help build brand stories for Unilever across key products.
 
WS: What was the genesis for the Time Warner MediaLab?
O’HARA: The initial idea bubbled up from the Time Warner Research Council, which is comprised of the top research executives across our four operating companies [Warner Bros., Turner Broadcasting System, HBO and Time Inc.] As they started to pitch us on the proposal, we quickly recognized that there was an opportunity to make this lab not just a center of research but a center of innovation and insight for the company. We saw that in an age where the shelf life of research was getting shorter and shorter because the landscape is changing so rapidly, what we really wanted was the opportunity to have a place where we could test and learn in real time.
 
WS: I’ve read about biometrics and eye tracking—tell us about what the MediaLab can do?
O’HARA: The main purpose of the lab is to help us understand consumer behavior as it relates to media and content consumption. And we can leverage the lab for our content creators, our marketers, our ad-sales side, as well as for third-party partners, be they advertisers, media agencies or creative agencies.
 
You mentioned eye tracking and biometrics. The focus there is to give us meaningful data points on actual behavior, not projected behavior—not what consumers will tell you they think or do—but how their eye is really navigating a digital experience on a tablet or on mobile. We’ve actually made changes from what we’ve learned in eye tracking in real time. Additionally, when we have put eye tracking and biometric capabilities together, we could really understand the inter-connectedness of devices during the entire viewing experience and how levels of engagement change and how consumers are shifting between multiple devices.
 
WS: What are some of the studies you have been conducting in the MediaLab?
O’HARA: One of the interesting studies was one on social TV. It was done as a partnership between Time Warner, Warner Bros. and Turner Broadcasting to understand how consumers are using the television in conjunction with a tablet or smart phone during the viewing experience. And there were some interesting findings. AT&T, who sponsored the second-screen experience in this instance, had a 30-percentage point lift in brand favorability by serving the consumer that second-screen experience, which provided a deeper engagement with a show that they loved.
 
WS: In what other ways are Time Warner divisions using the lab?
O’HARA: Most of our divisions have already used the lab multiple times and garnered tremendous insight. The insight in real time is one of the powerful things we have at our fingertips. HBO GO has been testing new iterations of their very successful HBO GO App product. During the Super Bowl, which took place at the same time we launched the lab, we had about three or four concurrent studies going on, some in partnership with advertisers and others were independent studies that we were doing to understand consumer behavior.
 
For instance, 50 percent of the TV commercials in this year’s Super Bowl were Shazamable [viewers could use a Shazam app on a tablet or mobile phone to get additional information about a commercial airing during the Super Bowl]. We wanted to understand how consumers reacted to this. Did they appreciate it? What were the Shazamable ads that were most compelling to them? On the content side, CNN used the lab during the State of the Union address in January. They went straight to air with consumer response direct from the MediaLab during the State of the Union coverage on Anderson Cooper’s show AC 360.
 
WS: The MediaLab also has a retail section.
O’HARA: Given that many of our businesses sell directly to consumers—Time Inc. within the magazine division and Warner Bros. on the consumer-products side—we thought it would be important to understand the retail experience and the media-to-retail experience. What happens when someone is exposed to stimuli and then they go into the retail environment? We can also change out that retail environment for our marketing partners—it can be easily transformed into a drug store, a super store, a home-improvement store, etc. just by changing some of the displays.
 
WS: I guess we are super distracted as shoppers, too, these days, aren’t we?
O’HARA: Exactly, and there is a great opportunity to understand what happens at check out. If you think about the implications of the mobile wallet and the content that people are consuming while they are waiting in line at retail, there is tremendous opportunity to be smarter about how we navigate through that “moment of truth,” as it were, at the point of purchase.
 
WS: You mean everybody doesn’t just pick up People magazine at the check out lane like I do!
O’HARA: We’re glad that you do! And lots of people do that, but as the world changes we need to be prepared and understand what that future looks like.
 
WS: Content producers and channel programmers are still trying to figure out the best ways to monetize content online. From a research perspective, what are the challenges in monetizing content on digital platforms?
O’HARA: We’re getting great value from the online content experience through the TV Everywhere initiative that Time Warner has been a huge proponent of in the marketplace. If you look at the HBO GO app, for example, it already has about 5 million authenticated consumers, and we have seen that those who use the app have an increased viewer engagement. They are 90 percent more likely to watch more HBO programming as a result of that experience. And that will be directly tied to subscriber growth. The HBO GO example is a best-in-class case study of how we are looking at monetizing digital content.
 
That said, I think we do need a trusted measurement system in place so that we can take advantage of online viewing more accurately. Today, the number is small compared to the amount of content that is actually watched on television, but we need to be prepared as that number increases.
 
WS: It’s hard to beat the wide-screen experience when you sit down to watch your favorite TV series or movie.
O’HARA: Absolutely and that is one of the things that we do with our biometric studies, we can see how the levels of engagement change across different screens. We do find that on the big screen there is a higher degree of engagement.
 
WS: What are some of the major issues facing the advertising industry today?
O’HARA: The consumer is moving and changing much faster than most organizations are, so the ability to see that change and be able to pivot your organization quickly enough to capitalize on new opportunities will be key.