"MOG": On Managing DeWitt Media, Inc.

On Management

MOG = Management Operations Group

The Management Operations Group at DeWitt Media met every Monday morning at 830AM.

All department and client account group heads attended along with our CFO and me, about 12 people out of our total staff of about 95.

Each MOG member presented a single page recap of the status of all work in progress in their area of responsibility---e.g., media planning, media buying, client service---followed by questions and feedback from all other attendees.

In this way, no project could go very far off base since every assignment was flagged weekly.

MOG meetings were a great way for me and my management team to be kept apprised of every job in the house.

They also alerted client account managers to possible problems with direction, due dates and other issues that could be corrected before they got too far off track.

By scheduling meetings first thing Mondays (our normal hours were 9-5) we made certain that our senior managers

• Started the week with a bit of momentum;
• Ended each week reviewing past progress and planning for the week ahead; and
• Were engaged with and could contribute their ideas and input to every thing that was being done in the company.

There was also a social aspect to MOG as everyone came to feel responsible for and proud of the work of everyone else.

The Wikipedia definition of collegiality is I think a concise way to summarize why and how this all worked so well for us:

“Colleagues are those explicitly united in a common purpose and respecting each other's abilities to work toward that purpose.”

Mass Marketing Still Alive & Important

An article in the current issue of Fast Company is cited in today's Wall Street Journal's The Informed Reader blog. It seems to me that creating mass marketing platforms in today's fragmenting media world is perhaps more important for certain business categories that need to influence millions of customers daily (e.g., beer, fast food, soft drinks, politicians) than trying to assemble slivers of audience in the even more fragmented web world. After all, there are not many Super Bowl, Academy Award or Olympic level broadly based media vehicles left. And there still is no more powerful marketing communications medium than television.

Ten Things Reality TV Won't Tell You

Writing at SmartMoney.com, Kedon Willis provides a number of interesting observations about the fundamental unreality of what is called reality television. Of particular interest to advertisers is the finding that program producers often do not do thorough background checks on program participants, which has resulted in a number of violent acts and resulting financial settlements. Although the studios use iron-clad releases to avoid legal liability for such missteps, the negative public relations potential for a sponsor is immense. My suggestion: advertisers need to pay special attention to program participant background checks and insist that producers do the same. Other highlights of this very well done piece include the facts that:

• Reality TV today accounts for 20% of primetime programming on network television
• Actors are often hired to play the role of real people
• Celebrities are increasingly replacing 'real people' in these shows
• One hour of Reality TV costs as little as $1 million per hour vs. $3 million for each episode of a dramatic series
• Because these programs can draw audiences as higher or higher than dramas, they are very profitable for the networks and have thereby earned an enduring place in future programming schedules
  

They Call It Blogging

They call it ‘blogging’ a word that is redolent of kindergarten or adolescence or of geeky twentysomethings engaged in some sort of mutual electronic ego massage. What if it were called electronic publishing or even better since today everyone likes acronyms and initials EP? Would we---my peers, ‘adults’, tightlipped agers---think better of the practice? We could see EP as harmless diary-keeping, a new form of diary that opens the authors’ words, and thoughts and experiences literally to the world. Some aimless mindless jottings of a child in Dubuque available to read by an septuagenarian in Kirkiztan.

It is clear from what little I’ve seen ‘on the web’, that a million monkeys typing on a million keyboards are not likely, in spite of the old saw, to generate the King James Bible or the works of Shakespeare. On the other hand, isn’t it possible that over time this thing, this blogging, will result, is resulting, in a new form of self expression? Certainly it is liberating to think that one, I, can write something that does not rise to the level of literature but that can be shared with others without the intervening scrutiny of an editor and publishing house, without the expense (or waste) of paper, printing, distribution, remaindering and recycling. As best as I can tell there are no rejection slips in blogging other than the occasionally sharp comments of fellow EP’ers, candid comeuppances intended sometimes to hurt but more often to encourage even the lamest expression of experience, thought, feeling.

What’s the point? I’m not sure yet. But I think that this blogging thing represents something new in human experience, the chance to throw one’s thoughts to the wind and to see in whose branches they are caught even for a moment, to be shared by others briefly until they drift to the end, turn brittle and disappear like the leaves they are.

In Memory of Steve Florio

Since attending the funeral service this morning at St. Ignatius Loyola church here in NYC, I cannot stop thinking of Steve.

Not that I knew him that well. A few business meetings, a weekend in Key Largo, maybe a few meals at the Four Seasons---but anyone who knew him at all will recall that it didn’t take long for Steve to make a big and lasting impression.

People are saying that he was “bigger than life” in many ways: his outgoing personality, his aggressive points of view, his competitiveness. But I think rather that he was as large as life, that he lived life as it should be lived, to the fullest. And I think this scared and scares a lot of people because many of us live our lives smaller than they could be, afraid perhaps to make those around us anxious or uncomfortable.

In business I think that Steve thought it was a major part of his role as a leader to make people around him uncomfortable with the status quo, to shake things up, to make us unwilling to settle for less than could be achieved.

Steve loved stories so here are a couple from my memory of Steve.

I remember a memorable night on Andy Berlin’s yacht, sitting on the top deck with Steve and his gang of usual suspects (Tom, Richard, Chuck, Ron) puffing on fine cigars and sipping fine cognacs under a cover of bright stars and listening to an endless series of tall tales and risque jokes for hours and hours. Steve’s energy kept us all at a high pitch whenever we were around him; what a blessing!

I also remember working with Ron and Tom on the launch of the BMW Z3 automobile, their first roadster in America. Our task was to pre-sell 9000 cars with a small budget. The solution: an ‘outsert’ to accompany certain Vogue subscriptions consisting of a tune-in ‘program’ for the VH1 Fashion Awards and a sponsorship of the awards. Steve and his folks introduced the BMW people to key contacts at stores such as Nieman Marcus and Nordstrom’s to get showcases for the car.

