RESEARCH

Brands Will Redefine Gender, Ownership, Customer Experience In 2019

• by Tanya Gazdik  @TanyaGazdik, December 23, 2018

From substituting subscription services for ownership, to evolving how gender influences products, the norms that have governed how brands acted will be challenged in 2019, according to a trends report from global brand consultancy Landor.

Landor analyzed innovations, consumer behavior and attitudes across myriad industries and the changing marketing landscape to determine the top trends for the coming year.

Focusing on the brand experience is critical in 2019, says Tiffany Vasilchik, chief growth officer at Landor.

“As technology becomes so integral to every experience, many brands are concentrating on engineering friction-less and seamless experience -- but this can, in effect, commoditize many brands,” Vasilchik tells Marketing Daily. “Creating an experience that conveys your brand in a unique and important way may be more important than efficiency.”

One example is Blue Bottle Coffee. The brand uses an elaborate, slow-pouring process, which turns getting a cup of coffee into a performance. “It takes longer to get served, but customers love it,” she says.

The norms that have dictated how brands routinely act will be challenged in 2019, according to the forecast. As gender becomes more open and inclusive, an increasing number of companies will turn away from “him” and “her” products and brand for “all.” 

“While gender neutrality is on the rise, we’re not advocating it for every situation,” Vasilchik says. 

For example, a recent survey said that only 18% of Americans want a “gender-neutral Santa.” While the sample size may have been questionable, it illustrates the point that not every brand has to be neutral.  

“It’s OK for brands to be feminine or masculine or neutral -- in fact, gender non-binary choice is also on the rise,” Vasilchik says. “What is most important for brands is to make conscious choices about gender and how it’s manifested in their brands. Ensure the brand teams making those decisions are acting on sound insight and are, in fact, gender-balanced.”

Consider voice assistants, for example.  Most are female. Most brand characters, such as the Pillsbury Dough Boy, are male.

“Why is there not a gender balance in these brand representations?” Vasilchik asks. “Do companies have a particular branding reason for making their voice assistant female or character male? Choices like these should be made based on awareness and an understanding of what brand personality they are hoping to convey.”

Other trends highlighted in the report: Brands across industries will have to incorporate health and wellness into their products and services, and companies will create customer experiences that appeal to emotions, rather than simply perform a function.

“More than ever, brand marketers need to make purposeful choices and not be afraid to take a stand, whether is it going beyond traditional gender norms or using the brand as a platform to weigh in on societal issues, like Nike did with the Colin Kaepernick ad,” Vasilchik says. “They need to understand their purpose and how that manifests across every aspect of the brand experience and make deliberate choices about what benefits they want to provide and how they engage the consumer.”

Then there's the rise of the “subscription economy." As younger generations continue to favor borrowing over ownership -- especially for large ticket items -- subscriptions that provide on-demand products and services will become the norm for a growing number of sectors and products.

Millennials and Generation Z are turning to flexible on-demand subscription services for cars (Access by BMW), luxury jewelry (Flont),textbooks (Cengage), cooked pet meals (Butternut Box), clothes (airCloset), and furniture (Lisa).

And as the fan base for esports competition continues to grow, traditional sporting leagues are embracing virtual and augmented reality to put spectators right in the game.

For example, the NBA’s AR Portals app allows fans to immerse themselves behind the scenes with their favorite teams; it can even turn any flat surface into a court for practicing shots.

“Consumers want to be 'in the game,’” Vasilchik says. “Whether we’re talking about esports or consumer products, customers want to have a voice and a role and actively engage with brands that interest them. Marketers should look for two-way dialogue and increased interactivity with the consumer. They shouldn’t be afraid to talk directly to their customers on social media.”

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Commentary

What Didn't Change The World Of Advertising In 2018 -- And Probably Won't In 2019

• by Dave Morgan , Featured Contributor, December 20, 2018

It seems like a good time to relive some of the most-hyped technologies and trends predicted to change the world of advertising in 2018.

Here are some of my personal favorites:

Blockchain. There’s no question that blockchain technology will find many applications for the advertising industry at some point — some with real market impact. However, blockchain is not going to revolutionize our industry nearly as fast as the hype would have you believe.
AI. Yes, artificial intelligence is an important technology that has been with us for decades, but is finally showing the capacity to improve computing systems in a number of industries, advertising included. However, the hype of AI for advertising massively overstates its capacity for actual real-world impact in the business today.

