MediaPost | Media Magazine

Client of the Year: Chipotle Mexican Grill - The Content Marketing Master

Wed, 08 Jan 2014 17:15:00 -0500

Branded entertainment and content marketing seem to be everywhere now. But relatively few brands of any size, in any category, have to date demonstrated the full power of these creative platforms as resoundingly as Chipotle Mexican Grill. As the advertising community is well aware, the fast-casual restaurant brand, working with creative agency CAA Marketing, has now bottled viral lightning twice in two years with groundbreaking, feature-movie-quality animated videos.

Supplier of the Year: Acxiom - Who's On First, What's On Third?

Wed, 08 Jan 2014 17:04:00 -0500

If you had to pick the most vexing and talked about subject on Madison Avenue in 2013, it most likely would be one that falls under the banner of "Big Data." In fact, if you're an industry pro, just reading those two words together probably gave you a sense of discomfort and a desire to stop reading this article right now. Don't, because what you are about to read will put you at ease, or at the very least will give you hope that someone is working on a solution that will get you there very soon.

Full Service Agency of the Year: Mediahub/Mullen - Killing the Competition

Wed, 08 Jan 2014 17:03:00 -0500

Boston-based Mullen, a unit of Interpublic Group, had an outstanding year on both the creative and media fronts. Against all odds, it dazzled Adland with its unlikely win of the Acura creative review in which it was considered a dark horse contender at best. The agency tapped into the cultural zeitgeist with campaigns like the one it did for realtor Century 21 in which it sold the home of Walter White, the anti-hero in AMC's hit drama Breaking Bad after the series ended earlier this year.

Small Agency of the Year: Spark - Sometimes, Innovation Is Right Behind You

Wed, 08 Jan 2014 16:56:00 -0500

Normally, when people think about innovation they think about moving forward. Sometimes, it requires a step backwards. Chris Boothe is proving that in his transformation of Spark SMG from a small, industrial-focused, lesser-known, conflict shop of big sister and brother Starcom and MediaVest into what could well be the agency of the future. To remind his team that sometimes the past can be prologue...

Holding Company of the Year: IPG Mediabrands - Automation Pilots

Wed, 08 Jan 2014 16:35:00 -0500

In October 2012, Matt Seiler assembled the top managers of Interpublic's disparate Mediabrands organization for a high-level meeting to discuss a strategic pivot he wanted the holding company to make in 2013 that he believed would change, not just how Interpublic's agencies buy media, but the way much of the world does. Already leaders in the rapidly growing programmatic media-buying business, Seiler told his team he wanted them to accelerate the process and set a goal of making 50% of all the media bought by Interpublic agencies automated within two years.

Executives of the Year: Jim Elms and Peter Mears - Teaming for Success

Wed, 08 Jan 2014 16:25:00 -0500

When Jim Elms and Peter Mears took on their new roles at Initiative last February the task was two-fold: reinvigorate a global media shop that had stumbled a bit while simultaneously integrating the roughly $1 billion media operation of sibling agency Draftfcb. They didn't waste any time injecting change into the organization. After a quick assessment they streamlined the agency's planning process and introduced a new set of operating principles - in effect creating a new agency culture. And they convinced every one of Draftfcb's media clients to make the transition to Initiative, which accounted for approximately $30 million in additional revenue.

Agency of the Year: Carat - Returning To Its Roots

Wed, 08 Jan 2014 15:22:00 -0500

When London-based Carat opened shop in the U.S. marketplace in the mid-1990s, it transformed Madison Avenue, forcing all of the major agency holding companies to unbundle their media departments into free-standing media services agencies. Carat didn't force Madison Avenue's hand because it was a pure-play, independent media-buying shop. Those had existed in the U.S. and other markets around the world since the 1960s. (In fact, Madison Avenue's oldest agencies - names like J. Walter Thompson and N.W. Ayer & Son - essentially began as media shops, repping newspaper advertising space). What differentiated Carat, and what forced Madison Avenue to capitulate, is that it was the first independent media services agency of its scale, and with the capital resources to invest in new forms of research and data needed to improve the science of planning, buying and measuring the effects of media. Carat, in effect, was a research company in media-buyers' clothing, and the world's biggest agency holding companies are still playing catch up.

Fast Forward: Courage, Discipline and Foresight

Wed, 08 Jan 2014 14:58:00 -0500

One of the interesting things about writing these introductions to MEDIA magazine's annual Agency of the Year editions is that they always coincide with the end of a calendar year, and so, like many other people this time of year, I'm not just reviewing what our winners have done these past 12 months, but what's been taking place in the world around us. Needless to say, I believe everything around us is accelerating - in large part - because of the acceleration of media options and ways of experiencing them. The most ironic part for me, is that I get to cover an industry that is both simultaneously contributing to, and reacting to those changes. The agencies, entities and people we recognize in this issue are some of the best examples of both of those things, and for me, nothing has galvanized that thought more than Matt Seiler's proclamation to automate half of Interpublic's media-buying within the next two years.

The Big Picture

Wed, 02 Oct 2013 14:58:00 -0400

We may not think of them that way, but before the Internet - and certainly before the cloud - libraries were our original content servers. This image, a photocomposition of two very different kinds of "stacks" - the book shelves of the Library of Congress (above/left) and the computer servers of Google's data center in Douglas County, GA (below/right) - makes that point in a visual way.

Fast Forward

Wed, 02 Oct 2013 12:10:00 -0400

Over the 10 years I've been involved in producing this magazine, I've often had a "gun to my head," but until this issue, it was only a figurative reference related to making our print publishing deadlines. With this issue - our annual "Future of Media" edition - it is a literal one. You could even see it on our cover, if we had one. Technically, we don't, because this is the first issue of MEDIA that won't be printed on paper, with ink - unless you choose to do that on your end. Instead, this issue was designed, produced and published 100% digitally on the Web, and utilizing a responsive design enabling it be rendered on whatever screen you happen to be reading it on.

