YouSaid · the spoken record

Sarah Kirshbaum Levy

lines on the record: 60
first: 2024-01-25
most recent: 2024-01-25
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“the world of investing, I would say, I did not fully appreciate the power of starting early and the power of compounding, save what you can. I think I also underappreciated really until I got to betterment, I underappreciated how much costs and taxes can undermine investing returns. And so to be cognizant of those things. And then lastly, I would say take advantage early on of what the government offers in terms of tax advantaged accounts, because that can be a real step up. So whether that's for participating in a company 401k or IRAs, right, these are all great opportunities for saving.”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I always think the investment banking training programs are a good way to start. They're sort of like bootcamp for a couple years where they teach you to understand P&Ls and financial modeling. And I think that's a really transferable skill. So I think those are fantastic programs. I also think these days, you know, whether I'm a financial company or a technology company is sort of a question we ask ourselves every day. I think the answer is both. But engineering and computer science is an incredibly fabulous career these days. And I think opens a lot of doors. But that appeals to a certain segment of the population.”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's about a little boy who grows up in foster care, and I think it's going to be about the opioids crisis, but I haven't gotten to that. I haven't gotten to that part yet.”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I love historical fiction and I love a good beach read. So right now I am reading The Elon Musk biography and I am also reading Demon Copperhead which is a Barbara Kinsolver which is fantastic”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They did. They did. Yeah, I wanted it to keep going. My early mentors were really my bosses. So I worked early on for a guy at Disney named Peter Murphy, who was a great mentor to me and then a woman named Dan Sarnoff who became ultimately was running the Warner Brothers studio. She was my first job out of business school. And then a fellow who was the COO at Nickelodeon before I was named Jeff Dunn, who went on to run Sesame Workshop. Those were probably my three.”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It did. It did. But I had seen that and I had never heard of the Pacific, but it surfaced, and I watched that it was about the Pacific Theater during World War II. Really interesting.”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a good one. I really liked it. But I also read the book. So those are two of my, I love, oh, I just watched the Pacific, which is an old, which is a spin-off of Band of Brothers. HBO must have recently sold a bunch of stuff to Netflix. So it surfaced in my algorithm. And it was a spin-off of Band of Brothers. And it's about World War II. Didn't Band of...”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a great show. That's on air. I love it. That's on Apple. Yep. I loved also on Apple. I loved lessons in chemistry, which I read the book first. Oh, really? That's like you.”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is a more recent board that I joined, and that is a company that sits actually at the intersection of AI and diversity and inclusion. And it's about creating pathways for underrepresented groups who don't have four-year college degrees into higher earning jobs using AI to understand aptitude and likelihood of success. And it's cool company.”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure. So I'll start with Lucius Latower is a foundation, and we support access to opportunity, and we support a series of Jewish causes. There was a man named Lucius Litauer, and he passed away without any heirs. And so we have a group of people who are interested to carry on his legacy. So that's been a great one for more than 10 years. I've been doing that. Funko Inc. is a pop culture company. It's a public company. You may have heard of Funko Pop, which are like little sort of plastic characters. That's the signature item we sell. But really when you think about fandom, it's a fan company. And that's been, again, a lot of fun. That's been my first public company board. And then Catalite.”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. And you have to have guardrails, right? And so I think we're being very thoughtful in how we deploy AI, but I think we would be foolish not to be embracing the technology because, you know, if we can speed everything up we do by 10% or 15% using the technology, then better, stronger, faster.”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, we have an opportunity to get them up to speed faster, right? Because there's just more information easily accessible at their fingertips. So what I don't see AI doing, or at least not yet, is replacing the fiduciary role that we play, right? Which is we have a responsibility to our customers that is highly regulated and that requires that we act in their best interest. And there still is a lot in the technology where there's what they call hallucination, right? Are they giving good advice? So we think that the technology is an enabler, but not so much a replacement for.”