Data science. I am a big fan of data science, and spend a lot of time personally working on increasing its application and impact on the advertising industry. However, anybody who’s realistic would realize that the vast majority of decisions made in advertising are not even very empirical, so we shouldn’t expect “big data” to change advertising — not until our industry becomes more comfortable making decisions on even “small data.”

What market dynamic might live up to its pre-season hype as we head into 2019?
My bet is the D2C [direct to consumer] movement. Not since the emergence of the World Wide Web have I seen something emerge that could be as consequential on the advertising, media and marketing ecosystem as the revolution being staged today by these digitally based brands to undermine channel-dependent incumbents in industries as far-ranging as razors, contact lenses and mattresses. This trend will only accelerate in 2019.

What do you think? What technologies or trends didn’t live up to their 2018 hype?

COMMENTARY

Visual Search, Gen Z, Live Video: Trends For New Year

• by Robert Passikoff , Op-Ed Contributor, 4 hours ago

Marketers are now preparing for 2019 fiscal brand planning. It helps to have an advance look at trends that will be make-or-break decisions — both for brands and for consumers. 

1) Real People, Real Profits: Celebrities are so 2015. Reality stars are not any better. Brands will benefit from leveraging real customers and authentic voices in the marketplace. 

2) Augmented Reality Will Become Real: Marketers will use the interactive experience of the real-world environment, enhanced by multiple sensory modalities, including visual, auditory, and olfactory.

3) Don’t Disregard Generation Z: Born hot-wired to technology, Gen Z will make up 30% of the U.S. population, a larger cohort than the baby boomers or millennials. Oh, and augmented reality will appeal! A lot.

4) A More Customer-Centric Mindset Required: How consumers define “value” has already become more complex. That’s only going to increase. Only consumers can tell you why they buy the way they do. Ubiquity will spell trouble for brands.

5) Live Video Is Not An Oxymoron: Live streaming will take video to a new level in a more emotional and intimate way for interviews, personalized outreach, and higher conversion rates.

6) Brand Surrogacy Is Basic: Brands will continue to be surrogates for “value.” Brands will have to work harder to avoid reliance on price points and price tags.

7) Personalization Augments Customization: The availability of enhanced Big Data analyses will make personalized content and outreach more engaging. Think of it as real-time outreach based on real consumer behavior multiplied by how customers really see themselves.

8) Consumers Want More: Consumer expectations have increased by 28% year over year. Brands kept up by just 7%, which leaves a huge gap between what’s desired and what’s delivered. Expectations will only continue to increase.

9) Search Becomes More Visual: Today’s (and tomorrow’s) consumers are more visually literate than ever before. Visual search will enhance the user experience and better meet consumers’ ever-expanding expectations. 

10) Don’t Snub Voice Search: More than half of all searches will be via smarter, learning-capable AI voice assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Home.

11) Engagement and Entertainment Are Different:  Entertainment provides amusement. It gets attention, but it doesn’t guarantee sales. Real engagement affects the emotional consumer-to-brand bond and the bottom line. A laugh or a tear isn’t an acceptable ROI for all your efforts.

12) Everything Will Get More Emotional: Successful brands need to first identify what emotional values exist in their category, and then worry about being entertaining. Differentiation has become more dependent on what a brand can offer emotionally.

These trends provide brands the opportunity to break habits, embrace new methods of engagement, and new -- and profitable -- opportunities into their brand planning.

COMMENTARY

How Does Audience Buying Fit Into The Next Upfront?

• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, Yesterday

Against the pull of traditional TV advertiser systems, habits and price biases, TV advertising’s upfront market for the 2019-2020 season -- some $22 billion -- hopes to move some business to audience-based guaranteed buys from age/gender-based deals.

How much? Jay Prasad, chief strategy officer, VideoAmp, the TV/digital advertising technology company, says maybe around $3 billion worth next year -- around 10% to 15% of the market.

“It’s admittedly aggressive -- but not out of reach when you look at two factors. First, is the volume of estimates from companies like NBCU, which have already invested in making audience-based, cross-screen buys a core component of their upfront strategies,” he says.

Second, he points to AT&T’s new advanced advertising unit Xandr, which focuses on audience-based buying and addressable TV advertising.

