COMMENTARY

How TV, Digital Media Should Prep For The Next Economic Downturn

• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, September 17, 2019

It’s late 2019, and everything -- generally -- seems to be going well for the media -- digital and traditional. But what looms in the economic distance?

Recently, every TV network seems to have scored not only nice mid-level, double-digit percentage gains in the price per thousand viewers in upfront deal-making, but decent single-digit percentage overall volume gains on revenue.

Digital media? Despite nagging fraud, transparency and other issues, including possible regulator concerns, revenues continues to soar -- almost unabated, by still double-digit percentage hikes.

Which brings me to the possible, and probable, oncoming recession.

The last one -- a real doozy, the so-called “Great Recession” between December 2007 and June 2009 -- hit the TV industry as hard as other businesses. 

For example, there was a sharp 12.5% reduction in overall broadcast/cable upfront advertising revenue for the 2009-2010 TV season -- with around a 5% reduction in the cost per thousand viewers, according to Media Dynamics. Even digital/online dropped 2% in revenue, according to a report in Forbes.

It’s only a matter of time before another recession hits. The big question: Is the overall TV industry -- TV networks, local TV stations, syndication, cable, and even new OTT platforms -- ready to take another punch?

Things have shifted mightily in media over the last 10 years. Can TV networks do better than last time, or will competitive, nontraditional TV-connected digital media just continue to accelerate, perhaps more modestly?

Media theorists would say: Don't stop advertising products and services -- even in a recession.

While cost-cutting continues to be prudent in an economic downturn, stopping or severely curtailing advertising sends the wrong message to consumers. Some customers could just forget about you, or worse, look at their own financial situation and make drastic cutbacks to their products and services.

At that moment, will marketers -- big and small -- ask: What must I keep in my media plan -- overall big brand messaging (TV) or return path consumer narrow-targeted ROI media (digital)?

That’s when a company's media message hits the road.

The key is to watch calm media/marketing executives find some significant ad dollars to spend during the recession. That will be followed by post-recession plans to accelerate growth.

Remember this, says Forbes: In 2009, Amazon sales grew by 28% during the Great Recession.

Also, while we know recessions do repeat, their intensity varies greatly. Sit tight, and take some of the emotion out of it. It may not be as bad as you think.

COMMENTARY

Local TV Begins Moving To Impressions-Based Data

• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, September 13, 2019

Local TV stations and media agencies moving to making deals on the cost per viewer impressions, versus longtime TV ratings, seems to be getting overall industry approval.

But isn’t this a bit late in coming? And what about the risks?

Local TV station ad executives haven’t been exactly aggressive when it comes to competing with locally focused digital media -- with digital media representing, at best, around 15% of all their ad revenue.

Digital media has focused on impressions -- and return path consumer metrics -- for a long time.

Couple this with very slow-growing local TV automated and programmatic advertising platforms. This has meant harder-to-achieve, solid, year-to-year gains for local advertising revenue.

Brad Adgate, veteran media-agency/media-sales research executive, and former executive at Comcast, tells TV Watch: “It’s long overdue, but it’s a start. Using audiences as a negotiating metric is more practical than ratings. It does allow for comparisons with digital media and audience-based buying used with advanced TV.”

For years, there have been other lingering traditional measurement issues for TV stations -- like the lack of local TV commercial ratings, something TV networks have had since 2007.

Nielsen only offers live program-plus-same day time-shifted viewing for local TV. That said, a 2018 4A’s industry report said “live plus one ratings at the local level tie closely to C7 ratings [on the national level] on an index basis.”

Right now, most media agencies don’t ink deals on local TV viewer impressions. Magna Global says it believes it is the first to do so, according to an Axios report.

Why wasn’t this done earlier?

Frank Comerford, the CRO-president of commercial operations for NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations -- which will be one of the first TV station groups to move to impressions -- has said TV station executives were worried about upsetting the “apple cart.”

Does that mean these executives were concerned that a transition period to impressions to establish new client-based ad-pricing levels would possibly lose more business to locally focused digital media platforms? 

With some $20 billion a year on the line when it comes to traditional local TV station ad revenue, maybe that’s an easy answer.

COMMENTARY

How TV, Digital Media Should Prep For The Next Economic Downturn

• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, September 17, 2019

It’s late 2019, and everything -- generally -- seems to be going well for the media -- digital and traditional. But what looms in the economic distance?

Recently, every TV network seems to have scored not only nice mid-level, double-digit percentage gains in the price per thousand viewers in upfront deal-making, but decent single-digit percentage overall volume gains on revenue.

