The Digital Influentials, by Cory Treffiletti

The Voice Of Tom Hagen Echoes In My Head (Mediapost 5.23.12)

Tom Hagen once said, “This is business.  It’s not personal”.  That memorable line was uttered in The Godfather; arguably one of the greatest, if not the greatest, cinematic masterpiece of all time.  My passion for that film and the characters it created put aside, that line is a lie.

All business is personal, both fortunately and unfortunately.   The personal relationships you establish in business will follow you around for years to come, and they mold the way you are viewed by your peers, by potential employers, and by the world around you.  If you treat people fairly, with honesty and with integrity that will reflect upon you.  If you treat people with condescension, a lack of sympathy and a disregard for mutual respect than that will come back to you.  At least this is true most of the time.

I’m a student of people and of the world around me.  I see two kinds of people in our business.  On one side there are the people who value time over personal relationships, and on the other side are the people who value personal relationships over time.  As a student of people and industry I honestly have trouble determining which is the right path for success.  There are the people who will sit and discuss business with you only when they see a personally beneficial reason as to why.  In most cases, if you don’t pay this person to sit there, they’ll never give you the time of day.  On the flip side are the people who’ll sit and discuss a topic of interest with you for hours, and when they speak with you they make you feel as though you are their top priority, even though that may not be 100% true.  These people have a way of making you feel appreciated and valuable in that moment, and they give of their time freely because they know that a good conversation with someone leads to mutual respect, and that could come back in droves down the line.  These two dichotomous personalities represent two sides of the coin.  The immediate benefit vs. the long-term benefit.  In a way of looking at it, its cash vs. karma.

Which side of the coin you represent depends somewhat on how you view personal success.  If you see success as a monetary goal, then you lean towards treating every interaction as a cash register.  If you value personal relationships as wealth more important than money, then you tend to lean towards the karmic view of the world.  In business, you rarely get both out of someone, but when you do its an amazing experience. 

Both kinds of people certainly deserve and earn your respect, but the latter are the people you tend to like more.  There are a number of people in our business who I like, but far more who I respect.  There are people who I respect, but I don’t have many nice things to say about because they have never made me feel respected. 

It’s a struggle to determine the path you want to take.  If you read “People On The Move” or any of the related news items that flood us daily, you see the results of both on display.  Both tracks of people will get new jobs.  They will get promoted.  They will sometimes “fall uphill” into new and very important jobs.  From my perspective, I feel as though this business is all about the people and if you’re going to succeed you had better find the right balance of appreciating and treating the people around you with respect and valuing them as people before you just monetize your day. 

That’s why I could never be a consultant.   Not to knock them at all, but in the consulting world it’s a mistake to take free meetings and give away knowledge when you know you should be getting paid for your time.  I like speaking with people.  I like writing these articles.  I like trying to be analytical about ideas without immediate monetary value and that is typically at odds with the world of consulting where every hour is billable.  I personally feel the more you can challenge your own way of thinking, the more you will grow and develop as a person.  The more you develop, the more effective you will become and hopefully the happier you will be with the path that you lead in life.

Of course, you’ll make mistakes, and there’ll be setbacks along the way because no one is perfect, but at least you try and at least you’re self-aware enough to know who you’re trying to be.  That is a sense of being genuine that can never be taken away from you.

So the next time you interact with a sales person or a client, think which path you want to take.  The next time you take a cold call from a potential partner or the next time you meet with a referral from a friend, be aware of how you want to be viewed and how you want to be treated.  Be genuine with your expectations and hopefully things will work out to your mutual benefits.  And remember – business is personal, and that’s probably a good thing.

The People Have The Power (Mediapost 6.16.12)

When you’re building a company there are many factors that affect your success, but none are as important as the people who surround you.  To quote Patti Smith, “The People Have The Power”!  The people make the company.  You may have the greatest idea in the world, but if you don’t have the right team it will be difficult to create success.

Sometimes hiring decisions are a well-thought-out process and sometimes they’re simply opportunistic.  You can make good hires in both ways, but when you make a bad hire you have to be willing to recognize it, make a change and move on or risk the ongoing effects of that kind of hire.  Regardless of the good or bad decisions you make during hiring, and trust me when I say you’ll make plenty of both, there are some things that you can do to make sure you’re always improving and always working your way to the top. 