If You Don't Read This Story, A Machine Will Take My Job

Wed, 02 Oct 2013 01:56:00 -0400

Those words were how one version of this story began when it was first published on Sept. 6, alongside an alternate version written by a machine named Persado. Both were sent in equal but random splits to the email subscribers of RTM Daily, a publication I edit that is mainly about people using machines to do a better job of what people used to do without them: planning, buying and evaluating media. One of the premises for why machines can help them do a better job is that machines - especially those tapping "Big Data" and utilizing next-generation data- processing algorithms - can make decisions faster than people can, enabling marketing to go "real-time." Hence RTM Daily's name.

Out of the Box. Welcome to TV Everywhere

Mon, 16 Sep 2013 13:47:00 -0400

Inevitably, when asked to contemplate the future of television, one can't help but briefly retreat into the past. What did television mean to us when we were kids, teens and young adults? What did it mean to our parents, our children and others in our lives? Anyone old enough to remember the pre-cable world no doubt feels a rush of nostalgia thinking about all of the simple good things television used to be.

Why You Should Be An Optimist

Mon, 16 Sep 2013 13:46:00 -0400

As one of the few people on Madison Avenue who seem to have a solid foot in it, what can you tell us about the future of media? Four big trends to the way that media gets planned, bought and measured.

This Article Knows You Want to Read It

Mon, 16 Sep 2013 13:46:00 -0400

"What do I want?" Sometimes it's an incredibly hard question to answer. Whether deciding where to get dinner, what smartphone to buy, or even which route to take to work, these questions add up fast.

The Pay-Per-Gaze Model

Mon, 16 Sep 2013 13:46:00 -0400

Well, this is the question most of us have in our minds as we get exposed to this sensational news - "Google Patents 'Pay-Per-Gaze' Gaze Tracking System." By the time you get active trying to figure out what the revolutionary technology from the Google Glass creator is all about, you indeed might have found your pupils dilated by now. So what actually is this 'gaze tracking patent' all about?

The Games People Will Play

Mon, 16 Sep 2013 13:43:00 -0400

When looking to the future of media, there's always a great deal happening to move the needle, and yet, in the short term, things really don't feel like they've changed much. It's a progress treadmill of sorts. Something like the shift from using DVRs to using Netflix is a massive leap behind the scenes, but the consumer experience seems elatively unchanged.

Welcome To The Thingamajigernet

Mon, 16 Sep 2013 13:41:00 -0400

The nice real-estate lady made it the centerpiece of her pitch. Having been notified that my wife and I would likely buy whatever house had the most bitchin' kitchen, she led us around the otherwise unexceptional colonial in suburban Jer-Z in an elliptical manner. First we toured the basement, then we trod up two flights of stairs to see the bedrooms. Only then did the agent swing back downstairs to the main living space. It was clear that she'd planned some grand reveal.

Shift Happens, Prepare to be Disrupted

Mon, 16 Sep 2013 13:40:00 -0400

One sunny Friday afternoon last March, I received a tweet. Though it was simple in form and short in message, it created an immediate shift in how I would experience the world going forward. The tweet was from Google's Project Glass team and informed me that I was invited to join the beta tester program as a Glass Explorer. This immediately united me with the now more than 8,000 other Google Glass Explorers who are connected through a private community on Google+ where we share our collective adventures, experiences and thoughts about Glass at #throughglass.

Weighing the Numbers Game

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 16:11:00 -0400

For media agencies, preparing for the upfronts used to be fairly straightforward: Watch the new shows, study the ratings for the old ones, review some demographics and place your bets. Win some, lose some, wash, rinse, repeat.

Flash forward to 2013, when buyers have the option of arming themselves with a mountain of data that makes Nielsen ratings look like the score of a ping-pong match. There’s C3, C7, set-top, single-source, social media, commercial ratings — the list goes on and on. And don’t forget the expansion of a three-network field into a veritable free-for-all of cable networks and digital platforms. So while there might be a ton more data, there’s also a whole lot more to measure, because who the heck knows what anyone is watching anymore?

“What has become abundantly clear in the past few years with all the different media devices available and vying for people’s attention is that what we really need to focus on is just attention,” says Brian Hughes, SVP and head of the audience analysis practice at MagnaGlobal. “People are bombarded with ads all day from all kinds of places, so we really want to focus on the times and the content in which we feel they’re most attentive.” For Hughes, doing so requires a carefully balanced mix of proprietary, social and vendor data.

It’s hard to say exactly when this modern era began. Perhaps in 2007, when the networks started basing their rates on the ratings of commercials rather than the shows they buffeted. But some would go back further, to 2002. Or more specifically, September 15, 2002, when a pay-cable show turned heads by siphoning off a serious chunk of America’s eyeballs.

That was the day HBO aired the first episode of The Sopranos’ blockbuster fourth season. The show pulled nearly 14 million viewers, then an all-time high for the show (and a remarkable feat given the mere 30 million U.S. homes that subscribed to HBO).

Billie Gold, VP and director of programming research at Carat, remembers scratching her head over the exodus of viewers. “We were all kind of wondering what happened,” she says. “It was one of the first times, besides when sports air on ESPN, that we saw some network shows take a hit during the hour that The Sopranos was on.”

“Now we see the same thing happening when AMC’s Walking Dead is on,” she adds.