Not only did we sell out the entire year’s production run before a single car was available but we did it in a classy, high quality way and we had fun doing it. That was Steve’s genius: surrounding himself with great people, always being open to ideas and willing to mow down any obstacles that got in the way.

Rest in peace, Steve. Vaya con dios.

Network TV “CashBacks”Pull the Rug Out From Under Advertisers & Doom the Upfront

A new age of media discontinuity may be dawning as the television networks, in giving cash to advertisers in lieu of promised audience or ratings, have pulled the rug out from under the foundation of trust that underlies the selling and buying of TV ad time. In giving cash instead of advertising to buyers of ad time, the networks are taking back time sold at one price in the past and reselling it to higher paying advertisers today. It’s “bait and switch” without the switch; the marketer who needs the ad time to sell goods is left with a bag or cash and no ad support.

Pre-emptions of previously purchased ad positions have long been a bane and ethical conundrum for local spot television ad sellers. Neither the media buyer nor the advertiser has ever been able to count on local stations to honor their media sales contracts. The ‘custom of the country’ for local TV stations in the U.S. has simply been to sell each spot to the last highest priced offer, reselling the same spot over and over until the last, highest paying offer is executed in the form of a telecast.

In this process, each of the early buyers of the same ad unit for ever increasing amounts, is “pre-empted” by the seller and offered a replacement spot or makegood, often in an inferior time period. As a result, one of the most expensive components of spot buying is the scheduling and rescheduling of makegoods. However, even in this swamp of reneged promises and towers of paperwork, one has usually been able to count on some sort of ad schedule airing approximately during the desired time periods.

However, the new network cash-back formula makes it impossible to count on the seller to ever deliver the promised goods. Any time ad rates increase over time, a network can now pre-empt an early ad buyer for a higher-paying latecomer. This situation makes much of the discussion about the Writers’ strike’s possible effects on the Upfront moot. In the “Cash Back Age” there really is no basis for an upfront, which is after all supposed to be at core a guarantee of audience at some future date. Let the buyer beware. A new, more risky media age is dawning.

I predict that the next few months will represent the most tumultuous period ever in the history of television. It is time for our industry---media sellers, ad buyers and advertisers---to sit down and to address the need for a new and reliable basis for doing business in the future, nothing less than a new foundation for television advertising commerce.

Media Agency Profitability May Drive Media Selection

Media Buying Today

What Leads Media Agencies to Recommend the Various Major Media?

Although we are primarily a consulting company, we undertook to place about $50 million for an advertiser over the past 18 months or so (mid-2006 through 2007). We planned, negotiated and scheduled time and space in virtually all media: national and local television and radio, magazines, newspapers, out-of-home and the internet. We bought every imaginable unit and just about every time schedule possible, from broadcasts upfront, calendar upfront, scatter, opportunistic and “the night before” and “day of”.

Since I had not been directly involved in media buying for quite a few years, having functioned as an executive, manager and company salesperson, I thought it would be interesting to comment on my experiences and perception of the various media from a front row seat. My perspective is that of the manager of a media buying operation, particularly viewing media from the point of view of whether we can make media buys that are effective and efficient for our clients and profitable for us.

Ease of Buying characterizes national media

There’s nothing like broadcast network television for spending a lot of advertising money fast. The networks are set up to accommodate media buyers in every possible way; in fact, my experience was that they do virtually all of the work involving in buying network time. For example, they’ll provide historical ratings tracks, project ratings forward to telecast dates and then guarantee their projections. What’s left for the buyers to do? Very little as far as I could tell. Plus the network sales people are friendly, responsive and exude positive energy. It’s a pleasure to meet with them and work with them. I found we could manage effective and efficient network buying very profitably.

National magazines come in a close second in efficiency for the ad buyer. The extra challenge represented by magazines arises in planning print schedules, selecting specific publications from the huge array of print vehicles available. Added the to complexity of the selection process and dealing with a large number of sales people, with quite a bit of duplication from the big publishers, is the importance of securing the best ad position in each magazine. Unlike television, which still offers something akin to an “involuntary” ad exposure at least to non-DVR users (the preponderance of all viewers today and in the near future), individual magazine ads are often ‘seen’ by a minority of the readers of a magazine. This is because magazine audience is measured by someone’s ‘exposure’ to the magazine issue, not to specific ads or even an average readership score for all ads in a book. The bottom line: when buying ‘expensive’ magazines such as People and Parade, it is still pretty easy to handle print buying profitably for the media agency.

Local media may be unprofitable for media agencies

Local television and radio, OOH and newspapers are a disaster in terms of media agency profitability and operational efficiency. The spot sales system is fundamentally dishonest because the same ad time is sold over and over in a series of serial ‘pre-emptions’ that drop earlier buyers for buyers offering to pay more as the telecast date nears. Out-of-Home is site-specific and requires a great deal of time to find locations and verify postings. Achieving significant reach with newspapers requires the use of large numbers of individual publications, each with its own approach to pricing, positioning, contracting and scheduling of ads.

The Internet offers media agencies a special income opportunity because advertisers seem to be willing to pay internet-focused agencies on a completely different basis from media agencies. Moving advertisers into more and more internet-based advertising is therefore a highly profitable strategy for ad media holding companies.

Media agency profitability may drive media selection

The bottom line of my 18 months back in the media buying saddle: the networks and magazines should do just fine over the next few years because they make it very easy for media buyers to recommend them. The Internet should continue to outpace other media’s growth. And expensive to place local media need to find another way to get on media buyers’ screens; until then, their revenue will continue to be rerouted to easier to place media.