Jess Gaedeke (00:00)
Hi everybody. Welcome to the Dig Inspiration episode. I was lucky recently to sit down with Vera Chan with Warner Brothers Discovery.

And she told a really cool story, a tale of two Xbox segmentations. She shared a passionate point of view about shepherding insights in the right way in the org.

So when I thought about who at DIG I would like to sit down and talk to, there's no one better than Betsy Pendergast, VP in our Future Strategy and Innovation Group. Two reasons, she is one of our gaming and entertainment experts, but also specializes in deploying and socializing insights with serious impact. So Betsy, that's what I thought of you. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Betsy Pendergast (00:37)
to be here. Thanks, Jen.

Jess Gaedeke (00:38)
So Betsy, heard episode, right? And so in my conversation with Vera, she was talking about how we may be on the edge of the next big wave beyond streaming. So I'm curious from where you sit, you're working with entertainment and with gaming clients, what's changing fastest with content?

Betsy Pendergast (00:56)
I absolutely loved that conversation. thought that both, think your chemistry back and forth was inspiring to me. And that as you guys started to go into the next horizon, was something that really got me thinking. And so I'll take you through a little bit of the way that I've been thinking about it and would love to just kind of go back and forth.

kind of where I started was just the idea that entertainment is over optimized today when we think about the amount of fragmentation. And we always talk about fragmentation in two lenses. One is the audience is across different mediums. And then on top of that, their attention is fragmented in terms of dual screening or just not paying attention period. And so I started to think about what that means for broader entertainment or the next horizon of entertainment, I started

going back to a historical view, which is kind of an interesting piece, but I thought that it was a good mental exercise to think about what does entertainment meant for all of human history. And when you think about it, it really is that entertainment has been a pretext. And so if you think about a campfire, a traveling theater, the church social, you see is that the core of everything is really that there was a gathering and that there was a shared reference point. And so.

When you think about those two things in combination, meaning that they are entertainment, what we see is that it becomes more challenging to think about what we're being entertained by today as having any part of the gathering scale. And so I think the really interesting piece here is that when we look from a macro perspective, we see we live in a world where one in three Americans is chronically lonely.

There are so many challenges. We're constantly overwhelmed. Like all of the mental health pieces, if we were only looking at that part mega really speaks to the point that we need to get back to the gathering. And I think that as we continue to distribute content to anyone, anywhere, anytime, becomes a broader conversation of what does it mean to love something? What does it mean to belong? And what does it mean to gather? And could entertainment get back there one day?

And so I got really excited about that kind daydream, I guess. And I started to think about we already have some signals of that that exist today. And so I thinking like the Minecraft and chicken jockey screaming phenomenon that created this collective joy for mostly young boys. But it filled theaters and it made the movie, I think it was around a billion dollars. And so.

think that that's a really good indicator of people are wanting that sense of togetherness. Also thinking about the other really exciting, I think, entertainment phenomenon from last year was just the growth in women's sports. It was the fastest growing category in entertainment. And it wasn't because the women's shifted the feats of athleticism or they changed the game in some way that drove additional attention the way that they're kind of doing in it was really about

catalyzing a community that was solely built around celebrating women's sports. And that's time. And so we see here is that the gathering is truly important to entertainment today. so I think ultimately when we talk about the vision for where entertainment's going, I do think really future-focused entertainment companies are going to be ones that bring us back to the gathering.

Jess Gaedeke (04:16)
so bringing more of that experience, you're talking about community. I know your team does a lot of work on the concept of community and how that shifted. think that's so true. And wonder what are some of the innovative ways that these companies will integrate experience back into the entertainment consumption process. It is an interesting thing to think about. I know you can't show anyone's cards or

convey any strategies, but anything we should get excited about as it relates to experience.

Betsy Pendergast (04:45)
Yeah, I think the big part is thinking about whatever the entertainment touch point or the tent pole moment is, to reframe the way that we think about that to being the start of a conversation or the start of a relationship versus an endpoint or a medium or value or product in and of itself.

Jess Gaedeke (05:00)
Yeah, fascinating. Well, I'm glad you had that daydreaming moment because that produced some good thoughts for us unpack there. know, one of the things that Vera talked about as well was really the importance of shepherding insights into the business. She sort of used that G.I. Joe term, know, knowing is only half the battle. It's like the job starts when you actually need to go to deploying and socializing. When you're working with clients, what does it actually look like to immerse teams in the insights so they really stick and they really get used?

