Developing Digital Product Concepts to Capture New Customer Segments

Case Study

How might one of the most conservative companies in the world develop a new entertainment product that speaks authentically to young, cord cutting hip-hop fans?

Our customer is huge. Despite its 190 billion dollar top line, the appeal of the brand and its digital products hasn’t easily captured the imaginations (or wallets) of millennials and Gen Z. Eager to win with this segment, our customer partnered with MO Studio to develop a unique digital product that would authentically engage and empower followers of urban culture and hip-hop.

To address this ever-changing segment (and to avoid sweeping generalizations of this diverse demographic) MO Studio began the project with ethnographic and marketplace research, looking at urban and hip-hop culture, values, and emerging behaviors. By connecting societal needs and identifying gaps in the landscape of digital experiences, the team delivered a framework for a new entertainment product.

The new offering—confidentially called Project X—is centered on empowering creators, curators and consumers of urban culture to engage with content and with each other. The framework was brought to life by articulating value propositions, content strategies, visualized UX scenarios and key behavioral and touch-point moments during the user journey. With the constructed framework, the team developed the business case for gaining buy-in from leadership and investment to move forward with implementation. The vision and strategy pushed our customer to understand the importance of evolving its role beyond utility, service, and content provider, to becoming nurturers of digital communities and curators of culture. Project X is slated to roll out in 2019.

“72% of Gen Z watch YouTube for at least 2 hours a day and half say they can’t live without it. [Our customer] is not currently playing in this space at all.”

– Internal Stakeholder

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