Digital media? Despite nagging fraud, transparency and other issues, including possible regulator concerns, revenues continues to soar -- almost unabated, by still double-digit percentage hikes.

Which brings me to the possible, and probable, oncoming recession.

The last one -- a real doozy, the so-called “Great Recession” between December 2007 and June 2009 -- hit the TV industry as hard as other businesses. 

For example, there was a sharp 12.5% reduction in overall broadcast/cable upfront advertising revenue for the 2009-2010 TV season -- with around a 5% reduction in the cost per thousand viewers, according to Media Dynamics. Even digital/online dropped 2% in revenue, according to a report in Forbes.

It’s only a matter of time before another recession hits. The big question: Is the overall TV industry -- TV networks, local TV stations, syndication, cable, and even new OTT platforms -- ready to take another punch?

Things have shifted mightily in media over the last 10 years. Can TV networks do better than last time, or will competitive, nontraditional TV-connected digital media just continue to accelerate, perhaps more modestly?

Media theorists would say: Don't stop advertising products and services -- even in a recession.

While cost-cutting continues to be prudent in an economic downturn, stopping or severely curtailing advertising sends the wrong message to consumers. Some customers could just forget about you, or worse, look at their own financial situation and make drastic cutbacks to their products and services.

At that moment, will marketers -- big and small -- ask: What must I keep in my media plan -- overall big brand messaging (TV) or return path consumer narrow-targeted ROI media (digital)?

That’s when a company's media message hits the road.

The key is to watch calm media/marketing executives find some significant ad dollars to spend during the recession. That will be followed by post-recession plans to accelerate growth.

Remember this, says Forbes: In 2009, Amazon sales grew by 28% during the Great Recession.

Also, while we know recessions do repeat, their intensity varies greatly. Sit tight, and take some of the emotion out of it. It may not be as bad as you think.

Will the 2020 Election Impact Radio?

By

 RBR-TVBR

 -

September 19, 2019

0

One of the best-known and most highly regarded political consultants in America has been added to the list of speakers and presenters at Radio’s Financial Summit — Forecast 2020.

The event, scheduled for November 20 at The Harvard Club in New York, is adding Dick Morris (pictured) to the lineup.

Morris will deliver a special address that will focus on the reelection chances of President Trump, and who the Democrats will eventually nominate as their candidate for the presidency.

How will he or she do? What events could upend all predictions?

So far, the political season has been a wild ride, with heated debate about whether or which Democratic challenger can beat Trump and what role the economy and other factors will play in the upcoming election.

What will all the drama and uncertainty mean for radio? How will that affect the tone and approach of on-air talk? And how will it impact the prospects for a political revenue windfall? According to WPP PLC’s ad-buying unit GroupM, political ad spending is estimated to rise to a whopping $9.9 billion, up $3.6 billion compared to the 2016 presidential election and well over double the spending in 2012.

That’s huge. How much of it might fall into radio’s coffers?

And while a good percentage will definitely go to social media, at what point might saturation on digital platforms find more dollars diverted elsewhere? Could radio benefit?

Being prepared means first knowing the landscape. Dick Morris is a genuine political pro, and he can help you get a sense of where this contentious, fascinating election cycle might be leading us.

“We are extremely pleased to have Dick Morris join us at Forecast,” Streamline Publishing EVP/Publisher Deborah Parenti said. “In what is certainly a most unusual political environment, his seasoned perspective should be of especially high interest to anyone trying to gauge where the future of the country and its economy may be headed.”

With his wife, Eileen McGann, Morris has written 20 books — including 13 New York Times best-sellers. He also writes a nearly daily column that reaches half a million people via e-mail and hundreds of thousands more at dickmorris.com.

Morris famously provided the strategy that brought about Bill Clinton’s re-election in 1996, after Clinton’s party had lost control of Congress. He’s handled winning campaigns for more than 30 U.S. senators and governors and has led successful campaigns in a dozen other countries, including Mexico and Japan.

5 Messaging Tricks to Drive Direct Mail Response

Wanna help your local-direct client improve their direct mail marketing? Here's a factual research piece that may help. Share it. Philip Jay LeNoble, Ph.D.

DIRECT MAIL FOR THE MODERN MARKETER

September 11, 2019

5 Messaging Tricks to Drive Direct Mail Response

By Summer Gould

We all need to reach ever-increasing direct mail response rate goals. This is a challenge. Although your customers and prospects really like to get mail, you need to make sure that what you send is relevant to them.