Today, Gold says the rise of original programming on cable is the main factor shaping how she prepares for the upfront. With basic cable networks producing some of the most popular and critically acclaimed shows on television, determining which broadcast shows will pull an audience is harder than ever — particularly because the broadcast networks are pulling so few viewers overall. Instead of factoring in two or three other networks, buyers must now scan the entire television landscape in search of other attractions, even those as seemingly inconsequential as Pawn Stars or Hoarders. (As if to drive home the point, the debut of The Bible on the History Channel drew a shocking 13.1 million viewers in March, just days after A&E pulled nearly 9 million viewers with the third-season premiere of its reality series Duck Dynasty.)

“The basic process has remained the same,” says Gold. “But we have to spend more time and energy figuring out what shows are going to do because we keep seeing them reach all-time lows. We keep saying ‘Oh it’s in a good time period,’ or ‘it’s following this,’ but it used to be much easier to predict shows.”

The change in ratings currency has also had an irreversible impact on how buyers do their research. Long gone are the days of share estimates, when agencies would approximate what percentage of active televisions were tuned to a given show — a relic of the days when commercial prices were tied to their host programs.

“We don’t do them anymore because the shares and the HUTs [Households Using Television] were all wrong,” says Lyle Schwartz, a managing partner at GroupM. “Today, we actually estimate the audience, not the share. The old metrics don’t seem to work in the calculations these days.”

The reigning currency these days may be the C3 (see sidebar), but that doesn’t limit the buyers from consulting other sources. What used to be a one-company business — Nielsen told you who watched what; otherwise you relied on hunches and gut — is now a multi-vendor universe eagerly providing buyers with every form of data. It’s information that may not make its way directly into a negotiation, but it can help buyers decide whether or not a program’s worth buying.

Not that all buyers choose to use them. “Not at all,” says Gold, when asked about including set-top-box data in her research. “Basically set-top-box data is just looked at in terms of trending and not in terms of ratings,” she says. “We match it up with Polk data and it marries with Simmons data, so the planners might use it directionally. But it in no way affects how we use it in terms of doing projections at all.”

As for single-source data, much-ballyhooed measurements that tie TV exposure to product purchases at the household level, the technology isn’t yet reliable enough to be compelling, says Hughes.

“There really isn’t a definitive single-source product available yet,” he said.

Still, MagnaGlobal long ago sensed the need to complement the usual Nielsen data, and developed a proprietary measurement called the Magna Value Index that seeks to capture audience attention. Exactly how it does this Hughes won’t say. “Some of the indicators we might use are how long they’re tuned in before they tune away or do something else,” he says,” or at what rate are they recording and playing back the program.” To supplement that metric, Hughes relies on social media activity connected with a given show. “We feel that people’s interest in watching a show and commenting on it in real-time also belies a level of attentiveness.”

Not everyone buys that theory, however. Critics question whether somebody tweeting about a show is necessarily paying attention to the commercials. But Hughes claims that his company has cracked the social/TV code.

“We’ve done a lot of really in-depth research on social activity that happens simultaneously with TV viewing,” he says. “Like when we’re looking at a big live event like the Oscars, we’re really looking at down to the minute how much activity is happening. Is it happening during commercial breaks? Are people commenting on what’s just happened or on something that’s happening in real time?” By studying the difference, MagnaGlobal believes it can tell just how engaged viewers are with a program.

Even with all the whizz-bang ratings available today, some buyers still rely on old-school metrics that have little to do with television. Schwartz says GroupM buyers “look at online viewing information from things like Nielsen as well as ComScore” and SNL Kagan, which provides wireless metrics. “But we also take a look at financials like the profitability of companies,” he says. “We look at the GDP, we look at costs of production such as gasoline prices, interest rates, unemployment.” Like any marketplace, TV advertising is based on supply and demand, so Schwartz says it’s important to know whether the ad budgets of certain industries might rise or fall in the coming year.

Unlike the buyers of decades ago, media agencies today can hardly complain about not having enough data. Instead, the problem seems to be an overabundance of available metrics and insights, not all of which have yet proven their value. So like the advertisers who find themselves drowning in big data, unsure what to respond to and what to file away, media buyers today may find their biggest problem is simply separating the wheat from the chaff.

“We’re of the mind that’s not about the number of sources you have,” says Hughes. “It’s about having the right sources.”

Negotiating a New Frontier

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 16:10:22 -0400

We hear about them more and more these days — those cord-cutters who have set sail from the expensive docks of traditional television and are waving from the shores of online video, happy, free, untethered, pockets heavy with saved money. The consumers who do opt to forgo the traditional TV model present a problem for content creators — namely, how to make money — or at least take some from television’s 70 billion-dollar-a-year ad revenue compared to digital’s 2 billion.

So while the TV advertising buyers are coming together in April in big hotel conference rooms in New York for the annual upfronts, across town an emerging conference is coming together for a similar event focused on the online video space that its presenters hope will one day rival the upfronts: the NewFront.

Started in 2008 by digital agency Digitas and spearheaded by then-CEO Laura Lang, currently the outgoing CEO of Time, Inc., the NewFront sought to create a marketplace for the growing segment of digital content that hadn’t found a home with marketers and advertisers.

“It started when we realized there was a burgeoning market of digital content creators,” says Lang, “There was no way to put that group of people together with brands and marketers. We said, ‘Wait, there is not a natural marketplace for this growing segment.’ It was very clear that people were consuming digital material. We wanted to show people it’s a future marketplace for digital content creations. A creation of a marketplace [was the goal].”

The first year’s NewFront, known as the Digital Content NewFront, brought together prominent digital content creation companies like MySpaceTV, MTV and the now defunct 60 Frames. The panelists were heavy hitters in the media industry as well, with then-Disney chief Michael Eisner and 60 Frames CEO Brent Weinsten, among others. After that, the panelist names got even bigger, drawing in people from myriad professions including Al Gore, Demi Moore and Subway CMO Tony Pace who all had one goal: monetizing their online video properties... at some point.