“[There] is the push to create new marketplaces like [AT&T’s] Xandr, where everything available is addressable, cross-screen, and measurable. If the inventory is available, it goes across screens, allowing buyers to more intelligently plan and measure their audiences. Then that’s how they’ll spend their upfront budgets,” Prasad adds.

For many analysts, the growth audience-based buying assumes more companies jump in -- especially around the Open AP network consortium initiative that Viacom, Fox, Turner, NBCUniversal and Univision have supported. Those companies say they represent about 50% of all national TV advertising inventory.

Much of Open AP's efforts have been to identify common-core audience groups for TV marketers going forward -- something that should move the market. Some media agency estimates: 10% to 15% of advertisers’ budgets should go into new audience targeting.

But what about more specific deal point guarantees -- like specific sales outcomes?

“The upfront is still about brand marketing,” says Prasad, speaking to TV Watch. “It should be about efficient reach against a strategic audience; you could have a secondary currency about age and gender.” In addition, a third currency could be about location, sales, social media engagement or another outcome.

Why be this aggressive for traditional media this year? Because big digital media players are ready to swoop in and really knock over some traditional media practices.

“If the market and traditional media doesn’t move this fast, what do you think about Amazon? Do you think they are going to sell age and gender?” he asks.

He says if Amazon buys up a big sports TV network/franchise, it will connect viewers’ Amazon accounts to TV commercials. That is a good enough reason to at least take one strong step.

No doubt legacy TV upfront base price deals -- and a host of other traditional media factors -- will remain major obstacles. But a small change may signal bigger ones.

10 Ways to Build Customer Loyalty and Trust

10 Ways to Build Customer Loyalty and Trust

Monday December, 17, 2018  for LeNoble’s Media Sales Insights

Author: Michael Nørregaard

When prospects are evaluating your company, they’re looking to ultimately maximize their return on investment. They want minimal downtime, support they can rely on and access to as much training as possible, so they can be in turn, as successful as possible with their deployment.

While that may seem like an obvious statement, it’s easier than you think to overlook these important items. You can have the best and most user-friendly offering on the market. But if you’re not doing as much as you can to create a customer-first culture -- one where you are passionate about your product and your customer’s needs -- you’re missing a valuable opportunity to not only set your customers up for the most success but also to ensure that they stay with you for life.

Besides the obvious benefits of high customer retention – you’ll generate more revenue and it’s more cost effective to keep a customer than find a new one – possibly the most important result of a stellar support program is the loyalty and trust you’ll build with your customers.

To get started, examine your customers’ journey within your organization -- every touchpoint they have in your company, every person they interact with. Create a holistic view and start to implement support where it’s needed. For instance, do you have a way to listen to your customers? Most companies are heads-down on product innovation or sales, and by not having a process in place for your customers to share feedback, you may be missing major red flags and losing existing customers.

Here are 10 ways you can offer the best support and create customer loyalty and trust:

1. Get them excited about using your product from the start. This is crucial. Ensure new customers are armed with the training they need to be successful. Creating videos is easier than ever these days. Most people would much rather watch a series of short training videos versus reading text. So hit record and tell your new clients what they need to know. They’ll appreciate the more personable approach and easily digestible videos. And don’t stop after their onboarding. Constantly be adding training videos to your library, and you’ll quickly have a robust place for your customers to reference whenever needed.

2. Listen, plain and simple. It really doesn’t get much easier than this. All you have to do is open your eyes and ears and understand what your customers need. Create a community that is their go-to place for tech support, product documentation and networking. The community could house all of those training videos. Allow them to ask questions about your product and share ideas and best practices. Plus, make sure all of your employees interact in the community, so they can answer questions in real time.  

3. Let your customers be part of your development track. One of the most popular features of our customer community is called Share an Idea. Customers can suggest a feature or changes they’d like to see in our technology, and other community members can vote on the ideas to help get them into our development process. This high-touch approach gives them a place to be heard and builds loyalty with our product. A side bonus: this collaboration in the community reduces the “ask” on your support teams.

4. Be transparent. Give them sneak peeks into your roadmap with webcasts. Customers LOVE it when you tell them the product they’ve been asking you for is in the works. Make sure they know what’s coming up by communicating with them in your customer community.