Your design grabs attention, but does your mail piece drive enough response? So what can you do differently to increase your response rates? Sending your pieces to the right people is No. 1; but, your messaging is very important, too. How much time do you spend crafting your messaging? 

Consider the following when crafting your message:

·       Create Your Core Idea — Core messages help people to avoid bad choices by reminding them of what is really important.

·       Uncertainty Can Paralyze Decisions — The more we reduce the amount of information and choices in an idea, the more it will resonate.

·        

·       Create Analogies — Analogies make it possible to understand compact messages, because they are based on concepts people already know.

·        

·       Create Surprise — Unexpected ideas resonate more, because surprise makes us stop and think.

·        

·       Avoid Logic — Common sense messaging is not remembered. Why bother? We already know it.

·        

Beyond the ideas above, there are other areas we can focus on that drive direct mail response. Human curiosity requires us to find answers, because it is a gap in our knowledge that we must fill. To get people to be open to our messaging, we need to provide a question that they can’t answer without the information we are about to give them. What people don’t know can be used to entice them to respond to your direct mail.

 

In order to create interest for a more complex idea or situation, you need to use a clear structure, vivid examples, and fluid language. You should then create a sense of mystery. This will grab attentio,n because people need closure; they will have to read your mail piece to solve the mystery. Make sure to provide clues to assure people they are getting close to the answer. When you do, it compels them to finish in order to get the answer.

 

Keep in mind that an abstract message is hard to understand and remember. Make sure your messaging is clear and concrete. Concrete language helps people understand new concepts and appeals to the senses. It should appeal to sight, smell, touch, taste, or hearing. The best messages are full of concrete words and images. Some examples are words like tart, cold, green, coarse, or fork. They are real and can easily be seen in the mind.

 

To make your message even more effective, shift from a “provide information” tactic on your mail piece to a “what questions can I ask” tactic. What do we mean by this? You need to create questions that get people thinking and questioning their own knowledge. You want them to need you to help them. The choice is clear, they need you. Of course, you also need a sense of urgency to get them to respond right away and a call to action that resonates.

 

Are you ready to get started driving a better direct mail response rate?

 

Don’t wait for HR – build your work family

SEPTEMBER 9, 2019 LYNNE LEVY

4-minute read

Most people call the people they work with colleagues, peers, or co-workers. In the military, they call each other brothers and sisters. I call my colleagues at Workhuman^® my family.

Two years ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. Fast forward two years, and I am happy, healthy, and doing what I love. I credit my colleagues to helping me through the many ups and downs of treatment and recovery. Whether it was a peer who told me how fabulous I looked in spite of my swollen face, or the EVP who continually told me, “We’ve got you, Lynne,” my family at Workhuman had my back.

When employees feel emotionally connected to each other, they are happier at work, more innovative, and more engaged.

The colleagues who supported me through treatment now tell me how supporting me gave them a sense of purpose and inspiration. Working in a culture that is like a family or community is good for employees, customers, and business.

We can’t just rely on our HR departments to create organizational programs to develop this sense of acceptance, connection, and caring. Each one of us can build our community at work.

(Want to learn more about Lynne's Workhuman story? Listen to her Workhuman Radio interview here.)

Here are my suggestions:

Break down barriers between work and life.

Many of us pretend we can’t separate work and life. But the reality is how we feel at work impacts what happens at home, and vice versa. Most of us spend more time with our colleagues every day than our family

In her article, “We All Need Friends at Work,” published in the Harvard Business Review, Christine M. Riordan notes, “Employees report that when they have friends at work, their job is more fun, enjoyable, worthwhile, and satisfying.”

Gallup found that close work friendships boost employee satisfaction by 50% and people with a best friend at work are 7x more likely to engage fully in their work.

Bring your whole self to work, including what is going on with your family and other activities outside of the office. Build connection by sharing stories with colleagues. For me, that meant sharing my health crisis.

Leaders, managers, and supervisors: Get out of your office.

Leaders set the tone and leaders need to model connection. They need to head to the lunchroom, chat with employees, talk about their family, and make an effort to attend social events with colleagues. Leaders need to tell personal stories to connect with others.

I once worked for a billion-dollar organization where the CEO modeled connection each day. He knew everyone in the home office by name, had lunch in the cafeteria, and always roamed the halls chatting. He knew when employees had children and when their children were graduating from college.

By modeling connection through his own behavior, the organization became a community from front-line employees through senior leadership.

Celebrate milestones.