Betsy Pendergast (05:29)
when Vera was talking about it, really resonated with me because that is one of my biggest fears is just, I don't want to create things. I don't want to scream into a void or develop ideas that have no lasting power. And so I think what I love about DIG is that we've done so much to safeguard against this challenge of just having research that's reporting and sits on a shelf.

I would use actually Vera's framework of thinking today and future. And so we are thinking about that as we're going through the activation socialization phases to really think what decisions do we need to make today as a result of that? teams do we need to catalyze to really apply the strategies that we're laying out in our work? And so that's kind of the first part. And that can be done through oftentimes working sessions, immersions.

can do that can be really, really fun and finding different ways to get immersed in the data and information. did this for, of my favorite ones is we did it for a sleep client where we had the workshop was fully catered to sleep and energy management. so it went beyond just thinking, oh, okay, we need to come up with concepts for sleep.

It was, we're going to structure the entire day, well, two days on our ultradian rhythms, which are optimal pathways for production. And then we were going to bring in a ton of different sleep exercises. did breath work, meditation. We did some movement exercises. all these different ways that we know can lead to better sleep, but in order to get people in the mindset.

less of what their individual roles are and more focused on what the capabilities are and kind of what the responsibility is for us to develop a better sleep path that's one example of the today piece. think the other part is the future And that one is equally important because there are a lot of people that are not necessarily responsible for applying the insights immediately. But it's very important that for strategic alignment, the work circulates beyond just the working team.

And so this becomes ways of creating more interactivity newsletters, dashboards, a lot of video work, podcasts, like anything like that that can help to say, our core learnings. This is what we're aware of. These are the strategies that we're leveraging just to ensure that the entire organization is not only aware that the work happened, but is also thinking about it, it to their day-to-day projects as well.

Jess Gaedeke (07:51)
Yeah. In that sleep immersion example you gave, that's exactly the type of experience that is going to be so memorable for those participants, what's going to make the people that are on the sales team or people working in supply chain or people in finance,

are stakeholders that are typically a little bit removed from the insight and some of that maybe decision making that leads to that action ability. And I love it when those types of stakeholders can just feel so immersed in insights and in the learning. And so I bet there are a lot of memorable pieces. I mean, that feels like an environment that I'd want to get an invitation

Betsy Pendergast (08:24)
Yeah, it was so fun. And I actually have had three clients who have then left that organization and gone to others who have hired us because of that workshop. it was a fun one.

Jess Gaedeke (08:34)
Yeah, that sounds like it.

Yeah, another thing Vera talked about is that for her, and I love this story, she said, you know, success was hearing teams actually use the language of the segmentation and apply it to their day to day. And I think there is nothing better than that, right? When you've seen this done really well with clients, I'm curious, what actually changes on their side? What is the actual tangible benefit of that?

Betsy Pendergast (08:55)
I think there are kind of two pieces. The first one is just the emotional relief, a feeling a feeling all of these things that I'm constantly thinking about in disjointed ways, I now have a plan for. think it's kind of the first part of it. And that's more of the emotional side. But I think on the functional side, creating internal strategic alignment is such a powerful tool. And one that I think

in our hyper competitive and reactive business environment is a true competitive advantage because clients that are able to really learnings, apply them strategically and cohesively across an organization are able to create a compounding effect. And so an action that's happening in product or in marketing or in leadership, internal culture, all of these things have potential to compound and really create that snowball effect that can give

just an environment, that sense of liveliness and vitality that's really important from both an internal perspective, but also from external and sales perspective.

Jess Gaedeke (09:56)
I think some of the most successful organizations, you see that shared that shared understanding of who their customer is, that shared understanding of the go-to-market strategy, right? You just kind of feel it play out in so many different Do agree?

Betsy Pendergast (10:12)
Oh, for Yes.

is that.

Jess Gaedeke (10:15)
like you said, it's, wouldn't want provide deliverable and an output that you're just, you know, screaming into the void. You want it to be felt and embedded and lived and breathed. There's nothing better than that within a client organization.

And then building on Vera's point about needing to really think beyond the initial brief, right, and extend the life of research. How do you think entertainment and gaming brands in particular, should they be using insights differently today if they want to stay ahead of what's coming next?

