Sep 11, 2009

Q&A Interview with Rachel Dreyfus - Time Warner Cable

Rachel Dreyfus is the VP Marketing Intelligence at Time Warner Cable. Rachel is the new co-Chair of CTAM’s Research Planning Committee and is currently involved in all aspects of Time Warner Cable customer satisfaction research. Rachel talks about her background - how she got to where she is today - some current projects, past changes and future predictions.

The four videos in this interview are as follows:

Video Subject                                           Length in Minutes
Background and Favorite Part of the Job       4:12
Current Projects                                              3:46
Past and Future                                               4:36
CTAM                                                             3:52





CW: Rachel, what are you working on right now?

RD: Working on a lot of things right now simultaneously. But the most important thing for the year 2010 is going to be improving our customer experience. Our industry has talked about that for at least 20 years or more but now with the competitive environment the way it is and our video market share challenged with the phone and the internet category slowing in terms of growth and potential we really need to focus on the customer experience. So a lot of our research is focused on guiding our decisions in terms of what is important to the customer. What do we really need to do to provide a branded Time Warner Cable customer experience that will make customers engaged with our company, for more of a two way relationship with our customers – not just send them a bill every month – but show them some love, show them some appreciation for their business and in turn hopefully be known as the provider who deserves their business….



CW: Can you tell me anything that you discovered from the Three Screen Study? Anything that surprised you? Anything that you found particularly noteworthy?

RD: Yes. The study was very interesting because they were tracking, fusing if you will, two different panels – panels of online viewers and panels of the same consumers who were watching tv traditionally. So Nielsen had these two panels and they found that the top quintile of traditional tv viewers were also in the top quintile of online video viewers. So what the finding was that the people who watch the most tv are also the same people who watch the most online video. The conclusion therein was that there won’t be any cannibalization, at least there isn’t now, of traditional tv viewing from online viewing. And from the MSO perspective we have a different point of view on that because as it becomes easier and easier to find the online video, as it becomes better quality like HD quality on online video and as the user experience becomes more convenient, that’s when we will see more and more people jettison one for the other. That is not far away in the future. So right now we are just taking in all the different research that we can on all these topics and try to synthesize it for ourselves and come up with a point of view and a strategy that will help us prepare and anticipate consumers future behaviors



Rachel Dreyfus, VP Marketing Intelligence at Time Warner Cable, talks about her career path and how she discovered Research as a career and her favorite projects in her current job.




Rachel Dreyfus, VP Marketing Intelligence at Time Warner Cable, talks about what she is working on now. How is the media landscape changing and what do we need to do to better serve the customer?







CW: What would you say are the most dramatic changes in the industry in the past five years?

RD: In the past five years social networking and blogging have overtaken almost any other internet activity we have and they now encompass something like one in every eleven minutes of internet activity time spent. I think that is really important because consumers are finding information from their own networks of friends more than they might be finding it from mass advertising or from any other media. And what that does is it propels internet ahead of tv as the most crucial service that you can’t live without. People are using these tools and getting their recommendations and word of mouth is spreading. We need to find a way to capitalize on social networking in our company and in our industry so we take advantage of the power that that has to offer us. I don’t think anyone has cracked that nut yet from a business perspective. It isn’t about forcing information at people or trying to be their friends but what I think will happen is that we will figure out the way to use social networking for consumer research purposes, for creating new ideas, passing new programming through the green light process and that sort of thing. And when we do it will be a very powerful tool for our industry.




Rachel Dreyfus, VP Marketing Intelligence at Time Warner Cable, talks about dramatic changes in the media landscape such as social networking and blogging and also offers some future predictions.





CW: Rachel, you are a member of the CTAM Research Committee and congratulations, you have just been named the co-chair of the Research Conference Committee.  Can you tell us about the work you’ve done on the committee and your plans for the Research Conference?

RD: Sure. I’ve been on the CTAM Research committee for about 4 years, since I joined Time Warner Cable. And I’ve been very involved in the Nielsen Three Screen Study where we are looking at traditional use of video and how online video use may or may not be cannibalizing traditional video use. From the MSO perspective we are very interested in tracking that and religiously trying to figure out what the business model for the future will be as more and more content goes online. So I’m very involved in that study. Yes, I was just named co-chair of the CTAM Research Conference for next year. That conference will be in May of next year so I hope to motivate everybody to attend it. I’m co-chairing with Karen Ramspacher from fuse. We look forward to shaking up that conference and making it compelling and actionable for everyone who attends.


Rachel Dreyfus, VP Marketing Intelligence at Time Warner Cable, discusses CTAM, the Three Screen Study and, as co-chair, her future plans for the CTAM Research Planning Committee.



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