“The goal at the time was to increase awareness of ever growing content creation to help marketers and advertisers understand the role digital content could play. For Digitas, it was a chance to show leadership,” says Lang.

When Digitas opened the NewFront to other agencies in 2012, the event became an industry force with content flowing in from competitors like AOL, Microsoft, Hulu, Vevo, Yahoo and Google/YouTube.

This year, Digitas will completely turn over the NewFront to the Interactive Advertising Bureau and host its own presentation during the event. “All six of the founding partners — Digitas plus the five founding publishers — recognized that the enthusiasm of agencies and marketers would grow if the NewFront was fully understood to be a marketplace run by sellers for buyers: all buyers,” says Randall Rothenberg, President & CEO of the IAB. “So IAB’s stewardship is simply an affirmation of neutrality in support of a vital and explosively growing marketplace.”

The Creators

Shira Lazar, cofounder and host of What’s Trending, a daily YouTube program, has been part of the NewFront since its inception: she hosted one of the first NewFronts and Digitas’ presentation again in 2011.

For online content creators like Lazar, the NewFronts are an opportunity to showcase their work and start a conversation with agencies about the online audience.

“An entire generation of people are getting content online,” says Damon Berger, CEO and cofounder of What’s Trending, “The subscription model, over the top — there is an entire generation who just watch online and it’s something advertisers are understanding more and more. At What’s Trending, forty percent of viewers access over mobile devices.”

With creators engaging their audiences, better and more finely tuned content can be produced based on consumer taste and preferences.

“The creators today have built communications and brands through two-way conversations with audiences,” says Lazar, “It changes how we produce content for this generation. It changes how we create and broadcast content. We can be more creative.”

This is good news for advertisers. Online content creators will even say it’s better than the TV ad model.

“Community allows advertisers to engage in a conversation that a one-way TV broadcast can’t handle,” says Berger, “Traditional TV is still linear and has no interaction even with Twitter and Facebook engagement.”

Are the buyers buying it?

Everyone wants to know just how much, if at all, the NewFront will affect its perceived counterpart.

“The upfronts are much more rooted in the negotiation aspects — driven by the scarcity of TV inventory and the competition for it,” says Jessica Sanfilippo, Group Media Director, 360i. “The rules are clearly defined and the opportunities in the form of spots are straightforward. With the NewFronts, we as buyers are still being sold conceptually by the digital publishers on the value — and, if you factor in all video channels including UGC, the inventory is fairly limitless. So the NewFront conversation shifted to more of the uniqueness of the integration opportunities, such as branded video entertainment. In that sense, the flexibility of execution opportunities afforded by the NewFronts translates into some strong branding opportunities.”

To that point, it may not be fair to compare the NewFront to the upfront in the future.

Lang agrees: “It’s not clear that the NewFront will mimic the upfronts. I do believe they will take money out of the markets.”

But the general consensus in the media community is that no money has been shifted from TV to online video ad budgets, though no one is certain.

“I’ve heard there are ranges from a half billion dollars moved from the upfronts to the NewFront,” says Lang.

“We have seen our clients adopt online video, not as a replacement to TV, but as a complement and supplement,” says Sanfilippo, “Clients understand the opportunity that online video offers in order to tell richer, more interactive stories with the consumer that go beyond the 30- or 60-second spot.”

With the IAB taking over the NewFront in 2013, the event is taking shape as something not quite entirely different from its Digitas days, but still evolving in scope and sophistication. “We look at IAB merely as the maitre d’ at the hottest restaurant in town — the burgeoning upfront marketplace for original digital video programming, distributed at mass scale, but infinitely segmentable and intimately targetable,” says Rothenberg. “Our goal is to help the producers of the most exciting digital content establish a robust market where agency buyers and brand marketers want to shop.”

And as the NewFront evolves, “there will be a new wave of new stars and celebrities from the digital world in the coming years,” says Lazar.

But not so fast. While buyers may pack into every seat at the presentations and eat all the shrimp at the after parties, don’t expect money to flow as freely as it does at the upfronts.

“There is urgency behind the upfronts, whereas the NewFronts involve more time for clients to source on budgeting as they shape their investment opportunities,” says Sanfilippo.

Still, Lang is optimistic: “The real deals are always done behind closed doors and that will always be the case. It will happen at the NewFront.”

Fast Forward: Worn And Threadbare

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 16:09:00 -0400

I collect T-shirts the way other people collect art or wine, but unlike them, I don’t preserve them for the future. I live in them to remember an important experience they are associated with. I wear them until they are worn out and all that’s left is the memory of what they represented. So it tickles me when I see my 17-year-old daughter sporting my 30-plus-year-old “No Nukes” T-shirt, or when I saw my son wearing the threadbare one shown in the image above.

That shirt is special to me for many reasons, but most importantly, because it was handed to me personally by late NBC programming chief Brandon Tartikoff in the spring of 1984, just after he briefed the affiliated station troops on the peacock network’s new prime-time schedule. The shirt has an NBC logo with the words “No Prisoners” on top of it, and it conveyed the spirit Tartikoff had when I interviewed him on his plans to turn the network around after another devastating prime-time season — and one in which some pundits had written NBC, and Tartikoff, off altogether.

