Repositioning Viacom and its Global Entitites
Approach: UX Vision Facilitation, Stakeholder Interviews, Audits, Competitive Analysis
Scope: Dotcom & subsidiary redesigns
Impact: Successful Merger of Viacom & CBS
Challenge: Management & Maintenance
New Tools: New Facilitation Exercise
In 2018, I was tasked with creating and overseeing the implementation of a brand new digital strategy of Viacom.com - to best reflect their marketing and communication ambitions that would inspire and attract investors, prospective employees, and the press.
The team’s challenge? To build a flexible and sustainable global design system, which can be easily managed across the dotcom and be applied to additional entities in the future.
Approach
UX Vision Session and Stakeholder Interviews: To help identify differing perspectives among stakeholders, ensuring the design team aligns on a common, and collaborative vision to avoid conflicting priorities.
Digital Ecosystem & Content Audit: Comprehensive review of all digital assets to evaluate performance, experience, and quality of content, SEO, and UX.
Competitive Analysis: Performed analysis of media competitors to identify marketing and content gaps to inform strategic opportunities for dotcom refresh.
The Vision
To transform Viacom as a thought leader in the global entertainment industry.
Findings
Fragmented Digital Ecosystem: The current ecosystem branches across international water and is comprised of various micro- and orphan sites makes it difficult for investors to gain a full-picture of the health of Viacom.
Redundant Messaging Across 11k Sites: Because of the lack of a cohesive experience, there was a missed opportunity to celebrate global brand relevance, local impact, embracing value & culture all within a unified place.
Stagnant designs de-motivate prospective employees to apply/ Content and design needs to be inspiring to best align with users’ personal values.
Recommendations
Build a Scalable Information Architecture to Match Ambition: Integrate attention experience sites (like Inspiration, Stories, Branded Content) into a centralized hub, with a scalable navigation and dynamic display of content as eventual campaign sites, programming pages, and screening rooms fold into Viacom.
Improve Content Strategy & Messaging Pillars: Update sitemap and IA, with a linking strategy that guides our three key user types to find the correct and relevant content.
Evolve the Design Language: with a dimensional shift that includes more playful typography, multi-color system, balancing informational and editorial content formats.
Impact & Contributions
I established the UX & content strategy guidelines that would tell the full Viacom story through the lens of investors and press. I also developed an updated Sitemap, improved IA, and content & SEO strategy to modernize the current experience. By implementing a streamlined UX and modern design, my UX strategy was a key contributor to the successful merger of Viacom and CBS in 2019.
Reflections
Being in a ‘client-service’ role taught me a lot on managing competing stakeholder goals and motivations and I brought that same mindset when I went ‘brand-side’. Exercising diplomacy and being an active listener helped the team move through some of the hurdles that come with conflicting visions.
