DMEC

Last week DMEC held its annual trip to LA, which for me was also a first visit in the city. We had a packed agenda, courtesy of many club members who utilized their networks to assure an awesome trip (and orchestrated by our ultra-capable co-VP careers, Richard).

DAY I – Time Warner, Blizzard, Alumni, Traffic

We started the first day visiting Time Warner in Burbank. We met with people from various departments – from the DVD catalog marketing, to Content Acquisition; from DVD Production to Digital Marketing. One of the key takeaways from this meeting was the immense impact that new content delivery method and the digital channels have on the thinking of everyone in the industry. These forces are highly acknowledged by the industry expert and raise tons of fascinating questions related to the existing business models. Two initiatives that the Time Warner people mentioned that are highly impacted by the digital content revolution are the inclusion of digital copies of movies with the purchase of standard DVDs and the Warner Archive – a new online service that allows users to select rare movies from the WB archive and have them specially burned and delivered to them personally (instead of going into mass production as was done in the past).

Our next station was Blizzard Entertainment. We were extremely excited about this unique opportunity to visit their secretive labs and we weren’t disappointed. Our visit started in a screening room where we watched some of the new trailers for Starcraft 2, followed by a presentation by HR and Marketing managers, moved to a tour in the company’s museum and R&D space (which is probably the coolest working space I’ve ever seen) and ended with an open discussion at one of the cafeterias. The most impressive thing about Blizzard is their focus on their brand equity and the clear emphasis on maintaining this high quality perception. Not only that, but it seems that the people in Blizzard really know their target audience and take great care in listening and meeting their expectations.

The day ended with a free-food-and-drinks (yay!) mixer with Haas Alumni at the Bodega Wine Bar. Oh…and there was traffic…it seems as if every road in LA is completely blocked between 5am-11pm. no matter which road you choose, it takes hours to get from one part of the city to another. It was the first time I really understood those parts of The Entourage where Ari needs two hours to get to a meeting at 12pm. I mean, what place on earth has traffic jams at 12pm? At least for us it was a great opportunity to bond with our DMEC car-mates.