Friday, September 28, 2007

How Execs Are Stumbling In A New Media World

From GlobeandMail.com:

Executives at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia took great pains earlier this year to make certain the company's redesigned website looked flawless before rolling it out to the public.

After all, this is a media company whose magazines, books, products and programs feature ideas about attractive and tasteful lifestyles. Why not a beautiful site?

"That was a big mistake," Wenda Harris Millard, the company's president of media, said this week during a panel discussion at Advertising Week. "We put beauty before utility."

She said the front page, with its video player and jazzy graphics, included only about five links to actual content, "so the things people were looking for couldn't be found."

The mistake, she said, was in failing to understand that "when the reader or viewer or listener becomes the user, what she's looking for is much different — at least initially."

Read the entire article here.

Monday, September 24, 2007

Are You Keeping A PPM Diary?

From Dave Martin's PPM News & Comment Blog:

The early days of PPM include a growing store of advice, counsel on how to win in a PPM world. My thought is one of the most important and effective strategies is not yet getting the attention deserved.

Keep a diary.As a practical matter keeping a diary, or journal if you prefer, affords an outstanding return on investment. Your diary will prove invaluable in gaining an understanding of the PPM data.What is happening?
What is not happening? What are the players doing to influence the action?

Dave makes a great point. The level of granularity in the data we can see with the PPM is uniquely insightful.

Aside from what Dave mentions here, I would further recommend that each department in the station/cluster, especially Programming, Marketing and Promotions, track the activities and events happening inside and out of side of the station/cluster.

Why?

Ultimately, combining your diary/journal information with Arbitron ratings data, Media Monitors data and other market information will provide a comprehensive, multi-level tracking system to help you better determine how your station/cluster is performing under the PPM. Those insights will prove invaluable when crafting actionable strategies and tactics for operating in a PPM world.

Monday, September 10, 2007

2008 Demographic Targeting

2008 Demographic Targeting Tool

With the 2008 budgeting and planning season underway, here's a demographic targeting tool you can use to help determine the music years and/or eras most relevant to the your target (or hyper-target) audience.

Legendary programmer/consultant Todd Wallace first shared this focusing tool with me some years ago. And ever since then, I've kept it in my programming tool box along with other tools that I've created or collected. The tool covers all ages within the 25-54 demo, lower and upper end, making it easy to identify your audience's "coming of age" - and most passionate - music years.

If you would like a copy of the "Demographic Targeting Tool" excel spreadsheet, just drop me an email at geometricmedia@gmail.com and I'll get it right to you.

Monday Motivations (from The 100 Greatest Leadership Principles of All Time)

Here are a few of my favorites from The 100 Greatest Leadership Principles of All Time:


“The ultimate leader is one who is willing to develop people to the point that they surpass him or her in knowledge and ability.”
Fred A. Manske

“A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.

“I used to think that running an organization was equivalent to conducting a symphony orchestra. But I don’t think that’s quite it; it’s more like jazz. There is more improvisation.”
Warren Bennis

Read more here.

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

What Is Your Dream?

From Matthew Kelly’s The Dream Manager:

What Is Your Dream?

“The temptation is to convince yourself that your employees’ dreams are not relevant to your business. That is only true if your employees are not relevant to your business—and if that were true, why would you employ them?

Most employees feel like they are being used. But if you can genuinely convince them that you have their best interests at heart, then you will reverse that belief, and in the process create a spirit of teamwork and loyalty rarely unleashed in the corporate world before now.

Dreams are invisible, but powerful. You cannot see them, but they keep everything going.”

Mathew emphasizes that a key and critical role of leadership is the ability to recognize the dreams of those that we lead and inspire them to achieve those visions.

What are you and your management team doing to inspire your programming and sales talent to achieve their dreams?