5. Tell their story and they’ll tell yours. Turning your customers into brand ambassadors is an outstanding opportunity to get your company and product name out there. Think about it this way: Yes, you’re asking them to spread the good word about you, but in the process you’re also giving them a lot of exposure. It’s a win-win. So work with your marketing departments to create compelling customer testimonials. Have customers speak about their experiences with your company at industry conferences, let them share their stories with analysts and ask them to write a guest post on your blog and do interviews with reporters (to name a few things). Make sure they’re entrenched in your company and you’ll create a deeper loyalty.  

6. Travel to them. It’s not enough to have a five-star support team based in your headquarters. You probably have customers all over the country or world. Your support should be, too. Provide support year-round on the road with a network of sales engineers. From supporting clients during deployment to keeping everything running effectively at their organizations, build a network of sales engineers that spans your customer base. They’ll appreciate you going that extra step to make sure they have everything they need to succeed.

7. Meet face-to-face regularly. Give your customers easy access to your team and the opportunity to meet in person by organizing regional user group meetings, summits and an annual user conference. The relationships and, if you’re lucky, friendships that form as a result of these events are priceless. If you aren’t able to host an event, look into local Meet-Ups or Ask Me Anything sessions on Facebook or Twitter.

8. Analytics are your friends. You wouldn’t make massive business decisions without doing a cost analysis. Your marketing team wouldn’t send emails and not look at the open rates. And your sales team wouldn’t call a prospect without first researching the person and company. Yes, those are obvious statements, but all that to say – Do your homework. You have a lot of metrics at your fingertips to measure customer satisfaction. Don’t ignore them. Monitor customer engagement on your community. Create your own customer support survey. On the flip side, this data will measure where customers fall off on their journeys and help you react. More importantly, the data can help you proactively prevent that from happening. It will show when customers’ usage drops, for example, and you’ll be able to help get them back on the right track before you lose them.

9. Delight customers at every turn by thinking about the small stuff. This might seem trivial in the grand scheme of things, however adding something simple to a package can go a long way. Maybe it’s a cool piece of swag (a sticker, a mug, a baseball cap or some fun socks) or a special offer. Top it off with a personalized note. You’d notice an effort like that from your vendors, right? Your customers will, too. And don’t forget about packaging. Wrap those little gifts in your brand colors.

10. Give them room to grow. We just built a new data center to accommodate massive growth in Europe. Think about taking big steps like this to show customers you’re doing everything you can to help them grow. Do you need to offer more features to help them do their jobs? Do you need to record more training videos about using your product or service? Do you need to plan more face-to-face site visits?

Creating a strong customer-first culture requires you to open your eyes and ears to new ideas, initiatives, products and services. It means doing everything you can to ensure your customers have what they need to succeed and reminding them with every action that you are passionate about helping them reach their goals.

Customer loyalty and trust is difficult to build but easy to lose. Make sure you’re doing everything possible to build deep relationships with your clients. Let them know every day that they come first. To your success.

Michael Nørregaard is senior vice president of customer experience and mediasite events at Sonic Foundry, the maker of Mediasite Video Platform.

Radio Needs A New Approach

Radio Needs A New Approach

By

 Radio Ink

 -

December 17, 2018

19

(By Peter Smyth) During the past months, I’d had the opportunity to think and view the radio business from a different perspective. Without the day-to-day obligations of leading a company, I have watched, read, and talked with friends throughout the radio industry.  It’s a different view and at times, a disquieting one. 

2018 was another challenging year for the radio business. If you eliminate the midterm political advertising, it was another in a series of “flat to down” revenue years. Managers must focus all their time and energy on the immediate viability of their company and  forward-looking strategy can become an afterthought.   

At the same time I do believe, as many say, that this is the golden age of audio. There are new and exciting delivery systems and content creators who are finding their way to connect with listeners, but not on the radio. We continue to struggle to find the right format mix or sales plan and hope for a bump in our ad revenues. What’s wrong? 

In the era of hyper-individualized choice, radio’s offerings creak under the weight not only of its debt structure, but also its accumulated history. Much like our brethren in television, we are being whipsawed by an expanding universe of consumer choices. We no sooner adjust to Pandora than we have to contend with Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, You Tube, and Google Play. As an industry, radio has not experienced anything like this since the FM breakthrough of 50 years ago. We are at an inflection point that demands a more radical approach. From where I stand, broadcast needs digital and digital needs broadcast.  There are podcasts with great content that need more circulation, and there are broadcast stations that desperately need compelling content. We need to experiment with new delivery platforms and full digital integration to see if we can find valuable relationships with younger listeners (anyone under 35!). 

