Let’s Get Down to Business
While Canal+ as a whole is a traditional company, my individual team functions much more like a start-up. They are a small team, yet are tackling challenges such as managing Canal’s set-top-box technology and product offerings, advancing the technology and UX of their offerings, and keeping up with tech trends to maintain and advance their position in the marketplace. Two weeks ago, they even launched a voice-activation functionality within their app on Apple TVs! Pictured above is me keeping up with tech trends and testing out a virtual reality demo at the VivaTech conference this week :)
It’s difficult, complicated, but really important work for Canal+, who has seen a decline in sales for the last five consecutive years. Local French competitors have established dominance within this intersection of TV content and connected devices, and have thus won significant marketshare over Canal+. Further, these competitors have done so amongst the sought-after millennial population, whereas the Canal+ customer is in large part much older, averaging around 65 (and aging).
They’re developing the products to remain competitive, but in my opinion, true success comes when a brand not only has the right offerings for their target market, but understands their audience and how to engage with them. It’s nearly impossible to do so if you’re not able to leverage data to analyze performance, draw insights and thus make informed decisions.
One area of opportunity for growth and improvement that I’ve identified and would like to explore more is how Canal+ leverages it’s own data to make smart business decisions. How does their own proprietary data influence the strategy behind the development and release of Canal+’s new products, who their target market is, and how they plan to connect with them? And how are each of the Canal+ teams integrated and sharing data, information and insight to make each other better and more efficient?
Right now, due to system fragmentation, the teams internally do not have the capability to work in this way, which does seem to hinder the progress they’re able to make. The challenges they face are incredibly similar to those of my own client, so I’m really interested in learning more about Canal+’s plans for improvement.