Maybe it was just showmanship, or salesmanship, but I believed Tartikoff believed what he was saying to me when he outlined how the new schedule, with rookie series The Cosby Show as its centerpiece, would put NBC back on top. History proved him right, and the experience, more than any other, defined for me what the upfront is really about: making bets. Big bets, but calculated bets. And all the things I’ve been highly critical of over the years — the upfront’s smoke-and-mirrors spectacle, its antiquated market inefficiency, and especially the media spin surrounding it — are the things I love about it. It’s all about the show, and if you pick the right ones, you’re back on top.

We’ve dedicated this issue of MEDIA to examining the upfront — both the economics of its market structure, as well as the unique role it plays in the culture of our industry, and our society at large. It’s the closest thing Madison Avenue and Broadcast Row have to Hollywood’s dream factory, where the spin and sizzle are as much a part of the product as the product itself. But as the old Madison Avenue adage goes, nothing can kill a bad product faster than good advertising, so goes the prime-time upfront. But for every Manimal or Super Train there is also a Cosby. You just never know until the viewers actually weigh in.

The part I like the least about the upfront, is the clubby, incestuous nature of how business gets done. And if you wonder why I’m so cynical about it, it is embodied by another adage I heard just after I started covering the upfront, and it’s one that’s still used today: “No buyer ever got fired for paying too much in the upfront, but some have lost their jobs for missing the upfront.” The “missing” is a reference to the timing of the market, and the fact that buyers who don’t move fast can get left holding the bag, missing out on commercial time in the best shows and/or paying too much for them. It’s the kind of logic that is a nostalgic throwback to an old world of doing business in this age of programmatic buying and agency trading desks, but that kind of thinking is still pervasive among media buyers, and advertisers too.

I miss the days when a programmer like Tartikoff could make a few bets and transform a schedule, a network and prime-time television culture. I don’t miss the old-school way agencies buy the upfront — because, like my faded T-shirt, it lingers on.

Staying Power

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 16:08:00 -0400

Long-term, TV's big broadcast networks need much to maintain their continued viewer and advertising dominance: More hits, perhaps a slowing down of TV viewer erosion, and building new digital platforms that attract meaningful advertising revenues. In the short term, TV executives have more specific hurdles.

Let's Go Numb

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 16:06:00 -0400

The reality landscape is turning inward, a world within a world. TV reality producer Mark Burnett told "Esquire" he hates the term "reality television" and prefers "non-fiction programming." These shows -- even the best of them -- aren't reality. In the AAA ball of cable television, they are awkwardly choreographed worlds of manufactured tension, interspersed with soundtracks and cityscapes.

The View From the Stage

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 16:01:07 -0400

Mitch Oscar, a long-time agency executive, remembers Robin Williams taking the upfront stage to interest advertisers in a new series called Mork & Mindy.In full dress and playing his role as an alien, the comedian’s act included a prayer to the Nielsen gods.

“We all cracked up hysterically,” Oscar said.

Not all actors (or talent) sent out by networks to entice the buying community are able to bring the house down like a pre-movie star Williams. In fact, over the years, their appearances are arguably one of the main culprits why upfront presentations have lasted so many hours.

A standard has a network playing a clip of a coming new drama or comedy and then members of the cast coming out. A lead star basically says hello and thanks for your support. The rest just stand there.

Though there is always polite applause, after the routine happens for, say, the fifth time at a single presentation, some in the crowd might get a little antsy — assuming the actors aren’t well-known. In other words, not the Friends cast saying hello or a Kevin Bacon heralding a new TV role.

Advertisers may have gotten excited a few years back when the talent on NBC’s NFL coverage didn’t just appear, but tossed footballs into the crowd. There were only a few, though. Did advertisers wonder with all the money being spent, shouldn’t everyone get one in a goody bag?

In recent years, as reality
TV has boomed, “regular
folks” have been called on to entice advertisers — notably,
during presentations by cable networks. Discovery Communications, which doesn’t use scripted programming, makes particular use of them annually at its showcase at New York’s Time Warner Center.

Last year marked the first time Shorty Rossi, the star of Animal Planet’s Pit Boss, appeared before advertisers in the presentation (he had attended and mingled with them at post-event gatherings before). Like other actors and reality stars, he said he didn’t know what an upfront was before a briefing prior to his first one.

Now, he gets it, though. The attendees control billions of ad dollars that can impact a career.

“You can have the best show in the world and if you don’t convince the [advertisers] that it’s going to last for a while or the ratings are [going to be] great, you aren’t going anywhere,” Shorty said. “You can have the worst show in the world and have huge ratings and the advertisers are going to see that … they’re the ones that pay the bills, they’re the ones that pay my salary even though it comes from the network.”

Shorty didn’t just come out and wave last year. A clip introducing new show “Finding Bigfoot” ran and it seemed likely one of the stars would follow on stage. But, playing off the Bigfoot concept, Shorty emerged from a cloud of fog as the lights came up asking, “What did you expect, something bigger?”

He was holding pit bull Hercules. Dogs frequently make appearances in Super Bowl ads, so why wouldn’t they appeal to advertisers?

In that vein, Animal Planet tried it again last year with Tanked stars Brett Raymer and Wayde King. Like other network talent, they were scheduled to play a role in the next Puppy Bowl and came out with puppies and waved their paws.

Raymer said he and King do fine in front of crowds, but there were some nerves before going on. “Being a big part of the whole presentation was really exciting and just a fun thing, but when you don’t know what’s going to go on, there’s … a little bit of nervousness,” he said.

Fellow Discovery Communications star, Buddy Valastro — the Cake Boss who appears in an eponymous show on TLC — said he wants to appeal to two audiences: advertisers and his bosses. “I do feel a little bit more pressure on me because not only do you have [advertisers], but then you have all the people from Discovery and they’re great people … but you are still a little nervous because you still want to perform,” he said.