Not only are work milestones meaningful, but so are life milestones. After cancer treatment, I returned to an office of balloons and hugs. Even today, after my periodic scans, my colleagues celebrate with me. Celebrating life milestones at work creates moments of emotional connection and positivity. 

Whether a graduation, a marriage, or recovering from an illness, it is important to celebrate often. And it doesn’t need to be complicated; a cake or a few balloons and a card can create a sense of positivity, connection, and encouragement.

Recognize your colleagues.

A social recognition tool is an effective way to build relationships, connection, and productivity. When an individual gives or receives recognition, their mood lightens, stress is reduced, and emotional connection is nurtured.

The week before I went on medical leave at the end of my treatment journey, I sent recognition moments to each of my colleagues who supported me. The moments were heartfelt, specific, and expressed my sense of gratitude. One read, “Thank you, Naomi and Michelle, for sitting with me at the airport in Canada when I received positive test results. You cried with me as my sense of relief poured over me.” My colleagues still talk about the recognition moments I gave and the depth of emotion I expressed.

Sincere, heartfelt recognition can cut through anger, frustration, and stress to create genuine connection between colleagues.

I call my colleagues my family. Others call their colleagues their community. Regardless of the term we use, we should all look to create cultures where there is a sense of commitment, caring, and connection up and down the organization. Don’t wait for a formal HR program. Build your community.

COMMENTARY

Survey: Local TV Station Execs Frustrated, Want Faster, Streamlined Ad Transactions

• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, Yesterday

A new survey of local TV advertising buyers confirms what we already know when it comes to ongoing media-buying/selling issues: Everything is too slow and cumbersome — and in danger of haunting the business for years.

The three top concerns are: 1. Giving marketers the ability for an agency to launch campaigns in three days or less; 2. Getting rid of slow-moving make-goods and approval process; and 3. Speeding up final reconcile adjustments between pre-invoice activity and invoice delivery.

The survey comes from the TIP (Television Interface Practices) Initiative, an industry group promoting open interfaces to streamline advertising transactions for local TV broadcasters and their media agencies.

Every year, advertisers spend roughly $20 billion in media dollars on linear local TV station inventory.

Perry Sook, chairman, president-CEO of Nexstar Media Group, and founding member of the TIP Initiative, stated: “It takes time and effort to change the way an industry has operated for decades, but the tangible benefits to broadcasters and our trading partners are real and meaningful.”

We have heard this before, and we seem to be no closer, despite a number of independent local TV station-focused programmatic, automated ad platforms showing some growth.

The TIP survey -- done in January 2019 -- along with a white paper, keeps talking about “urgency” for media buyers and broadcasters.

Does that mean local TV buyers and sellers worry about losing more ground -- say next year -- to growing local digital media platforms impinging on TV’s ad revenues?

And, if little or nothing changes, will media agencies and their advertising clients look to siphon more money away from local TV -- at some point -- considering the high expense in managing and placing media referenced in those survey concerns?

Local TV is nowhere near real-time framework levels of digital media. Increasingly, when looking at publicly traded local TV station groups, many analysts focus on big political advertising revenue and seemingly ever-higher retranmission revenues.

The new ATSC 3.0 standard seemingly offers some hope for the future -- in terms of competing with digital platforms when it comes to new interactive content and possible automated, even addressable advertising.

But right now, we can’t expect much big change, even in the next five years. Urgency? Please define urgency.

COMMENTARY

Consumers Warm To In-Car Tech

• by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, 3 hours ago

Consumers are anticipating the growth of connected cars.

Automakers and marketers may want to pay attention, since in-car technology is appealing to many potential car buyers.

The majority (81%) of consumers see connected cars as the wave of the future and expect “we’ll all have connected cars eventually,” according to a new study.

Technology in new cars also will matter. The majority (86%) of consumers say technology and connectivity is important in their purchase of a new car, according to the study, comprising a survey of 1,100 U.S. adults conducted by Metova.

If their next car did not contain the technology they wanted, 18% would be unlikely to make the purchase, according to the survey.

Many consumers are using the technology already in their cars. For example, the majority (72%) say they connect their phone to their car via Bluetooth. Of those, 79% use it to play music, 75% to make or receive phone calls and 56% for GPS location tracking.

Connected car devices appeal to car owners, with 81% at least somewhat interested in connected automobile devices, such as upgraded car stereos, integrated GPS or a Bluetooth adaptor.

Nearly half (49%) of car owners use their smartphone to control connected automobile devices and 79% are satisfied with the technology in their primary vehicle.

