Case Studies: Digital Audit & Governance
Merlin Entertainments Audit
Merlin Entertainments was experiencing digital performance stagnation and poor return on digital investment, against market trends. To improve return on digital investment and the performance of the digital channel, Merlin Entertainments elevated its digital governance based on Tengja’s recommendations.
Background
Merlin Entertainments is one of the world’s largest attraction operators with 130 attractions across 30 countries. These brands include LEGOLAND/LEGO Discovery Centres, Sea Life, Peppa Pig World of Play and more.
Insight & Strategy
Given its target audience, digital is a core channel for Merlin. However, the brand had started to experience digital performance stagnation. The return on digital investment was also poor across the organization. Both pain points perplexed the commercial leadership team as market trends showed that consumers were adopting digital more than ever and technology cost was falling.
Tengja Digital was brought in to conduct an objective audit of Merlin’s digital practices and to provide recommendations to elevate their digital practice and improve return on digital investment.
Based on a series of interviews and audit activities, Tengja identified that the root cause of their digital deficiencies was a lack of governance – the decentralized, reactive approach to digital. Different digital teams had their own digital plans and tech stacks, independent of others. Based on the key findings, Tengja Digital introduced the hub & spoke operating model to Merlin’s commercial leadership team.
Additionally, Tengja Digital also helped Merlin’s commercial leadership team see the potential of a holistic, customer-centric digital ecosystem where various Merlin brands could cross sell and more effectively bring greater value to its customers.
Results
Tengja Digital was invited to present the findings to the executive team and to provide a digital marketing overview to help contextualize the recommendations. The recommendations were well received by both the executives and the digital teams. Merlin has established a digital centre of excellence since the recommendations were made and has recently made a few key hires to improve digital competencies at the corporate level.
