Subject area:                 Business & Positioning Strategy

Region:                           United States

Industry:                        Entertainment and Streaming

Company:                      Peacock: NBC Universal

Challenge:                     In October of 2020, NBCUniversal announced their quarterly earnings, which were significantly lower than the third quarter of 2019. Earlier in the year, NBCUniversal launched Peacock, a new streaming service, under their Television and Streaming Branch, which was led by Mark Lazarus. NBCUniversal thought this could help the company increase revenues, but after seeing the earnings report, Mark knew his group had a major problem to overcome. Mr. Lazarus needed to decide if NBCUniversal should maintain the current positioning of Peacock, or if the service could be repositioned to help the company gain greater revenue. If they needed to reposition, he needed to determine how they should do so. 

Investment in Personal Capital: Elucidating Professional CORE

• Jacob Hoffman: I initially was interested in the project because I am a frequent consumer of their content. That made this a fun project for me. This project provided value to my personal capital in a few different ways. In the short-term as a project to discuss in job interviews. Longer-term, this project gave me practice and experience in understanding and effectively utilizing the strategy wherever I end up working. The fact that our project was focused around such a big company was great because it comports with the type of companies I’m looking to work for immediately after graduation. I am also interested in innovative companies, which aligns closely with the SBU of Peacock, as an innovation to the entertainment industry.  

• Julia Wong: Although working in the entertainment industry is not my end mission, I would still consider working in a finance or accounting position at a company as well established as NBCUniversal. I have long been a fan of the work that NBCUniversal does, and I really enjoyed gaining insight into the operations of the company. Additionally, since I will be starting a consulting job in July, this was a great chance for me to gain practice in a consulting role. 

• Marcus Stewart: This project was interesting to me from the beginning as I had subscribed to Peacock in early January. This excited me because it enabled me to understand more about the company I was subscribing to and why I made the purchase decision to create a Peacock account. I developed a deeper interest into the workings of the entertainment world and this is suited towards what type of employment I will be seeking in the future: sports and entertainment. It was also great to learn more about the consulting side of business; I had little knowledge of the workings of it until now.  

• Tianshu Chu: Before I started on this case, I never realized how many of my favorite TV shows were a product of NBCUniversal. Although I was only slightly interested in the entertainment industry in the sector of content production, completely different from my major, this project helped me meet people and learn about the workings of the entertainment and information communications conglomerate as a whole. I will be starting my work as an auditor after graduating in August and perhaps this project will come in handy for a company that I will eventually work on. 

• Timothy DaSilva: I initially proposed the idea for the Peacock and NBCUniversal case because of my general interest in the sports and entertainment industry. Over the course of the project, this interest was reaffirmed. With no formal job experience in the entertainment field, this project allowed me the opportunity to research and better understand an industry I am interested in entering in the future. Additionally, this project provided great insight into the world of consulting. While I had not previously thought of entering the consulting space, I now welcome it as a potential opportunity. Lastly, as this case was majoritively a marketing challenge problem, it gave me a strong introduction into what marketing is like at a large firm with several SBUs. Overall, this project provided me with research, marketing, and consulting experience that I will be able to carry with me post-graduation. 

Investments in Social Capital: Building Trust within the Company and Industry

Through this project, all team members were able to grow our team working skills. We learned how to better communicate and collaborate to achieve our project goals. Additionally, while we didn’t grow a wide social network, we were able to make contact with an employee at NBCUniversal via LinkedIn. This experience could allow us to be more confident in reaching out to possible employers via LinkedIn. The team was also able to build social capital by learning about how to gain trust from clients through conducting research. Leveraging public data on the company allowed us to learn more about how the stakeholders felt and about the culture of the company as a whole. 

Investments in Professional Capital: Analysing Market Needs, Crating an Industry Map

This project taught the team general strategy frameworks that we can now apply to future projects. We learned how to employ VRIO framework and value chain analysis to assess the internal environment of a company. Then, to assess the external environment, we learned how to apply the PESTEL and Five Forces frameworks. Another very valuable item the team learned is the DAFI framework. This will allow us to make recommendations on how to achieve competitive advantage in a more comprehensive way for any future projects we work on.  

Capital Utilization: What’s next? 

Moving forward, the team will carry the lessons we learned with us, as we enter the job market after graduation. Seeing the project all the way through from start to finish showed us what we are capable of. We all learned a number of soft skills, such as communication and teamwork, as well as specific strategy concepts, that we can employ to achieve our own personal visions in the future.