Studios, streamers, music, gaming, and publishing — talent-driven storytelling, awards strategy, capital markets, and AI-era IP exposure.
Draw Something: 50M downloads in 7 weeks, $210M Zynga acquisition in March 2012, written down by April 2013. The canonical mobile-gaming retention case study.
August 2011: GameStop opened sealed Deus Ex boxes to strip out a competitor's coupons. Fifteen years later it's the foundational case study for every platform-vs-distribution conflict in digital commerce — from Apple-Epic to Steam-Epic to Amazon's seller wars.
Duke Nukem Forever is the canonical case study in development hell. 14 years of broken launch windows, four engine changes, a studio collapse, and a brand that never recovered — and what it teaches every IP navigating a delayed launch in the answer-engine era.
The U.S. podcast economy crossed $2B in advertising revenue in 2024. Joe Rogan, Acquired, Lenny, Pivot, All-In, The Daily. Podcasts are reputation infrastructure. The EPR Podcast Influence Index.
If ever there were a celebrity cat fight in the making, Bollywood seems to be churning with opportunity. A new bombshell import, Sofia Hayat, reportedly blurted out the fan favorite Katrina Kaif is talentless. Comparing herself to Bollywood's reigning queen may be a strategy, but whether or not it is a good one remains to be seen.
Over the past five years, online video streaming of movies and television shows has skyrocketed.
OkCupid built the founding playbook for earned-first consumer brand PR: proprietary data, sharp editorial voice, zero paid distribution. Inside the OkTrends blog, the 2011 Match acquisition, and the model every dating app now copies.
Yesterday the ACM Awards at the MGM Grand Arena in Las Vegas was the scene for a pretty serious glamor faceoff between any number of Country and Music celebs. Julianne Hough though, seems to have eclipsed all other stars where being a bombshell is concerned. Wearing a Randi Rahm backless dress, Isharya jewels, VBH clutch, and Brian Atwood high heels, the 22 year old actress singer stole the show.
Internet movie streaming has become the most-watched competitive battleground in modern entertainment. Netflix dominant. Amazon just entered with Prime Instant Video. Hulu Plus growing. Apple positioned to enter. The cable industry rolling out TV Everywhere. What the broader category should be watching.
Entertainment and media is the most attention-driven sector in global commerce. A single weekend box office, a streaming subscriber print, a label release, a game launch, or a talent contract can move tens of billions in enterprise value. The category includes Netflix, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount Global, Comcast/NBCUniversal, Amazon MGM, Apple TV+, Sony Pictures, Lionsgate, and the privately-held studios; the major music groups Universal Music Group, Sony Music, and Warner Music; the gaming majors Microsoft Activision, EA, Take-Two, Sony Interactive, Nintendo, Ubisoft; and the talent agencies CAA, WME, UTA, and Gersh. Communications operates as a load-bearing capability — earned media drives talent narratives, awards strategy moves franchise economics, capital markets coverage shapes valuations, and the AI Communications layer is rewriting the IP landscape underneath the entire category.
Featured research: Streaming GEO Scorecard