Upgrade Your Talent

The first thing is always being on the lookout for upgrading your talent.  Someone once told me a baseball analogy and it made great sense to me.  You always want to be looking to upgrade your 8 and 9 hitters in the lineup.   These are typically your weakest hitters, and you want to be rotating in stronger players from the bottom of the order, putting more pressure on your earlier hitters to perform.  Never rest on your laurels and the team you already have when you can be doing your best to improve at all times.  The competition isn’t sitting idly by, so why should you?  If you’re always looking to bring smart people on to your team, and the right opportunity comes across your plate to do so, you should take it.  Don’t break the bank to do it and don’t put your company financially at risk to bring that person on, but if you can make it happen it can work out well.  Strong, intelligent people have a positive effect on the people around them, and they tend to improve the team they’re involved with.  They also help to shine a light on the people who aren’t pulling their weight simply from being around.  If someone is falling behind, they will pale in comparison to your stars, and that can help you improve and move on as well!

Share Information

The second most important thing when it comes to the people and the collective intelligence of the company is to make sure you create a culture that allows for the sharing of information.  This goes for all the good and the bad.  People learn from one another, so you have to do the best you can at making sure everyone learns from the positive and negative experiences of their peers.  Sharing information actually achieves two goals.  First, “all ships rise with the tide” in terms of everyone gets smarter when the entire group gets smarter.  Secondly, if you see the same people making the same mistakes, or conversely there is a portion of your team who is routinely quiet during these interactions, then you can quickly uncover the weakest links in the organization.  Those weakest links are either painfully shy and need to be worked with, or they may need to be weeded out.  The sharing of information can help you uncover these challenges and allow you to define the solution.

Performance Reviews and Performance Discussions

It goes almost without saying, but regular performance reviews and even simple performance discussions among peers and managers can help provide feedback for an employee and can give them a recurring baseline from which to evaluate and improve upon their performance.  If you don’t give them regular feedback, then you can’t possibly expect success.  There are very few people who can succeed in a vacuum.  People are social by nature, and that social interaction requires feedback and the approval of your peers.  The same goes in a corporate environment – you have to provide feedback to people so they know where they stand.  Too many companies forget, or overlook, performance reviews and when they do they perform a disservice to everyone in the organization.  Don’t ever overlook these processes.

Keeping your team in tip-top shape is the most important element of any manager’s role in a company and if the team works well, then the company will perform.  Your people are the engine behind your business and you need them performing at the best of their ability, so be sure to take advice from someone who has done it both well and poorly during their career – the benefits of paying attention to your people far, far outweigh the effort and additional workload that comes with this focus.

Wouldn’t you agree?  What has your experience been – let me know on the Spin Board!

The “Myth” Of Commerce-Enabled Interactive TV (Mediapost 5.9.12)

Is it possible the concept of truly commerce-enabled interactive television is nothing more than a myth?  From my perspective, and specifically that of a consumer, I’m starting to think that’s the case.

The most hyped fantasy involving interactive television is the promise of “hot-spotting” or commerce-enabling TV shows.  The idea is that a consumer will see an outfit that’s being worn by a celebrity on a show, pause the show and buy the outfit through image-embedded tagging.  Many companies have tried this, and almost as many have found a way to make it a reality, but consumers aren’t buying it.  It’s not caught on online, and I’m not sure it’ll catch on through television anytime soon.  The reason is deeper than just the commerce-enablement.  The root of my point is that consumers don’t really want it – they’re not in the habit.

Consumers like TV for a specific purpose.  It’s a diversion.  It’s an escape.  Most of the people I know – when they sit down to watch TV it’s because they’re tired and they want to relax.  They’re winding down from a hectic day and they’re looking to pass the time and disengage until they go to sleep.  If you’re a parent, you know exactly what I’m talking about.  The idea of being highly attentive, engaged, looking to interact, and even potentially looking to spend money?  It’s starting to feel a bit far-fetched.