He’s been on stage multiple times — Discovery has presentations in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles — and said he once forgot his lines and “definitely got a little stage fright,” but improvised to the point he didn’t think anyone in the crowd noticed.

Speaking of “regular people” — or ones that used to be — Discovery authored one of the more emotional upfront moments in 2009 when Chesley Sullenberger, the pilot who landed the US Airways plane safely in the Hudson River, came out. TLC was announcing it would air a documentary about him, and the crowd gave him a sustained standing ovation.

Besides actors, network executives from sales to programming also appear on the upfront stage each year, and it’s important they be prepared for anything. Memorably, one year Mike Tyson appeared to introduce an Animal Planet show he’d be starring in, rooted in his love of pigeons. As he got going excitedly, he spoke about how he used to skip school while collecting them.

Animal Planet chief Marjorie Kaplan might have been a bit surprised, but she didn’t miss a beat after Tyson, seamlessly telling the advertisers, “We don’t support truancy, but this is going to be quite a show.”

Perhaps the best example of an executive acting extemporaneously with aplomb came in May 2011 at the Turner Broadcasting event. It was the upfront when the lights went out on Broadway (actually a few blocks away at the Hammerstein Ballroom). About 15 minutes into the show, an executive pointed the audience to a clip of a new comedy.

The screen was blank. And, it stayed that way for what must have seemed forever for the Turner bosses.

Upfront presentations are rehearsed, so when Steve Koonin, in charge of the networks presenting, realized some sort of power outage wasn’t in the script, he ran up on stage and offered a hilarious intro: “My name’s Steve Koonin, formerly of Turner Broadcasting.”

He proceeded to tell a series of jokes that killed time and just killed. At one point he said to advertisers, “Our pricing is not changing because of this.”

Upfront event schedules have moved over the years. In 2010, seemingly looking to take advantage of the popularity of Jersey Shore, MTV held an event in February not long after the show wrapped its first season. The cast didn’t take the stage, but was very popular when mingling with advertisers at an after-party.

Turner and ESPN have joined the broadcast upfront week, looking to persuade advertisers their value is on par with the Big Four.

In 2008, NBC sought to shake up the overall concept of a presentation, looking to emphasize NBC prime time along with other NBCUniversal assets. Instead of its typical Radio City grand show, it held an NBCU Experience — replete with the “Kitt” car, as a Knight Rider redux was on tap — in a tent at Rockefeller Center. There was also a party where Conan O’Brien did a bit, as he was readying to take over The Tonight Show.

The comedian riffed on NBC’s decision to try something new (or perhaps cheaper): “When I first started with this company 15 years ago … the NBC upfronts were held at prestigious Avery Fisher Hall. Remember those days. Then, they moved to historic Radio City, a beautiful majestic palace. Now, we’re all standing in a soggy tent outside the NBC store. I hope you’ll join us again at next year’s upfronts at the falafel stand on 49th Street.”

NBC traditionally had the prime lead-off position during upfront week on Monday afternoon when anticipation was high and advertisers weren’t tired of, well, largely unknown actors coming out and saying hi. In 2009, NBC held an evening comedy event after ABC’s Tuesday event and ceded its Monday spot.

Many would say that turned out to be major mistake. Fox pounced and has taken over the Monday spot. NBC has since returned with a Monday morning event, but no longer has the day to itself.

Needless to say, O’Brien is no longer in the spotlight at NBC, having been canned at the network. Turner, where he now hosts a late-night show on TBS, has called on him quite a bit, though, for laughs at presentations. (O’Brien had finished a bit just before the electricity problem in 2011.)

Perhaps, though, the most anticipated comedic performance of upfront week comes courtesy of Jimmy Kimmel, who annually pokes fun at the TV business at the ABC event, including his own network.

“He’s a highlight,” said Don Seaman, formerly of MPG and now at TVB. “Every single time I think he kills it.”

In 2011, Kimmel told advertisers: “I can’t promise you any of these shows will be good. I can’t promise you any of them will be successful. But what I can promise you is that they will be expensive to advertise in.”

And … “Remember those shows that we were so excited about last fall? We cancelled all of them. And yet here you are again. I think you might have a gambling problem.”

Does ABC censor him? Basically, no, Kimmel told Kim Masters last year in an interview on her public radio show in Los Angeles.

“They forgot to look at my script the first year,” he wagged (or maybe not). “Nobody was paying attention to me and I wound up making fun of them and kind of everything and it went well.”

He added: “Luckily, I was able to kind of set a precedent, and now I think people expect it from me. And, by next year they should be pretty well sick of me.”

Not a chance, says Seaman. “He owns that crowd … maybe it’s just because he’s mocking us, which we seem to appreciate. That works really well.”

(One long-time agency executive said Kimmel’s funny, but it’s not in good taste to mock the hand that feeds you, so to speak.)

Speaking of ABC, Seaman said that the network played the full pilot of Modern Family as it was getting ready for launch at Lincoln Center and advertisers were very impressed. “The whole room just went: that’s a hit,” he said. “That was obvious. Perfect.”

The cast may have come out afterwards, but it sounds like the deal with advertisers was already sealed before Kimmel could poke fun at it.

Show Starter

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 15:59:42 -0400

When it comes to announcing their annual fall schedules,do the big broadcast networks really need to continue producing massive presentations and throwing gigantic parties during what has long been known as upfront week? Or have digital media and social networking eliminated the need for such old-school largesse?