However, music systems may lag a bit, since 56% say their vehicle does not support built-in internet music services, such as Pandora or Spotify.

Cars are getting more connected, with 68% of consumers saying their car provides a direct internet connection without using a smartphone. However, 65% say they have never used a Wi-Fi connected device in their car using Wi-Fi supplied by the vehicle.

The latest and greatest in-car technology may not matter to most consumers, but it does matter to a significant number enough to pay attention.

From the Switchboard to Social Media: A Brief History of Customer Service

Fri, 09/06/2019 - 07:04

Did you know that for the first 20 years or so after telephones were invented, they were exclusively sold in pairs — and those two phones could only call each other? Given such a clunky, limited system, it’s a wonder that this method of communication caught on at all. It wasn’t until 1894, when the switchboard was invented, that telephones became less of a novelty and more of a convenience.

Of course, we’ve come a long way since then. Today we have more ways to get and stay in touch with one another than ever before — so many, in fact, that there are plenty of people who rarely even talk on the phone at all!

From a business standpoint, it’s imperative to provide customer service across a multiplicity of channels, too. Let’s take a closer look at how this integral aspect of doing business has evolved over the years as the communication choices have broadened.

Operators Are Standing By

It wasn’t all that long ago when “contacting customer service” simply meant visiting a store or office and talking to the owner or manager. Sometime in the 1960s, large companies realized that they needed a dedicated department to handle customers’ orders, concerns, queries — and complaints. Thus the call center was born.

Getting in touch with a company became even easier toward the end of the decade, when toll-free, 1-800 numbers were invented in 1967. (Aside for the Millennials and Gen-Yers out there: the cost of telephone calls was once based on the physical distance between caller and callee. Being able to contact a commercial enterprise for free was therefore a pretty big deal.)

Press One for the Main Menu

About a decade later, in the late 1970s, call centers began incorporating interactive voice response (IVR) technology. Now customers could push a button to navigate a menu, speeding up the process of getting in touch with a customer service rep — although in the early days, IVR was still pretty finicky, so it often delivered a dose of frustration along with, or instead of, the convenience factor.

Reach Out, Reach Out and Touch Someone

Call centers and their use of IVR continued to expand, but despite technological advancements, many companies found these departments expensive to build, staff, and run. Their answer to that problem was outsourcing to overseas locations with cheap labor, most notoriously India. This made communications cheaper, but not necessarily better.

The same could be said for the increasingly complex and confusing phone trees. Through the 80s and 90s, both offshore call centers and bewildering automated options became the butt of a lot of jokes. They also helped pave the way for today’s multichannel customer service experience.

You’ve Got Mail!

All generational jokes aside, it can be difficult for today’s younger consumers to understand just how revolutionary the world wide web truly was. For the first time in decades, email and live chat support made it possible to quickly and easily communicate with a real person instead of a computerized menu or canned response.

Smart companies saw the possibilities of cyber customer service from the beginning, and jumped right on that bandwagon. It was a huge leap forward for CS-kind, but email was about to be eclipsed by social media.

Don’t @ Me

Similarly, cutting-edge marketing and customer service gurus saw the advent of social media platforms as a golden opportunity to set themselves apart from the crowd. Early adopters of sites like Twitter and Facebook, in particular, discovered that social media was not only a fantastic way to glean insight into customer habits and behavior, but also a remarkably powerful communication tool.

Much like the businesses that set up call centers to meet their CS needs in the 1960s, savvy retailers and service providers set up social media teams to read and respond to tweets, direct messages, and other posts.

Naturally, the public nature of communicating with customers this way was, and continues to be, something of a double-edged sword. One poor interaction could tank a company’s reputation, especially early on before best social media marketing practices were established. On the other hand, a stellar or even satisfactory interaction also wielded great power to build trust, earn customer loyalty, and attract new leads.

“There are so many social platforms that companies need to master these days,” says Zach Hoffman, CEO of internet marketing company Exults. “It can be confusing to understand which ones are imperative, and which you can ignore — for the time being, at least — so don’t be shy about calling in the pros for help navigating it all.”

What’s Next for Customer Service?

According to Adweek, fully 68% of consumers already choose messaging as their favorite way to contact a company or interact with a brand, and that number is predicted to grow. Messaging is quick, easy, convenient, and an effective means of communicating.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning, which can help chatbots and other automated systems crunch data and incorporate it for even more impactful interactions, is another horizon for marketers to keep their eye on.

No matter which channel comes to dominate customer service in the 2020s and beyond, one thing is clear: we’ve come a long way from the days of 800 numbers.