I’m not completely knocking the concept of interactive TV as a whole, though I do think it will be many years before a truly interactive TV experience catches on to the masses.  I’m just saying that we as an industry need to adjust our expectations for what we think the future of television is going to look like. 

Socially enabled TV and digitally enabled TV are close, but still not quite there and the reason is similar to what I said before – most Americans watch TV as an escape, and they don’t want to be high touch.  They don’t want to be bothered.   There are some exceptions to this.  Once in awhile a show like LOST comes along and the viewer has to be highly engaged to understand what’s going on, and they do.  That show was an enigma.  It’s definitely not the norm.  Reality TV shows like American Idol profess viewer interaction through voting, and while they do have an obvious outcome on the show by driving results of who stays in the competition, the result is delayed by 24 hrs.  It’s not an immediate impact.  Sports programming, which is real time and rarely DVR’d, can be socially enabled and might even lead to being commerce enabled due to the immediacy of the content,.  That is coupled with the fact that the audience for those shows is indeed looking to supplement the experience with stats, etc.  They’re not passive.  They’re highly engaged and very high touch.  That interaction can be measured, and it can be utilized in a deeper fashion by the leagues, etc.  That category has the most promise of any of the areas that have tested out interactive and commerce-enabled television to date.

The element to be addressed still is the habit of the consumer/viewer.  What are the habits that need to be changed?   What environment has to be created for a consumer to watch a show and spend money while they’re in a relaxed, passive mindset.  That habit needs to be addressed before programmers will be able to create an environment ripe for the future of commerce-enabled interactive TV.

My bet – there needs to be a sea-change in the TV landscape in order for this to happen.  If I were a betting man – I’d say its still 15 years away.

Not All Inventory Was Created Equal (Mediapost 5.2.12)

We’re heading into a phase of the online ad business that’s clearly based on the concept that not all inventory was created equal.  The fervor around the viewable ads issue, coupled with the rapid development of Data Management Platforms (DMP) which make marketers smarter about how they spend their money, leads us to a situation where placement, audience and performance of creative can influence the value of the inventory that’s available.  That means changes are in store for the media buying community.

To date, most online ad pricing has been one dimensional, and tied either to context or a basic set of data parameters, but the issues mentioned above are becoming hot buttons and leading us towards new opportunities.  These include dynamic pricing, upfront markets and a changing perception of the landscape for supply and demand of online inventory. 

It’s inevitable that there will become a finite supply of premium, higher quality inventory for advertisers as more advertisers become smarter.  The potential resolve on the viewable ads issue means more marketers will be competing for a smaller set of inventory, whether it be contextual, audience-based or more likely a combination of both.  Conversely, the market for junk inventory will drop.  This creates a situation where demand and supply lead to a fluctuating marketplace, more like financial markets.   This could lead to realistic upfront markets finally being established in the online space, which have not previously been required.  In the past, there was the perception of limitless supply for premium inventory, but that’s simply not the case.  The best sites and the best placements are being bought in advance, and that’s going to happen more often.

The other factor that leads to this situation is the increased use of DMP’s by marketers.  As more marketers become intelligent about the ways they spend their money, they could end up competing for the same inventory, or at least similar customers.   Right now, the use of a DMP is a competitive advantage for a marketer, but it will become table stakes in the next 12-18 months, and the result is the long tail of media will be become more valuable, and the “extra-long” tail will be devalued as more marketers squeeze value out of the top 50% of available inventory online.

The other factor that gets overlooked is performance.  If the interaction rates and engagement rates don’t increase in online ads, then only the most visible, more premium inventory will be considered valuable.  The long and extra-long tail of inventory will see no value at all.  Regardless of whether they price on performance or not, you can’t squeeze blood from a stone.  If the inventory can’t drive performance with poor creative, then the advertisers will place the blame on the inventory, unfortunately rather than taking the blame for poor creative, and they’ll focus their dollars on only the top notch placements and audience.  It won’t be far, but it will be a fact.

So the fact is not all inventory is created equal, and the immediate future for media buying is going to be changing quickly.  Upfronts may become a necessity.  A futures and secondary spot market may soon become a reality.  The perception that there is a finite supply for premium inventory will become commonplace, and prices may indeed begin to increase.

Do you agree?