Nielsen

The case explores the CEO’s response to an existential threat to Nielsen’s core business coupled with a challenge to the company’s core values. Nielsen’s highly profitable TV audience measurement and customer confidence in Nielsen’s main offering – trusted, accurate data - is threatened by shifting consumer viewing habits and emerging competitors using disruptive technology. The TV panel homes, Nielsen’s long standing  differentiator for audience measurement, is appearing to lose relevance to customers; at the same time, household recruiting challenges is contributing to salesforce income disparity, impacting morale and testing the company’s commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. The company announced a radical new product, Nielsen ONE, powered by data and machine learning, but it would be differentiated, the company insisted, by the venerable Nielsen panel – households across America. At the same time, COVID, George Floyd’s murder and the Black Lives Matter movement tested Nielsen’s operations and the authenticity of its purpose and values. Can the CEO and his senior leaders use a multistakeholder lens to simultaneously address the compensation inequity issue, as well re-frame its customer value proposition and the role of the household panel to compete effectively against the new disruptors?