Dana Wheeler, senior vice president of marketing for The Fashion Channel (TFC), sat in her Chicago office and scrolled through the email messages in her inbox. Thankfully, none required an urgent reply. She toggled over to her calendar: no meetings for the rest of the day. Finally, she could focus her thoughts on reviewing her recommendations for TFCs new segmentation and positioning

wheeler believed that she had prepared a solid analysis felt confident about the strategy she was proposing. But next weeks senior management meeting would mark her first big presentation to the companys leaders sinceshe had joined TFC, and, she admitted to herself, she was eager to gain the support of her colleges.

There was a lot riding on the outcome of this meeting, both for Wheeler and for the channel. If founder and CEO Jared Thomas and his team liked what they heard, Wheeler would move forwardto implement recommendations. The company needed to strengthen its competitive position and would be spending more than $60 million in all national and affiliate advertising, promotion, and public relations in 2007, based on these recommendations. This would be an increase of $15 million over 2006 provider.

Background TFC was a successful cable TV network and the only network dedicated solely to fashion, with up- to-date and entertaining features and information broadcast 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. Founded in 1996 by two entrepreneurs, it had experienced constant revenue and profit growth above the industry average almost since the beginning. Revenues for 2006 were forecast at $310.6 million, marking another steady upswing. The channel was also one of the most widely available niche networks, reaching almost 80 million U.S. households that subscribed to cable and satellite television.1Women between 35 and 54 years were its most avid viewers, according to its annual demographic survey. But beyond basic demographics, the channel didnt have much in the way of detailed information about its viewers. Nor did it attempt to market to any viewer segments in particular. From the beginning, in fact, Jared Thomas had believed that TFCs marketing messages should appeal to as broad a group as possible in order to achieve the highest possible viewership numbers. Early on, the network had chosen Fashion for Everyone as the theme for its marketing programs; one of its more popular series in 2005 had been Look Great on Saturday Night for Under $100. TFC had clearly grown quickly without articulating any detailed segmentation, branding,or positioning strategy. However, at the beginning of 2006, the network realized that other networks were taking note of its success and beginning to add fashion-related programming to their line-ups. TFC was facing competition that could provide meaningful choices to both viewers and advertisers. By June 2006, these new competitive dynamicshad prompted Thomas to rethink his approach to marketing. At the quarterly executive meeting that month, he told his senior team: Its time for us to build a modern brand strategy and secure The Fashion Channels position as the market leader. I want touse marketing to lay a foundation for future growth. At the same meeting, Thomas had announced plans to sharply increase TFCs investment in advertising and to hire an experienced marketer to develop marketing and brand-building programs to support TFC continued growth. Enter Dana Wheeler, in July 2006. Wheeler had a strong background in marketing for packaged consumer products as well as broad experience in the advertising industry. Thomas expected that Wheeler would draw on these strengths to help TFC build on the momentum it had created to dateand stave off any competitors trying to make inroads. Still, he and some of the other members of the leadership team felt an urge to resist The network had been highly successful to date and no one wanted to break something that isnt broken. Wheelers Plans Wheeler turned back to her computer, opened up the slide-deck presentation she had created, and started reviewing it. As she beganto page through the materials,she was thinking about the trends in the advertising marketplace that Norm Frazier had been talking about in the sales forecasting meeting this morning. Frazier, senior vice president of Advertising Sales, had warned that TFC might need to drop the price for a unit of advertising next year by 10% or more if the network did not make some changes in its performance. He mentioned that both Lifetime and CNN had launched fashion-specific programming blocks that were achieving notable ratings (Exhibit 1). Frazier was a high-energy salesman who had personally built the strong ad sales performance of the channel. He was justifiably worried. Wheeler had left that meeting acutely aware that next weeks executive session wasnt coming a moment too soon. Wheeler knew that in order to hold or increase price it would be crucial to attract a critical mass of viewers who were interested in the networks content and were also attractive to advertisers. The key would be targeting the right viewers and offering advertisers an attractive mix of viewers when compared with what competitors were offering. Wheeler believed she had good market data that would give her insights into the options for identifying the right segments for TFC. At the same time she knew that the network needed to maintain its overall audience ratings with the cable consumers and the cable affiliate distribution network. If the network changed its offerings in a way that disappointed too many cable subscribers, it could risk losing its distribution support.Wheeler clicked to the slide that outlined the marketing tools in her arsenal, and then clicked to a slide near the end of the presentation that revealed an aggressive implementation schedule. Her plan was to build a strategy for segmentation, and use it as a base to employall of the marketing toolstraditional and internet advertising, public relations and promotionsto reach the target consumers with integrated positioning messages. She also knew that it would take time to create and launch all the elements of a well-integrated marketing programand that there was no time to waste.She moved back a dozen slides or so, opening the ones that summarized TFCs revenue stream from advertising salesand the slides that considered its revenue stream from cable-affiliate fees. Thomas and the rest of the senior management team knew this data as well as she did, she assumed. Everyone felt that advertising was TFCs primary growth opportunity. She wanted to think about her key messages one more time to ensure her recommendations would support building revenues as aggressively as possible. TFCs Advertising Revenue Model First, she reviewed TFCs advertising revenue model. TFC was on target to generate $230.6 million in 2006 from advertising. The advertising business model was built on attracting a mix of male and female viewers on a regular basis as measured by ratings (the percentage of television households watching on average during a measured viewing period.) Across the entire schedule, TFCs average rating was 1.0. With 110 million television households in the United States, this meant that on average 1,100,000 people were watching at any point in time.2 TFCs Ad Sales team sold access to these viewers via advertising spots (30 or 60seconds in length) to a variety of well-known consumer marketers ranging from cosmetics companies to brand name clothing designers and automobile manufacturers. There were usually six minutes of national ad time in each half hour of programming, 24 hours per day for a total of 2,016 minutes per week. Wheeler knew from industry studies that, in 2006, U.S. consumer advertisers spent almost $20 billion buying spots on cable networks such as TFC. Because there were several hundred cable networks competing for viewers and the related ad dollars, competition for ad revenue was always fierce across all the networks. While competition was intense for advertising overall, TFC remained the only network dedicated to fashion programming 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. This set up an interesting competitive dynamic. TFC needed to compete against a broad range of networks for advertising revenues. For these networks the ad buyers would be most interested in buying ratings and demographics, and less interested in specific programming subjects. At the same time TFC competed against other fashion- oriented programming that would appeal to advertisers who specifically wanted to participate in that programming context. The strong fashion programming blocks on Lifetime and CNN represented a double-edged competitive challenge. And if successful, more networks would likely copy the concept, skimming more viewers and ad dollars from TFC

Questions to solve

1) Brief Intro of the Case Study (Answer What/Who/When/Why/Where, Mention the main proponents, etc.)

2) Introducing to the Main Problem

3) Discussing Other Key Problems (if any)

4) Why do the problems exist?

5) How do they impact the organization?

6) Who is responsible for them and are they taking any action?

7) Possible solutions/outcomes

8) Conclusion: The best solution along with justifiable reasoning.