Here’s what you can learn from “the man who revolutionized how the world consumes content!” [Monday: Marketing Marvels]
Miles Everson’s Business Builder Daily speaks to the heart of what great marketers, business leaders, and other professionals need to succeed in advertising, communications, managing their investments, career strategy, and more.
A Note from Miles Everson:
Happy Monday!
How are you doing? We hope you’re ready to kickstart another awesome week.
Let’s have our dose of motivation by talking about our “Marketing Marvels.” In these articles, we talk about outstanding individuals and highlight their experiences, insights, and contributions to their respective industries.
Ready to know more about today’s feature?
Continue reading below.
Miles Everson
CEO, MBO Partners
Chairman of the Advisory Board, The I Institute
Marketing Marvels
Netflix is a streaming service and production company headquartered in Los Gatos, California. It offers a wide range of award-winning TV shows, movies, documentaries, and more on thousands of Internet-connected devices.
Subscribers of the platform can watch films as much as they want for an affordable monthly price. There’s always something new for viewers to discover as new shows and movies are added every week!
As of September 2022, Netflix has 222 million subscribers worldwide. From initially selling and renting DVDs by mail, the business has since expanded into a digital company that operates in 190 countries.
What led to Netflix’s growth and success over the years?
Part of that is attributed to the leadership, management, and marketing strategies of one of its co-founders…
Photo from CNBC
Reed Hastings is the co-founder and co-CEO of Netflix. He sits on a number of boards and non-profit organizations, and is a strong advocate for education reform through charter schools.
Hastings graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine in 1983. After graduating, he served in the U.S. Marine Corps before studying for his Master’s degree in Computer Science at Stanford University in 1988.
After earning his Master’s degree in 1991, he became a software developer and founded Pure Software (now called Pure Atria Corporation).
In 1997, Hastings had an idea of a subscription-based movie-rental service after incurring a large late fee when he failed to return a store-rented video cassette. This gave birth to Netflix, which he co-founded with his business partner, Marc Randolph.
At first, Netflix customers were only allowed to rent each DVD for a 7-day period. As time passed, Hastings and Randolph changed the system to allow customers to rent an unlimited number of DVDs by paying a set monthly fee.
Hastings expanded Netflix through movie studio partnerships and marketing campaigns that emphasized the brand’s catalog of indie films, documentaries, and other shows not easily available through other platforms.
In 2007, Netflix shipped its billionth DVD and subsequently launched applications that allowed customers to access movies and TV shows through streaming downloads. Today, the company is known not only for its brand exclusivity but also for its personalized content.
What enabled Hastings to turn Netflix into a billion-dollar brand?
- Thinking GLOCALLY (Globally + Locally)
Hastings knows thinking globally and acting locally is crucial to understand how each country reacts to Netflix’s content. This is one of the reasons why the company makes sure to personalize its offerings depending on where a subscriber is located.
For example: For Netflix’s first original content, “House of Cards,” the company created 10 different trailers to show to 10 different kinds of audiences.
The same approach applies to the brand’s show artworks: Displaying a different image depending on a user’s content preferences. Because of these strategies, Hastings is able to guide Netflix in meeting customers where they are, while also giving them impactful and engaging experiences.
- Talent Management
Hastings is known for establishing a “‘No Rules’ Rules” policy at Netflix, where employees are only guided by a 5-word principle:
“Act in Netflix’s best interest.”
This principle has made employees more responsible in doing their jobs excellently over the years. As Hastings said:
“We want people for whom freedom and responsibility work.”
- Taking Advantage of Various Online Trends
Hastings is 62 years old now, but that doesn’t mean he’s ignorant about social media and the online world.
In fact, one of his instructions to his workforce is to always look out for and take advantage of various online trends to create relevant content and generate highly engaged followers on Netflix’s social media accounts!
So, if you see Netflix posting memes, GIFs, polls, and other types of content online, you know who’s the mastermind behind those! Through social media, Hastings helps Netflix engage with its target audience and take every opportunity to remain relevant.
Part of what makes Netflix successful is because as a leader, Hastings knows how to think long-term, give employees the freedom to innovate, and anticipate future market changes. According to him:
“We knew that eventually, DVD would become streaming, but we didn’t know when, so we thought if we build a business that’s Internet-based, we’ll be in a great position to navigate that to streaming.”
The result of that?
Not only did Hastings turn Netflix into a billion-dollar brand but he was also acknowledged by Forbes as “the man who revolutionized how the world consumes content!”
… and until today, many are looking up to him in terms of leadership, talent management, and marketing.
We hope you enjoyed reading today’s “Marketing Marvels!”
With a vision and the right execution, you’ll also be able to do things like Hastings—able to position his brand into something his target audience enjoys.
Have a great start to the week!
(This article is from The Business Builder Daily, a newsletter by The I Institute in collaboration with MBO Partners.)
About The Dynamic Marketing Communiqué’s
“Monday Marketing Marvels”
Too often, industry experts and the marketing press sing the praises of some brand or company’s marketing strategy.
… only for the audience to later find out that its product was a flop, or worse, that the brand or company went bankrupt.
The true ROI in marketing can’t be separated from the business as a whole.
What good is a marketing case study if one can’t prove that the company’s efforts actually paid off?
At the end of the day, either the entire business is successful or it isn’t. And the roles of marketing and communication are always paramount to that success.
Every Monday, we publish a case study that highlights the world’s greatest marketing strategies, marketers, and communicators.
However, the difference between our articles and the numerous ones out there is that we will always make certain that the firm really did generate and demonstrate earning power worthy of study in the first place (compliments of Valens Research’s finance group) in keeping with a person’s leadership skills in the area of marketing and/or communication.
We’ll also study the greatest marketing fails and analyze what they did wrong, or what they needed to improve. We all make our mistakes, but better we learn from others’ mistakes—and earlier, rather than later.
Hope you found this week’s marketing marvel interesting and helpful.
Stay tuned for next week’s Monday Marketing Marvels!
Cheers,
Kyle Yu
Head of Marketing
Valens Dynamic Marketing Capabilities
Powered by Valens Research
www.valens-research.com