We are at a point where consumers pay for the control and choice that they demand. We should respect and learn from that behavior.  We need to stop clinging so tightly to our spot-advertising business model. More spots per hour are a dead end. We need to look at alternative revenue models such as sponsorships and subscriptions as a supplement to rational spotloads. We have burdened our products to the saturation point. 

As leaders we no longer have the luxury of short-term fixes and band-aid thinking. We have to be all-in on a more radical and strategic way forward. I certainly do not have all the answers, but I know that we are going to have to fund and support experiments that may fail in order to find the best way. We have to see this business through a new lens, the critical lens of consumer behavior. We have to admit that we are overly-dependent on older listeners and formula DJs to prop up our one-time monopoly on customers’ ears. We have resources and community awareness that most digital-only operators would die for. We have to be open to new partners and joint ventures. Just creating a podcast/broadcast of our morning show is not sufficiently exciting. It is table stakes, not a winning hand. 

The demand is for compelling content, where they want it and when they want it. The demand from sponsors and advertisers is for partnerships that move product in a provable and accountable way. We have to figure it out and not lull ourselves into extinction. Time’s short, the job is big and we need to start now.  

Peter Smyth is the former CEO of Greater Media and the recipient of Radio Ink’s 2018 Lifetime Leadership Award. He can be reached by e-mail at phsmyth@gmail.com

Commentary

Could Local TV News Morph Into A Digital Media OTT Service?

• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, 9 hours ago

New digital media platforms by virtually all traditional media continues to climb -- local TV stations included. 

Much effort has been focused on low-yielding websites, social media pages, and other platforms. The problem is that it doesn't look like TV.

New independent digital media platforms don’t compete with established local TV station groups for local news content. Now, some TV station groups, such as CBS, are amping up news coverage, with live, local video streaming OTT services.

CBS is starting CBSN New York, the first major local market streaming service featuring news content from its New York-based outlets: WCBS and WLNY. This move follows CBSN, the national digital CBS news service launched in 2014.
Many TV station group owners have talked about the lackluster expansion when it comes to growing digital media advertising revenues.

Here’s the bottom line: Traditional local TV advertising is expected to rise around 6% to $18.2 billion this year; with digital advertising gaining around the same level — 6.3% — to $1.1 billion, according to lBIA Advisory Services.

Digital revenue should be increasing more. Think of what digital media advertising growth -- 30%, 40% or more per year -- has been regularly for Google, Facebook and others established digital media companies; 6% isn't a good number.

What accounts for this number, if TV station owners/managers say local TV has more to offer than digital? Does this come from misunderstanding the digital marketplace, or just a misallocation of sources, still favoring traditional linear TV business?

For a long time, on its live, linear outlets, TV stations have increased their news programming content as a way to maximize revenues from established news production costs. Now, all this seems firmly myopic when looking at the future.

Here’s the good news about establishing a live, local TV news OTT site: younger news viewers. Nearly 80% of CBSN’s viewers are between the ages of 18 and 49, with an average age of 38.
True, we don’t know the specifics around reach and scale of CBSN. But overall, these numbers show promise. CBSN’s average monthly viewers have grown nearly 30% year-over-year in 2018.
That 30% is a strong growth number, what digital media expects with these days.

So while looking to break a few news stories, more TV stations should also be looking to break a few business molds.

Many have asked and now a memorable answer: Philip Jay LeNoble, Ph.D.

LinkedIn

WTF is ATSC 3.0?

Published on May 10, 2017 Republished December 10, 2018

Mickey McClay Wilson

OTT, VOD, IPTV – and now ATSC 3.0. In the media industry whirlwind of technology acronyms, ATSC 3.0 is a new one for even the folks who track this world closely. WTF is ATSC 3.0? And why will anyone care?

Advanced Television Systems Committee 3.0 (ATSC 3.0) is a new proposed technology standard for transmitting TV content over-the-air. Any device with an ATSC 3.0-compatible chip, including TVs, tablets, and mobile phones, will be able to tune into content from stations that comply with the standard.

This article won’t attempt to address the technical side of ATSC 3.0, which is more for the hardcore broadcast engineers. Nor will it try to fathom why ATSC 3.0 skips over ATSC 2.0 to replace the current ATSC 1.0 standard.

