Disney's 20th Century Fox Believes the Data Revolution is the Next Business Blockbuster

Most organizations are not innovative by design. And even though we live in an era of digital Darwinism, as technology rapidly evolves, the path to innovation isn’t always clear. Legacy business models, executive hierarchies, dated perspectives of customers, and more, add up to challenges that need modernization to break new ground. Every organization, if it aims to survive and thrive against digital Darwinism and compete for the future, must innovate. So, how can traditional companies do so? The answer lies in customer data. 

One of the genuine leaders in this emerging data revolution is Julie Rieger, president, chief data strategist and head of media at 20th Century Fox Film, a division of the Walt Disney Company. I had the privilege to meet her at Google Marketing Live in Silicon Valley. I have to admit, I’m a fan. Ahead of our meeting, I read a piece she wrote for Think With Google, "Lights! Camera! Data! How insights help 20th Century Fox Film reach the right audiences." In it, she shared how her bold data strategy is selling movie tickets and driving growth. I wanted to learn more.

Her path to where she is today, the team and data-centric business model she’s built and her progressive mindset and unique perspective are all very inspiring. I wanted to share that conversation with you here.

Julie’s role is complicated but necessary. She’s aiming to shift and modernize an organization that’s over 100 years old. That takes courage, vision and the ability to bring people together around a common set of challenges and opportunities to make informed decisions about innovation, digital transformation and ultimately, business growth. For Julie, the common core is data.

To earn support, start at the top

I asked her how she landed in her role and where organizations need to start to earn support in plugging into the data revolution. Her answer was to start at that top. “The number one ingredient to having a chief data strategist in an organization is your CEO…speed of the leader, speed of the pack,” she said. 

But that’s not as easy as it sounds. Whether you’re on the marketing, customer experience or data team, to reach the CEO, you have to speak the language of the C-Suite. That means, you have to translate your work, vision and strategy into stories that communicate business impact, outcomes and growth. Once you do, “that's when you can begin to shift your institutional beliefs and behaviors…that's when you can take the fear away from people, because they know that the leader is supportive,” she told me.

Change agents take the starring role at Fox

I view Julie as a leading example of a change agent, someone who believes so greatly in where the business needs to go, that they step beyond their roles to help drive necessary change. And, for change agents to be successful, they have to artfully bring people together to collectively understand risks and opportunities and then empower them with the data and insights to make informed decisions.

When I asked her how she does so, she shared a helpful basketball analogy.

“I feel like a guard…I pass the ball…I assist…I assist to all the groups in the organization that are responsible for their piece and then let them go make the basket,” she shared enthusiastically. “My job is to provide, like when I assist, signals about what our consumers think, feel, and do,” she continued. “I hand that off to production. I hand it off to marketing and let them own it. I'm here to give them more…more information.”

Making data human is what matters 

Data is more than just numbers. It humanizes customer behavior. Julie reminds us, the beauty of data is that it is always there, it doesn’t go away. Because it doesn’t, Julie and her team can build a customer database and tools on top of it that allow for what she called “look backs.” These look backs provide a searchable repository that helps anyone within the organization better understand customer behaviors, interests and their likelihood to take action. 

There’s also a humanity to the art of presenting data. According to Julie, the key is to make the data and its meaning human, “because that’s what matters,” she said. “People want to do good, they just do…and when data is presented in a way that’s not threatening...they’ll come to you,” she explained.

“Data to me, is words, language, it’s how we express ourselves” she shared. “It's how we tell our stories. It's how we express how we feel, how we think.

To get to the heart of the story, beyond the numbers, Julie is rounding out her team with data scientists, AI and machine learning technologies and psychologists. This is where humanity meets data. 

Julie told me more, “We get the data and we sort it, and then she goes through and helps us translate and understand it.” She continued, “That has been one of the most valuable things…numbers only tell you so much.”

Data powers enterprise-wide transformation

As data becomes more pervasive, the combination of humans and machines to scale insights across business groups becomes increasingly paramount. Julie’s work is now instrumental to the entire organization as it contributes individually and collectively to business growth. 

“The vision that we set early on was to affect everything that we did at the company…because we needed to transform,” she revealed. “If you're going to transform, you can't just transform in one division. You must transform as a company.”

Digital Darwinism doesn’t discriminate. Companies, like Fox, that invest in understanding customer behaviors, their preferences and intent and convert those insights into enterprise-wide innovation, will stay ahead of the evolutionary curve - and their competition.

As Julie shared, “The data, the strategy that we built, the systems, the tools that we built, inform all aspects of our business.” 

She’s just getting started. Julie’s already thinking about the future, literally. “Being able to not only understand your customer behaviors, but also predict it, is what we're building toward,” she concluded.

Brian Solis, Author, Keynote Speaker, Thinker

Brian Solis is world-renowned digital analyst and futurist. He is also a sought-after keynote speaker and an 8x best-selling author. In his new book, Lifescale: How to live a more creative, productive and happy life, Brian tackles the struggles of living in a world rife with constant digital distractions. His previous books, X: The Experience When Business Meets Design and What’s the Future of Business explore the future of customer and user experience design and modernizing customer engagement in the four moments of truth.

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