Situation

TiVo Inc. is a global leader in next-generation television services. With global headquarters in San Jose, CA and offices in New York, NY, Durham, NC, and Warsaw, Poland, TiVo's innovative cloud-based Software-as-a-Service solutions enable viewers to consume content across multiple screens in and out-of-the home. The TiVo solution provides an all-in-one approach for navigating the 'content chaos' by seamlessly combining live, recorded, on-demand and over-the-top television into one intuitive user interface with simple universal search, discovery, viewing and recording from a variety of devices, creating the ultimate viewing experience. TiVo's multiple subsidiary companies provide the broader television industry and consumer electronics manufacturers with set-top box, cloud-based video discovery and recommendation options, interactive advertising solutions, and audience research and measurement services.

Challenge

Joe Miller: "Before we hired zoom we were in a position where we had a great technology, we had a great idea, and we had fun doing it. But like most companies we're really busy and trying to find exactly the direction that we wanted to go. We struggled with the category itself. If you think about it a TiVo really had no previous device to work of it was not a VCR it was not a DVD player. It was something new and trying to come up with a new category was very tricky."

Solution

"By using the term DVR which helped us galvanize our thoughts around that the term digital. It became really one of the most defining moments. Prior to that we had considered personal entertainment television and we had considered PVR. Near-term really didn't hold water and would not have held water for the long term either. DVR entered the consumer vernacular and still stands today ten years later. All too often we end up with subtle messages that are how the company wants to express itself not how consumers can deal with you. Having a firm point that matters is really needed for a company in the early days from a sales perspective. Because having a defensible position you have something to leverage and you have something to work off of.

Benefits

"We found that the process was not marketing, it was not PR, and it was not advertising. It was a true self-assessment of our position in the marketplace. Asked if we would recommend the Zoom process, we absolutely would. I think the work that was done for us in the early days really allowed Tivo to establish itself as a company for early investment as well as for the long term"