ATSC 3.0 is just for traditional, old-school TV -- the type that’s beamed from broadcast towers. In most cases, these are local stations that have affiliate relationships with national broadcast networks like FOX, CBS, ABC, NBC and PBS. ATSC 3.0 is not relevant for cable networks like ESPN, Comedy Central or AMC.

Why broadcasters like ATSC 3.0 – Extending today’s business
Television is the perfect medium for pushing a one-to-many message, which has always been TV’s greatest appeal to advertisers. In the digital age, this strength has also come to be seen as a weakness, especially as more advertisers grow concerned with the perception of advertising ‘waste.’
Digital media offers better targeting and a more personalized experience, although on smaller screens that mitigate its effectiveness. Internet publishers have long had the power to push unique content experiences to a certain person or group of people. This flexibility and precision are the medium’s greatest strengths.

ATSC 3.0 evens the playing field by granting similar powers to TV stations, giving them the opportunity to grow revenue with new ad products that can compete on a more equal footing against digital media offerings. The new standard allows stations to convert their one-to-many broadcast TV signals into over-the-air IPTV hubs for delivering targeted, near-personalized content experiences. TV stations on ATSC 3.0 will be able to offer digital-like audience targeting – for example, by demographics, neighborhoods, or even cherry-picked individual households.

By more carefully targeting ads, a station could argue its inventory is worth more to advertisers because it can focus the right audience and eliminate wasted impressions. Audi, for example, could run ads for its entry-level A3 line in neighborhoods populated by young professionals while simultaneously show ads for its luxury A6 cars to areas with affluent empty nesters.

ATSC 3.0-enabled interactive ad units could also give TV ads the opportunity to get attribution credit for consumer actions, which is challenging today for any ads that do not have a direct response component. For example, TV stations are rightfully frustrated when a pizza franchisor runs dozens of spots to create awareness, but the last action before ordering is credited to the search engine the consumer used to find the local outlet’s phone number.

ATSC 3.0 can also help stations draw all kinds of business insights on who’s watching their content on what device and for how long. For the first time, stations would have data to help them develop better programming, understand which content is most popular, and refine the effectiveness of advertising products. They could even sell this data to advertisers, as many online publishers do now.

Why broadcasters like ATSC 3.0 – The gamble on tomorrow
While generating new ad products and data are relatively obvious uses for ATSC 3.0- TV stations might be able to enter different, even more lucrative businesses – bandwidth leasing and datacasting.
ATSC 3.0 improves signal compression, helping stations use the broadcast spectrum more efficiently. This matters because the proliferation of connected mobile devices is starting to cause traffic jams on the “digital superhighway,” which are only going to get worse. Cisco estimates that three-fourths of the world’s mobile data traffic will be video by 2019. Companies from Akamai to Netflix are looking for ways to increase bandwidth. To satisfy this demand, stations on ATSC 3.0 could sub-lease spectrum capacity, especially if the FCC’s net neutrality rules are repealed.

But the biggest potential may come from datacasting to the Internet of Things (IoT). Datacasting would be a new and incremental use of the spectrum – essentially found money for broadcasting companies.

To understand the datacasting opportunity, consider the information needs of the IoT, which will be 100% incremental to an internet backbone straining under the weight of its current load.
Today, every home has a number of devices exchanging data over the internet. That number is only going to grow. Forecasts show that by 2020 there will be 30 billion IoT devices that will need internet access for basic functionality and product updates.

McKinsey estimates that the global market for IoT home devices – including items like smart appliances and home security and energy management systems - could be worth $3.9 to $11.1 trillion by 2025. ATSC 3.0-enabled broadcasters have a shot at grabbing a share of this market by providing datacasting services to companies that have sold consumer products that require constant or occasional internet connections ­.

While datacasting may look like a mammoth opportunity, it’s impossible to predict its future returns today. The business model and revenue potential are still unknowns. It’s conceivable that it could become the most lucrative part of the broadcasting business since it would likely require little additional labor and zero programming costs.

Why consumers will like ATSC 3.0 – or will they?
The consumer value proposition for ATSC 3.0 is not as clear as it is for broadcasters. What’s in it for the average viewer? It’s fair to say that nobody’s ever purchased a new TV because he or she wanted better ads.