On the one hand, if the primary purpose of an upfront week presentation is to inform advertisers and the press of a network’s plans for the upcoming television season, it would seem that such events have in recent years become largely unnecessary. Interested parties now have all of that information at hand at least a day before the events, and sometimes earlier. Those individuals include television viewers and fans that used to be the last to know about the networks’ fall offerings but are now as well informed as anyone working in or around television, especially when it comes to announcements about forthcoming programs and schedules. That’s because the networks release that information to the press before the events, and it is instantly transmitted to the public at large. Additionally, reporters at certain media and entertainment Web sites begin posting this information days or weeks in advance, as deals for new and returning shows are closed on the studio level and arrangements are made for talent from those projects to travel to New York for upfront week.

Some networks augment this early information discharge by posting clips from new shows on their Web sites in advance of their presentations. These are often the very same clips that are shown to advertisers on giant high-definition screens at Radio City Music Hall, Carnegie Hall or another outsize New York City venue. As a result, many of the attendees at these events already know most of what they are about to hear and have already seen much of what they are going to be shown.

This is a dramatic shift from the upfront week experience of old —old being defined as pre-digital. As recently as the ’90s, most people walked into upfront events with only a general idea of what would be announced. Newspapers and daily trade publications would publish best-guess schedules based on information from the previous day, but they were rarely accurate. The atmosphere inside those venues was electric, especially if the presentation was well-produced and the clips from new shows caught on with the audience. In fact, the only way a presentation could truly fail was if it ran too long.

Today, the networks make a concerted effort to keep their presentations fast-moving, and most of them run between one and two hours in length. But in the old days, before the audience was digitally empowered and ready to tweet snarky comments about an overly long production, these events could drag on for hours. Occasionally, a network would make the mistake of including an entire pilot of what it considered to be its most promising new comedy or drama, extending its presentation by up to 45 minutes and rarely generating good will in the process. Just ask anyone who was forced to sit through the pilot for the long-forgotten newsroom drama WIOU at CBS’ presentation back in 1990.

Of course, even the longest broadcast upfront presentations were somewhat easier to take than they are today, because they weren’t crushed together in the space of four days along with those of so many cable and Spanish-language networks, and they didn’t come at the end of three months of cable upfront presentations and parties. Indeed, back when there were only three upfront presentations, for CBS, NBC and ABC, and even when Fox was added to the mix, they weren’t necessarily even scheduled in the same week. There was plenty of breathing room between them. Today, those four overloaded days have for many become a punishing marathon, more an endurance test than an informational and educational opportunity.

An informed audience is not necessarily an enthusiastic one, and that’s where the value of a strong upfront presentation still comes into play. Given the competition for advertising dollars and press attention, not to mention viewers, it still makes sense for networks to do everything they can to propel their properties to the forefront and leave advertisers and journalists wanting more. It’s one thing to read about CBS’ new schedule on your smartphone and watch a few clips on your tablet. It’s quite another to be seated in Carnegie Hall, long the home of CBS’ annual presentation, surrounded by advertising, network and studio executives and the talent from the network’s current and future shows, watching those clips on a breathtaking high-definition screen and taking in what is always an extraordinary showing by the network.

All of this celebration and exposure can work against a new show if its clips indicate that it isn’t one of the network’s best. Sometimes that is immediately clear to everyone but the network’s own executives. (To cite just one of countless examples, how did NBC not see the looming disaster that was Animal Practice, the freshman comedy last fall that starred a monkey, when everyone at its upfront presentation couldn’t help but see how utterly inane it appeared to be?) But risk has always been a big part of the network game, at least where program development is concerned. Better to look at the positive aspects of the traditional upfront experience, especially as they are typified by some of the more successful presentations.

Looking back over almost a quarter century of upfront week events, which has included large-scale successes and unforgettable failures by each network along the way, two memories stand out: The presentations by The WB at the Sheraton Hotel in midtown Manhattan, and NBC’s decision a few years back to forego a formal upfront presentation of any kind in favor of intimate agency meetings. The WB is long gone, having merged with UPN in 2006 to form The CW, but happy memories of its upfront presentations remain. The WB didn’t so much present its programming as immerse its audience in an environment in which everything that the network had done and had planned to do was made to seem even more stimulating than it actually may have been. The WB had its problems along the way, but it was second to none at generating interest in its shows and stars among advertisers and members of the press.

As for NBC, its attempt in 2008 at removing itself completely from the traditional upfront week structure, choosing instead to have small meetings with advertisers and the press beginning in early April of that year, was widely panned. It was simply too dramatic a change for the industry to get behind.

And so it is that the networks now find themselves caught between the expectations of the old and the realities of the new. It’s no longer enough for a presentation to serve as a glorified announcement. Instead, the presentation —and, arguably, the party that follows —must serve to generate interest within the business and provide insight and context into brand, strategy and programming alike. That’s the only way to separate the upfront experience for advertisers and the press from what is now an outpouring of new, context-free information directly to the viewing public.

Bande A Part

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 15:54:28 -0400

The last upfront presentation I attended was a Nickelodeon breakfast-palooza three or four years ago. I went with my wife, who had a valid professional reason to be there. Mine was of a more earthly nature: I was in the neighborhood and had a hard-core hankerin’ for hotel-buffet-caliber eggs. Also, the featured entertainer was one of the network’s litany of triple-threat starlets (acting/singing/reputation management). When iCarly — or Zoey 101 or True Jackson, VP, or whoever it was — comes a-knocking, you answer that door, friend. You answer that door.

So you can imagine my excitement as I backed the football-girthed omelet onto my plate. Media! Food! Song! It was like a Renaissance Fair, but with fewer Drench-a-Wench booths and more impenetrable market research. Surely I would be delighted into allotting the totality of my nonexistent ad budget towards a brand-redefining presence during the breaks of The Naked Brothers Band.