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So AI, think of it as supercharging everything we do. Right. So it's causing us really to relitigate every process we have and say, can we do it better, stronger, faster? And how can technology enable that? So we're starting really in the back office. And that's both internal and customer facing. So think about, you know, writing first drafts of marketing pieces, right? Putting some inputs, giving an assignment to the AI and letting them draft something that you can then use as a jumping off point. Think about customer. That's just an example. Think about customer service. Not necessarily, I think a chat bot can answer simple questions, but also you can have AI develop more sophisticated answers that then the human service operator can translate for the consumer, right? So speeding up every one of those interactions. Think about a brand new engineer joining the team who doesn't know anything about betterment and needs to find his or her way.”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Their research, and that still is true for a lot of folks when they sign up. But once you have this, your wealth somewhere, you want to be able to check it and you want to be able to check it wherever you are, you know, in the bathroom, online, wherever you are. And that's on your phone. And so that's been a huge push, you know, during my tenure the last couple years. Saying we need to think mobile first. So that's just an example of sort of usability and where you need to be. And perhaps obvious but critical.”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And they've grown up with a phone in their hand, so to speak, right? And so I think what worked for customers a generation ago, I think the expectations are just raised, right? And so in terms of what technology can deliver, it has to be on mobile, not just ease of use, but ease of use on mobile. I want to be able to do everything on my phone. Don't make me sit down at the computer, for example, right? And that's actually not the way we were born, right? A decade ago, these digital platforms were online as opposed to digital and we've moved the word online to digital because really we need to be mobile first, right? And I think I wouldn't say that betterment was sort of first in its class on recognizing the power of mobile in this space because when we were thought this is a considered purchase and as a considered purchase, people are going to sit down at their desktop and they're going to do.”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right because they knew that that has to be part of the mix. And I think similarly, right, if I think about those as brands, I think the technology is a start. But I think building a brand that understands the customer segment you serve is going to be critically important in terms of who wins and who loses. And so what I aspire to for betterment is that we should become the millennial and Gen Z wealth management brand, the Wei Schwab or Fidelity serves our parents.”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, my aspiration is sort of what Amazon did for Walmart, right? Which is it pushed them to be better, but ultimately there's room for both. I think that is very true in the wealth management space as well. So I think Schwab and Fidelity and Vanguard, like those are the great brands. Those are my parents' brands, right?”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The heavy stuff up, right? Because they knew that referrals and customers who loved them was the holy grail, right? And so, you know, they won. So I think the same can be said in any industry, right? I mean, Netflix is the clear leader in the streaming space. And I think, you know, I intend for betterment to be the clear leader in the digital wealth management space.”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, like they all emerged. Amazon was books, right? It wasn't the everything store. It was books. And I think, you know, they won because they were excellent, right? And they delivered, they were maniacal about the consumer, right? And they just continued to build off of super serving that consumer.”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. And I think, look, that's not unlike the sort of digital boom and bust in every industry, right? Which is think about Amazon, right? Amazon won, but there was a lot of roadkill by the side of the road, right? Whether it was e-toys or to remember just a brand name, right? There were a whole number of these firms.”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think so. I mean, I think that there's certainly you need some experts in the mix, right? I'm not going to say that, you know, no industry experience needed here, right? But you can do that within the context of a balanced team. And so I think, you know, I happen to have a fantastic team and the team is really made up of a bunch of folks who were here before I was and are really deep experts in the space. And then we complemented them with a handful, four or five new folks who I brought from the outside who had a fresh perspective and maybe had a different skill set.”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was going to kind of take the next step. Maybe there was a different kind of leadership that could help do that. So he was meeting candidates and we met, and we got along incredibly well. He's still on the board. So he's a sounding board for things. But we brought really different skills to the party, right? He was not a marketer and a brand builder. And I think in the early days, there was a thought here that sort of if you build it, they will come. And this idea that like, you know, a product led product-led growth was the sort of holy grail, right? And I think that in the early days, that was a good theory. I think the reality is what John and others who sort of innovated around his time did is they pushed the whole industry to embrace technology maybe faster than they would have, right, out of fear, right? Not unlike my experience in the media business, right? Which was you can't ignore, you can't put blinders on and ignore streaming. You got to jump in.”