Viewing local broadcast programming, including news and sports, on mobile devices sounds like a great ‘Nice To Have’ but it’s not really unique. Smartphone users are already accustomed to an on-the-go ‘TV watching experience.’ In fact, access to local broadcasters isn’t really an innovation since many stations already offer branded OTT apps.

Many ATSC 3.0 proponents point to Ultra HD picture quality. While it’s technically true that ATSC 3.0 will push more pixels, it’s unlikely that most will notice a difference in their viewing experience. Broadcasters are planning to focus on delivering 1080p HDR rather than true 4K. Ultimately, the leap in quality will be nowhere as dramatic as the transition was from SD to HD.

Emergency alerts can be delivered to targeted areas with ATSC 3.0. For example, people in the path of a tornado can receive ‘Amber Alert’-style messages based on their location with updates, evacuation paths, and shelter recommendations. The system can even turn TVs on to alert people in their sleep, which in actuality falls somewhere between being a strong benefit and completely creepy.
While all of these are incremental improvements in the TV experience, none of them are likely to prompt quick and enthusiastic consumer adoption on the scale of iPhones or HDTVs. So far, the hardware companies agree. At this writing, no major manufacturers sell ATSC 3.0-compatible sets in the U.S. and those that are available run more than $3,000.

While it’s realistic to expect the costs of ATSC 3.0-compatible TVs to decline as more become available, mass consumer acceptance is still questionable.

When will it happen?
The transition to ATSC 3.0 will not happen overnight. It is going to take time. For each broadcaster that wants it, they have to change hardware, software and business models. That’s happening across multiple broadcast groups. When you add the FCC rules to the mix, you quickly realize there is a lot of technical complexity that broadcasters need to work together to solve.  (Side note: Wireless carriers are pushing for 5G adoption on a similar timeframe.)

There are a lot of factors influencing the adoption of ATSC 3.0. It’s going to be an interesting few years ahead.

Why Executives Don’t Listen Well

by Anne Perschel | Dec 6, 2018 | 

Have you ever wondered why executives don’t listen well, or perhaps much at all, despite all the research, articles and advice about the importance of listening?

Leadership experts, and top level leaders themselves, acknowledge the importance of listening. Even so, too many senior executives I know don’t listen well enough, often enough and long enough. The question is, why?

The answer can be found in the criteria we use to identify, reward, promote and value leaders versus what we say is most important.

In theory we love curiosity and questions, but we routinely elevate people who have (or at least appear to have) the answers. 

I recently conducted a tiny study, research subjects = 1 leader.

“On average, do you speak more than listen or listen more than speak?”

“I listen more.”

“By what percent?”

“50/50”

“That’s not more. It’s equal parts listening and speaking.”

“OK then, 49/51.  I’m the CEO. People want to hear what I have to say.”

“Have you ever asked people about that and listened to their answers?”

“No. Any more questions?”

“I guess not.”

How We Identify Future Executives

Corporate executives rise up through a system that begins with individual contributors. From this gigantic pool, we select first time managers. Let’s look at who gets selected and why.

People who:

• Are highly knowledgeable and perform well in their area of expertise
• Have good ideas
• Speak assertively and confidently
• Get the most stuff done

We don’t typically look for people who:

• Express curiosity
• Ask great questions
• Are excellent active listeners
• Listen more than they speak
• Seek different perspectives and ideas

How We Reward and Promote Future Executives

We continue to reward and promote leaders for these same qualities. We also tack on a few more criteria, such as business savvy, meeting revenue and budget goals, being excellent communicators. The latter is focused on communicating out versus taking in. At the executive level we value executive presence, big picture thinking, the ability to synthesize and present complex ideas in simple terms. In theory we value listening, being curious and asking great questions, but we don’t reward or promote for these attributes. So it’s no surprise our most senior executives don’t listen very much and likely don’t listen well, even when they’re not talking.

As long as we value the assertive aspects of leadership and pay lip service to the more receptive qualities, most leaders will spend more time talking than listening.

What will it take to strike a better balance between these complementary opposites? A leader who listens and changes the criteria his company employs to identify, promote, reward and value upcoming leaders. Are you that leader? Are you really listening?

 

 

System 21© has been hailed as television and radio's most prolific sales and marketing management's training curriculum following 506 stations' management reported having added $315,744,000 in new, long term, local-direct revenue during the last 25 years at $624,000 per year!
For more information on how this is attainable for your company in 2019 call Michael Guld, President at 804.356.7006....