After striking gold with its Paris Olympics coverage, Peacock now seeks to become one of the must-have streaming platforms. President Kelly Campbell shares what makes Peacock different, and the superpower strategy driving success in the ever-shifting streaming wars.
This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by Robert Safian, former editor-in-chief of Fast Company. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today’s top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode.
So are you still basking in the glow of the Olympics?
Peacock is certainly having a moment right now. You know, you can kind of feel that. It’s palpable, which is very exciting. I have people from all walks of life reaching out—from my teenage nieces and nephews to my parents and their friends, neighbors, former colleagues—and it’s exciting. The Olympics have played a big role, but we’ve had a great run for the past couple of years. Fastest-growing streamer, big breakout originals. So we’ve kind of known it all along. But as you sort of point out, you know, others are catching on. And so we’re going to bask a little but stay focused on what’s ahead as well.
Do you have particularly memorable moments from Paris, like were you hanging out with Snoop and Kevin Hart and Kenan Thompson or Alex Cooper?
There were a number of big moments. Snoop was certainly a hit. He did a little impromptu performance at a party we had to launch our NBA partnership. One of the highlights for me was the studio tour, just to see our teams in action, from Mike Tirico and Savannah [Guthrie] and Hoda [Kotb] to our teams that are behind the scenes making it all work. And of course the studio was set up right behind the beach volleyball. So you’ve got the view of beach volleyball and the Eiffel Tower, which was incredible.
That was a beautiful spot. Amazing.
Oh, it was gorgeous. Yeah, we’ve got our work cut out for us with L.A. in ’28, which is where I’m based. No shortage of beautiful places, but you’re not going to get the Eiffel Tower, you know, so yeah. But the athletes too. I mean, these athletes are incredible, and so stopping by Team USA and getting to talk to some of the athletes who are just such an inspiration was really cool. I was like a fan, you know, “Can I take a picture with you?” It’s really cool.
The challenge after a big success is always keeping the momentum going, right? How much are you expecting from the Paralympics? Or now that Premier League soccer started up or the NFL season is coming that like, the focus is even further out?
It’s both. There are teams who are extremely focused on the Paralympics right now that really barely got a break between the Olympics and the Paralympics. But we also are extremely focused on what’s coming when you bring together our football coverage across the NFL, Big 10, Big East, Notre Dame, like we’ve got a pretty incredible lineup starting with Thursday night of Kickoff Weekend. Then on Friday, we have an exclusive NFL game that will be only available on Peacock. That’s the Friday night game that’s taking place in Brazil.
But we get to use moments like those to launch entertainment content as well. So Fight Night is a show that we are super excited about that will sort of launch out of that momentum. We promoted it during the Olympics, so consumers and fans are starting to get excited about it. And then we’ll get to launch it out of this moment.
It’s like Peacock is a version of ESPN. Is ESPN in some ways a competitive model or opportunity?
And so much more. Sports play a really critical role. Sports are a great hook to bring people in, but even with the live sports people who come in, like we call our “sports cohort” or “sports first” audience—people who come in and the first thing they watch is a live sporting event. We typically see that nine out of ten of their next titles are entertainment titles.
So, sports play a really powerful role as a hook, but then once we get people in and we can uncover everything else that’s on Peacock from our original series, we have a super expansive library. We’ve got all of Universal’s films right after theaters. So sports play a big role as an anchor, but it’s so much more than sports. It’s really that mix of entertainment content with sports that sets Peacock apart in this market.
So it’s more like the Disney bundle with ESPN and Hulu and Disney+ together?
That’s a good way to think about it. It’s like people are starting to get it, you know? I don’t have to explain to everyone what Peacock is. I can just say “Peacock.” It doesn’t have to be a disclaimer—“NBC Universal streaming service, a mix of next-day content from NBC and Bravo and the library content.” It’s like people are really getting it.
Your background is from Silicon Valley. You worked at Google. So you’re familiar with a little platform called YouTube. How do you think about YouTube relative to the streaming competition? They’re not tied to a network, but they are a default, particularly for many younger-generation viewers.
Yeah, look, it’s a different type of content. So I think the reasons to turn on YouTube are different from the reasons you might open Peacock or any streaming service. I mean I certainly think of them as a competitor when it comes to share of time, which is ultimately the game that we’re all playing. When it comes to attracting the best creators and putting the best sort of premium content out in the market, our competitive set differs.
Do you have a vision for what the future of entertainment looks like and the future of streaming? Is there a clear place that you’re trying to move toward, or do you just have to adjust and adapt continually?
I mean, it’s a little bit of both. If you think about it, there will be a handful of players who emerge as the must-have streaming services. We believe that Peacock is absolutely positioned to be one of those. At the same time, it’s a growth business in a growth space, and things happen very quickly. We have to move very quickly. Even just using the Olympics as an example, we had multiple daily meetings throughout the Olympics—one of which was at midnight Paris time.
So it was like regardless of where you were, you made these meetings happen and we used those meetings to make real-time decisions. Fans wanted to see more Snoop—“Where can I find all the Snoop coverage?” So we were able to pull together all of the coverage that Snoop did, put it into a collection, and make it available for the consumer to just click on the highlights from Snoop and watch that.
It’s like an example of, if you zoom all the way out now to Peacock, of the sort of cadence that we have to have internally, because we do have to move fast. We have to make fast decisions. And so I think that’s a bit of a superpower for Peacock: We have a leadership team that is comprised of people who are such specialists in what they do, but that come together every day focused on these Peacock outcomes. And there’s a cadence or a pace that is just lightning fast. And we’ve now been in it long enough together that we’ve sort of found that groove and I think we are starting to see real potential about what’s possible.