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's funny. So I came from such a different world, right? I came from the corporate world, and I didn't know from founders. And so I had no expectation. And in my experience, changes of leadership were somewhat commonplace, right? You know, when you're at a big company, things change. And so I met John through actually a business school classmate of mine, knew a board member at Betterman, which was kind of my path to betterment. And so I first met this board member and she introduced me to John. And I think he was at a moment in his career where he was thinking, look, I built this thing and I'm sort of getting antsy. I'm kind of ready for the next. And I want this to be a big business to scale, whether it goes public or whatever the next act of this business is. It's an act that I have not had experience in. And he was self-aware enough to understand that now maybe was the time if better.”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I think that it's a mistake to not embrace the whole market, right? And to not recognize that, look, there are customers who feel comfortable. I've had a financial advisor myself personally for 20 years, right? And that provides peace of mind and it provides, and it's a relationship, right? This is a relationship. Technology is never going to replace a relationship. Technology can enhance the service that that relationship provider can give you, but it's never going to replace it. And I think recognizing that is one of the things that differentiates us as a brand.”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sophisticated and had life events, right? Got married, bought a home, their needs became more complex, and they wanted to talk to someone. And so understanding that, he understood that there were limitations sort of to the reach that you could have if you were only serving customers directly. And so rather than say, you know, we're anti human interaction, he said, let's embrace that and let's understand that technology plus humans is better. So how can we be great technology and great service? And the way to do that was through the RIA community. But you're right that in the early days, it wasn't so much that we saw the RIAs as our competitors, it's that they saw us as a competitor, right? And so one of”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Does predate me, I think that's right. So I've been in the CEO seat for three years. So John Stein, our founder, he really saw around corners, right? And I think, you know, what was so great about him, and I think tends to be true of founders in general is they're always innovating, they're always thinking about the next idea. And I think there were sort of two motivations for him. One was, well, wait a minute, why don't the RIAs, why don't the human advisors like us? Why do they see us as a threat? And as he started to dig in, he said, well, wait a minute, we don't have to be a threat. And this is another way to meet customers where they are, right? Because some customers, you know, young, digital, savvy, you know, not a huge amount of assets yet may be okay with a completely digital solution. But what he started to understand and through talking to customers was that as customers became more”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, the idea there was we have great tools, great technology that can scale and that can help advisors scale their practices. We don't need to compete with advisors. We can actually enable their success. So that was the next business line. And then we added a third business line, which is a 401k business for small and medium-sized businesses. And so that is interesting because in all three business lines, they're very different. The customer segments are very different. But what they share is that the big guys and the established incumbents all serve enterprise incredibly well and serve wealthy people incredibly well. And in all three instances, we are expanding access through the use of technology.”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I agree with Well, I think that's exactly right. I also think that in the early days, it was a simpler idea, right? Which was fulfilling a simple promise of low cost and automation and bringing access to investors who previously didn't have access to great advice, bringing sort of the simplest and clearest advice to that group and therefore expanding access. Now what we're learning, and we'll get it, we'll get into sort of the what's happened over the last decade, is that that's really only the beginning. And so for us, I think we think of sort of the robo advisor as the first act. And we then took that platform and thought long and hard about what do the clients really need. And some of them want human advice, for example, right? The technology is not sufficient unto itself. So we extended that platform to the advisor community, to RIAs, right?”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But those 800,000 customers actually are across three lines of business. So we are best known for what was once called a robo advisor. I like to think of it as a digital wealth management platform.”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure. I mean, if you think about the arc of the wealth management business, sure, we're relatively young. But I think when you consider the digital wealth management space, we were early and one of the OGs, if you will.”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is how do you build a team that works well together and how do you put sort of the right structure around that team and the right organizational design? And I had a lot of learning there because we reorganized every, I don't know, 12 or 18 months over my 20 years at Biacom. So I think that all of that is transferable.”