And then cataclysmically disastrous tragedy struck: an exec approached the mic, cleared his throat substitute-teacher-style and announced that the featured entertainer had called in sick, or at least slightly hoarse. You could almost hear all the media buyers in attendance start yanking their ads from Team Umizoomi. It seemed possible — nay, probable — that Nickelodeon would lose its low-digit slot on every major cable provider’s basic tier before brunchtime rolled around. Natasha Bedingfield gamely filled in as entertainment, singing her “Pocketful of Sunshine” as if the room hadn’t just been smacked by a comparable weather-event metaphor, but the damage was done.

Or not. Mostly the upfront-saturated media drones shrugged and bantered pleasantly with one another. Some checked their BlackBerrys. The second the Nick presentation ended, they rose from their seats absently and plodded en masse to the next network confab, one of three can’t-miss klatches scheduled for that very day. They didn’t seem bored or disgusted or sad. They were just going through the motions, not unlike the average factory grunt.

Unsurprisingly, then, my lasting takeaway from the morning was this: There is precisely no reason for upfront events of this sort to exist.

Maybe there was 15 years ago, when there were only a handful of the darn things and media buyers had to joust for coveted Nash Bridges ad inventory. But today, when every broadcast or cable network move that matters is leaked and/or telegraphed weeks in advance of the upfronts? When there are close to 100 such shindigs on the slate, once you factor out-of-home, radio and other entities into the mix? And when there are about as many cable networks as there are days of the year?

Who has the time? Who has the will? The average buyer’s resources would be better spent reading the online TV trades, making a few extra one-on-one visits and flipping a coin (“heads, I advertise on Utilisima. Tails, it’s Chiller”).

None of this is to pick on Nickelodeon, which was far more of a gracious host than the occasion demanded, nor to dump on the attendees, who were largely there because their job description said they had to be. No, it’s to call for a major-league reassessment of the upfronts. To that end, here are a few suggestions, proffered by some of the industry’s most-bored veteran upfront attendees, to remake upfront season into something remotely useful for media folk, not to mention interloping idiots (raising hand).

Start with the question, “Why bother?”: Unless you’ve got an answer other than, “Because we always have” or “Because if we don’t, someone else will and then I might have to explain it to my boss and I think she’s got a nephew who is eyeing my job,” it’s time to cut the cord. If you can answer that question in another way — say, with “We’ve got a metric ton of branding initiatives, new programming relationships and a possible breakthrough on a cure for baldness to announce, and we’d try everyone’s patience if we reveal it piecemeal” — bully for you. Then…

Make sure that you’ve got real news: The whole “yoo hoo! over here!” act gets grating when 65 other media entities are echoing it. Yes, it’s never unwise to let your core clients know you still exist, and yes, it’s probably not the worst idea to alert both buyers and sellers that bartering season has arrived. But if you’re not sure whether a certain set of announcements can sustain attendees’ interest through an upfront gala scheduled to occupy an afternoon-long chunk of temporal real estate, run it by your critical-minded journalist pals. Not me, though — I call for 32-point front-page headlines every time VH-1 comes to terms with another saucy Basketball Wife. They’re so saucy! Still with me? Terrific! Next, you should…

Take whatever packet of research you’ve prepared for the occasion and trim it down by 85 percent: In context, numbers are fun. Educational, even. But when you throw 300 different statistimical nuggetrons at an audience during a three-minute PowerPoint blitzkrieg, those numbers will cease to have any meaning. It’s better to tease the audience with two or three surprising findings (“we own Aleutian males 18-34”) and suggest that there’s more where that came from. I believe this is known as either foreshadowing or bluffing. Same difference. Anyway, once you and your industrial-grade paper shredders clear that hurdle…

Find an event planner that’s either on the cutting edge of whatever event planners are event-planning nowadays — or a complete mental patient: Would-be sippers at the advertising trough have attempted to charm buyers with better food. They’ve tried hipper venues. They’ve tried Aerosmith, probably. None of it has worked; the events mostly remain indistinguishable from one another. And while recasting upfront events as strictly social gatherings makes some sense — everybody enjoys seeing their professional peers from time to time — the notion would lose luster if 80 such events are similarly reformatted. I don’t have the slightest inkling of a clue of an idea how to solve this problem. But as a one-time upfront regular and lapsed chicken finger aficionado, I can say this: Be different, or be gone.

The Turnaround

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 15:53:00 -0400

In the spring of 1984, Edsel Ford II, the Ford Motor Co. scion who was then head of marketing for the Detroit auto giant, assembled the top media buyers of his major ad agencies - Y&R, JWT and Wells Rich Greene - to come up with a strategy to help turn around one of the worst sales periods ever in its history.

Confessions of an Upfront Reporter

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 15:44:00 -0400

The first time I realized something was wrong with the upfront was as a rookie reporter covering the 1983-84 marketplace. Only a few weeks into the job, I started getting calls from Wall Street analysts asking me how the market was going. I remember thinking, "Aren't I supposed to be asking you?" A few years later, the pattern started to make sense.

OMD's Spotify Hackathon

Fri, 28 Dec 2012 18:33:00 -0500

Every digital media platform worthy of the name unleashes the creativity of its audience by opening up the platform to app developers, encouraging them to come up with new apps that make the platform more accessible, more convenient, or simply more fun. It's a win-win for both sides, as the platform taps the insight and enthusiasm of users to improve its service, and the users get to customize their favorite media.

All Together Now

Fri, 28 Dec 2012 18:30:00 -0500

A sandwich can be a powerful lure to those in the ad business. When the sandwich comes with fresh research and new insight - even better. That's what more than 300 executives in the agency, marketing, TV, research and technology business get four times a year from the Collaborative Alliance, a think tank founded by MPG executive Mitch Oscar. The Collaborative Alliance lives under the auspices of MPG's innovation umbrella and has had one of its most productive years.