Candid Conversation with Jack Myers and Matrix Solutions' Brenda Hetrick

Hetrick asked Myers about a recent Jack Myers ThinkTank podcast titled Battle for the Soul of Media in which he fiercely and passionately critiqued the impact that some of the larger social media players are having on the quotsoulquot of the media industry quotCompanies like Facebook have positioned themselves as media companies and are competing for media budgets when in fact they are really not a part of the media industry They are a part of a very different commercebased industryquotThe vast majority of their revenues are from small and mediumsized businesses They have created a turnkey and seamless model for integration and have imported that into the agencies and inhouse agencies at national marketers to enable an efficient model for procurementcentric brands to shift money away from the more traditional mediaquotThey39ve become active in our nonprofit groups our trade associations and are advocating for tools and resources while at the same time are capturing the very revenues they39re ostensibly helping the industry bring in The simple way to look at this is that they are focused on the bottom of the funnel but also present themselves as being a top of the funnel competitorquotHetrick concurred that Matrix Solutions39 core constituencies see FAANG companies as competitors quotand you are spot on that they are at the bottom of the funnel It39s not about the relationships or the value of the inventoryquotLooking back at Myers39 early career in sales at ABCFM followed by CBSTV Myers pointed to a quotcommon denominator of meeting with the retail community and learning and understanding how they were viewing our medium It39s interesting because today everyone is looking at commerce and the growth of Amazon Walmart Walgreens CVS Target and others that are competing for media budgets but delivering sales promotion value Major retailers have historically looked at radio and TV as a brandsell not a driver of business That39s how it has been sold to them even though it targets only two percent of their advertising budget At CBSTV I wanted to see how we could get to the other 98 of their budget most of which was provided by their vendors through coop dollars So I became an expert in coop and partnered with retailers like Bloomingdale39s Saks Macy39s Marshall Field Waldbaum39s Supermarket and even Crazy Eddie to generate vendorsupport for radio or TV campaigns promoting shortterm sales events It was a hugely successful strategy that broadcasters could learn from todayquotIn the early 1980s Myers foresaw the growth of cable and launched a consulting and research practice that has evolved into MediaVillageAdvancingDiversityorg which today hosts more than 150 dedicated educational and workforce development platforms that support the B2B marketing media advertising entertainment and educational communitiesIn terms of what local sales organizations can do to compete today Myers suggested that technology education and diversity are core to a successful modern sales strategy In light of the privacy restrictions that are starting to rollout he envisions more 1st Party datarich walledgardens similar to the way that NBC One has pulled in the local inventory to simplify the process remove the friction and make the buying of the inventory turnkey and seamlessMyers expresses frustration with the current state of data quotUnfortunately our data sources are still focused on driving information not knowledge although that39s evolving Information is garbage especially with having every agency and every client looking at different sets of data without true standardization I39m a believer in the importance of accelerating initiatives like Nielsen39s recently announced Nielsen One and Comscore39s planned advancesquotOur industry was always built on quality content support of the public interest and trusted and truthful journalism Marketers should pay a premium for that Instead we39ve been pushed by digital media into a model that devalues quality content devalues trust devalues truthfulness and devalues quality When you are locked into a strictly transactional sell you have no place to go but downquotLooking forward to 2021 Myers predicts a period of mayhem quotThere has to be an unbundling and reaggregation New winners New partnerships There will be more regulation We will have a different tax code that will make an impact With the end of the pandemic there will be a focus on globalization As many negatives and tragedies as there have been in 2020 and will likely continue into the first part of 2021 with Covid19 there are a lot of positives that have come out of pandemic as well as the quotBlack Lives Mattersquot movement I think there is a heightened awareness among people of the realities and the dangers that exist in the world and in our nation It39s the role of the media industry to act in the public interest and confront those dangersquotClick the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friendsThe opinions expressed here are the author39s views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet

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Candid Conversation with Jack Myers and Matrix Solutions' Brenda Hetrick

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