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. That's right. You're thinking about movies. You're thinking about television series. You're thinking about how to, you know, how to keep the excitement alive, themes. So anyway, so all of that discipline is, I think, an incredibly good learning ground that then can apply to any brand building. I think similarly, as we were talking about all the platforms, right, the idea of how do you expose your brand, where do you expose your brand? So all of that, I think, I think works incredibly well regardless of industry. Operational excellence is something that in any business, right, you need to figure out, which comes down to setting the rules and the parameters and what do you measure, right? And how important is efficiency relative to growth, right? These are all concepts that travel across businesses. And then I think people manage and organizational design is a really important part of any business.”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I think there are transferable skills, and then there's a ton I had to learn, right? So, in terms of transferable skills, you know, we were talking earlier about branding and marketing, right? I think that media is particularly excellent at that, right? And we had not just a house of brands in terms of Nickelodeon and MTV and Comedy Central, but then each of our intellectual properties. Each of our shows was effectively a brand, right? You had to launch it and you needed to have a brand plan. So SpongeBob had, and I'm sure has today, a 10 or 15 year brand plan at all times.”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right, and some stuff is again, we do quantitative testing, qualitative testing. Sometimes you would do dial testing, right, during you'd air an episode and you'd see like what are the places where they either laugh or turn up the dial or down the dial. So all sorts of different tactics and methods, but it's art and science. I think that's the great creators have an instinct and it can't just be about what happened in that focus group.”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We thought of everything as an input, right? And so I think you have to take everything with a grain of salt in the sense that, let's say you're doing, you know, three or four focus groups, you've got 10 or so people in each of those focus groups, you're trying to pull themes and insights. Sometimes one loud person in the focus group can impact everybody else. So you're watching for that. I think in kids, what you're really looking for is you're just looking for sparks and sometimes their physical reaction is as much as they're sometimes they don't have the vocabulary. We had preschool television, right? Sometimes they don't have the vocabulary to articulate in the way that adults do. I didn't like that character he was mean or whatever, right? But you could just see them shiver or you could see them smile or right. They're authentic.”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The right questions of your consumer and getting to them in kind of different ways, and then triangulating where to next. And then we had to take these brands, of course, and move them off of television, not just into toys, but building a digital footprint was sort of the next, you know, the next act. And you realized, and there was a tension in that too, right? Because there was sort of, are you giving away your content for free or are you immersing your audience in the content and understanding each of these platforms was different? And so I think all of that really translates as you build a brand, you have to think about what platforms are you on and what's the purpose of being on those platforms.”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I mean, there's so many levels, you know, both quantitative and qualitative. So there were a lot of focus groups. There was a lot of instant feedback in the form of ratings and analysis, sort of, you know, post facto, right? After you air the programming, there was pilot testing. I mean, we would sit with kids and show them pictures of characters. And, you know, they would comment at every step of the way. We were basically bringing things to kids and watching them react. Do they laugh? You know, do they hug the toy? Are they drawn into the character? So we tested storylines. We tested characters. And then that was sort of early days in content. We did less, I think now when you think about digital testing and you think about sort of A-B testing messages, the ability to do that really was transformed kind of over time as we started to build a digital footprint. But again, all of this was in service of asking.”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I think from a branding and marketing standpoint, yes, I do think it translates incredibly well. And I think ultimately your brand needs to meet a need or solve a pain point for a consumer, right? And so it all starts with the consumer and the consumer research. And that was something that we were incredibly good at at Viacom with all of these really, really targeted niche brands. We really invested a lot in our research and in understanding that consumer. So I think that translates incredibly well.”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, it's inevitable, right? You're also your public company, you're living quarter to quarter, and the considerations are different.”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It didn't make the cut. No, not at all. But I will say that we did have a few times when we had some sort of braver ideas around, you know, investing more deeply in some of these segments. And those did require pitches exactly as exactly as you say. And we ultimately didn't decide to go forward with bigger investments, right? Buying a part of a theme park, you know, franchise, for example. So we never made that move. Other companies made other decisions there, right? NBC Universal, Disney, et cetera.”