Betsy Pendergast (10:44)
I love this question and this point because I feel like oftentimes we might get an RFP that's pretty classic of just like answer kind of a standard market research question. And I think the part that we want to impart at DIG is just that the future isn't optional, it's really survival. And that you have to be thinking steps ahead of your and of their needs.

so for a client with a size and scale of Warner Brothers Discovery or any market leader, a challenger brand in entertainment, it's craft the future start to think beyond the current day. And it can be very easy reactive to the environment, but having a long-term plan and really a vision for the future is so important with the amount of uncertainty and as you said, chaos that we experience regularly.

we want to do in order to really understand the future is to be able to anticipate where the consumer is going. And so when we talk about that, I think Vera made the point of of these media companies have been around for about 20 years and that the 20 year lifespan is a really interesting pivot point or inflection point. think this is why reinvention is such an important part of a brand's ethos or a company's ethos.

because we need to be really staying clear on consumer needs and developing those engagement pathways can provide that sense of constant surprise and delight or this idea that, this company is always staying ahead of me and giving me something to look forward to or excite me by. think is really an interesting point that I would double down on is just that most of the disruption that we see in entertainment is caused by emergent And so it's a very clear lens within which we can apply

apply to a future view and an operational structure. And so when we talk about the most recent emerging tech leverage, is just like streaming didn't invent the concept of It removed the friction from it as a consumption strategy or delivery method. And I think that that's a really important piece that we continue to think about because entertainment brands need to stay on the pulse of where culture and consumers are moving. And then putting that lens on emerging tech will be important as well, of course.

But really it's about crafting those on ramps today and so that your consumers ultimately grow with you as opposed to apart from you.

Jess Gaedeke (12:57)
So you said about 15 really smart things in there. A lot of those I could dive into, So if you go back to the point you made about streaming didn't invent storytelling, that is such a good point. And it almost sounds obvious when you think about it,

how we as a society and as households and as culture sort of taken the tech advances and what that has meant to how we interact with others. just, imagine. It's really crazy when you think about what's happened just in the last 20 years. As Vera said, Netflix is 20 years old, YouTube is 20 years old. I still have a Netflix DVD. I kept one in the red envelope. It's an episode, Project Runway, it's like a relic.

But it is insane to think just in the last 20 years how much that has changed our entire experience with how we interact with content and interact with each other.

Betsy Pendergast (13:45)
know it completely. did where, well, do you play wordle at all?

Jess Gaedeke (13:50)
I used to and then I had to quit, but go ahead. I'll pretend like I do. Yes, of course I play wordle.

Betsy Pendergast (13:55)
Well,

think Wordle is a great example of an entertainment medium that's really changed gathering back to because it's a point in time, everyone's playing together. So it creates that sense of collective effervescence. And it's easy. It fits seamlessly within one's life. And I think that that's an interesting point. I mean, I don't want all content to become bite-sized point in time.

go back to cable or we can all sit by our radio. So I don't think that, but I think there needs to be more mechanisms that that create that afterglow and allow you to have that participatory environment. there's nothing worse than watching a show or like having something hilarious happen in a game and having no one to share it with. It's like, it's weird. I was laughing. It's like the, when there's nothing more embarrassing than like tripping by yourself. I think it's so true.

It's like you want that moment of like...

Jess Gaedeke (14:48)
Yes. my God. I'm remembering a time when I totally tripped by myself and it was like in downtown Denver and I knew that our office was up on like the 16th floor or whatever and I'm like, I wonder if people are looking down and watching me. that's so sad. Okay. So Wordle, just really quick. The reason I don't play Wordle is because...

Betsy Pendergast (15:00)
I'm sorry.

Jess Gaedeke (15:07)
It started at a time that I was with a company where I think our CEO wanted some bonding at the executive level. So we wanted us all to play wordle. And in our little group chat, it was just such corporate metaphor, cringy jokes. I just could not do it. And so I just left the chat and the CFO was just cracking up because it's just like all this stupid back and forth. it's like, Jessica, the kids left the chat. I just can't have it.

Betsy Pendergast (15:30)
Good.

Jess Gaedeke (15:31)
I do understand

the reasoning behind love to think about an afterglow with something like that. So, well, as always, Betsy, you've given me new things to think about, new ways to think about the conversation that I had with Vera. So I appreciate you taking the time to share your wisdom and your thoughts.

Betsy Pendergast (15:46)
Happy to do it. This was a pleasure.