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think what's good for kids is good for business really prevailed on that one. So, in any event, we considered all sorts of things and people would pitch us. The sponge.”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I just shivered when you put the image of the big boardroom back in my mind, right? Is that accurate? Is that just a accurate for sure? I think, you know, the pitch, the way in which we entered the business, and again, back to my comment earlier that, you know, I don't think we were brave. We licensed the content. So it didn't require an enormous investment, right? So we would work with toy companies. We worked with the hotel business. We worked with cruise ships. And basically lent them our characters in exchange for revenue. So there was a really a lot of scrutiny around kind of the brand impact and the brand risk potential thinking about the downside of doing some of that, right? What if a kid gets hurt with a toy, you know, that kind of thing, right? So I think we put, we thought about that quite a bit and there were products and services we were unwilling. Like people would pitch us things like a kid's credit card, right? And encouraging kids to go into debt was not exactly.”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Those characters From SpongeBob to Dora the Explorer to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, right? These were the great brands of my tenure there. And so that's what we did. We said, okay, look at Disney, right? They have theme parks, they have hotels, they have toys and t-shirts, et cetera, et cetera. And all of that was opportunity. I think that was less so an opportunity in the adult targeted brands. Adults don't, you know, when they fall in love with a character or a story, like there's only so much Jersey Shore you want to wear on your t-shirt, right?”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think that wasn't about fighting off the streamers so much as about expanding the business. If you think about really the kids' intellectual property more so when I joined Nickelodeon, it was really about joining a kids brand because I understood the power from my experience at Disney of Kids love and passion for characters and stories and how you could deepen their engagement with your brand through products and experiences. And so one of the reasons I went to Nickelodeon was really on that thesis, which was they were a cable channel and really a platform more than anything, right? They were a platform we were at that time sort of pre-YouTube. We had 60 or 70% of all kids entertainment time was spent on Nickelodeon. It was an amazingly powerful platform. And so the question was, you have their attention, you're building these characters and stories they love. How do you take that love and immerse them more deeply in your brand?”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I agree with that. I mean, I think the sort of, you know, the algorithmic recommendation was sort of the holy grail. And I think it hasn't worked as well. It's not that good. It's not that good. But again, if you think, again, think back to the cable days, what our brands did is our brands organized content around audiences and interests. And so you sort of had an advantage, right? What Netflix is trying to do is serve everybody. And so you have this sea of content and how do you sift through it? So it's a difficult challenge.”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And when capital is largely free or cheap, right? So I think the combination of those things just put us at a disadvantage. And it's interesting to watch now, actually, because one of the insights, right? The insights that the streamers had were all about the customer experience. They were about, you know, ads being, you know, interruptive to the content. And consumers didn't like that, right? So they went at it and said, we're going to design something that's delightful for the consumer. I think what they are now learning is that the economic model that they started with was not a sustainable economic model, meaning they're now introducing ads, the dual revenue stream they're seeing, and the price point at which they were offering, call it unlimited content, really just more content was, again, not sustainable.”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There you go. So I think, you know, again, this is sort of the catalyst for my career pivot later, but I think the reality is, how did we do, you know, the streaming businesses ate our lunch, but they had a structural advantage and we were not brave.”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With great economics. A giant legacy infrastructure that had dual revenue streams and that had incredible margins. And, you know, it's always hard to compare a dollar invested in the core business that's going to return 60 cents versus a dollar invested in the new business, which you know is your future, but that's going to lose money out of the gate, right?”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look, I think one of the reasons I made the career pivot I did is because it's really hard to be the analog incumbent who needs to fight a fight in a digital war when the newbies, so to speak, have cheap capital, right, and have the ability to candidly to invest and lose money in ways that the incumbents can't. So I think definitionally we were risk averse.”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, there you go. And they also have Pluto TV, which we bought while I was there, which is an ad supported, I think they now call them fast channels, but ad supported streaming channels.”
2024-01-25 · Masters in Business · Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source