“Extend Your Career Life! …Call Now and Receive a Free Set of Lemon Cutting Ginzu Knives”
– Matt Feinberg
What is one of the biggest problems currently facing media sellers, buyers, and planners? I think most would agree it is that as digital media grows, people stuck in traditional media are becoming less relevant and indeed run the risk of being expendable. However, as the saying goes, “when life serves you lemons, make lemonade”. For those steeped in years of traditional media and see new media as the lemon juice souring their dessert, you need to look at this digital lemonade as the ingredient that is going to improve the recipe that is your skill set. Capitalize on your core experience and realize your years of experience in other areas of media are valuable and can serve as a building block to jet into the digital age. I believe what many advertisers, their agencies, and sales organizations need are people with: a solid background in traditional media, a broad view of the marketplace, some years of managerial and general business experience behind them, and who have embrace and understand the digital space.
Unfortunately, grasping the digital space is much easier said than done. Wrapping your head around digital media can be mind numbing at times. And no one person can comprehend the entire digital landscape – it’s just about impossible. Many companies want a head of digital. Beware of the phrase “we want digital”. Digital what? Most agencies, clients, and sellers will fall a little short when you ask them to specify exactly what they need. Many are not sure what they want, how to ask the question, and what question to ask (most digital ad agencies excluded). They just know they need to be digital!
The aforementioned is a challenge. So what can a single person do to maintain relevancy in the workplace and extend their career and perhaps even have fun while doing it? Learn digital! Learn the basics of digital media and how they relate to traditional media. Now the challenge is to try and define what aspect of digital media you need to understand and how much you need to know in order to do your job. You don’t necessarily need to know that computers are based on a binary system of 0’s and 1’s and that Search Engine Optimization is based on each company’s closely guarded algorithm / alchemy to analyze a site for keyword phrases and give your sitemaps quality scores, etc. What you do need to know is: that digital measurement is empirical; audience numbers are based on real usage, not estimates; GRPs are not generally used as currency but can be loosely translated from impressions using standard media calculations; depending upon the site you’re dealing with and how it is serving content, there are file size restrictions which need to be discussed upfront, not after the deal is consummated; why third party serving is best practice, but not always practical; how an integrated media plan is put together, analyzed, and measured on a post basis.
Other aspects include rationalizing the higher CPM’s that come with streaming media and how banners and buttons are generally priced (along with determining their upside, downside, and creative possibilities). Of course, you must also determine which trades and books to read and, more importantly, which articles pertain to your scope and which are just “nice to know”.
During my tenure at Zenith and well before, I sought to understand everything about the digital space I could and often got bogged down in non-essential areas that were irrelevant to exactly what I was doing at the time. Years later this has served me well but, in hindsight, there were times I wish I would have streamlined my digital education. Now 15 years after my first digital meeting (with the founders of Razorfish) I have mixed feelings about poking my nose in every digital hole I could find. It helped satisfy my curious nature but, at times, confused the heck out of me. In a world where agencies are still somewhat “siloed”, it made for a real uphill climb, as integrated media has been a challenge for many. Lately, everything has been coming together in ways I never even imagined and it’s really neat. I have been able to marry certain aspects of digital and social media with the appropriate traditional counterparts and help clients streamline the process of developing an integrated strategy to reach their brand’s objective and not be sidelined by an overload of “digi-speak”.
For those who need to/ want to maintain relevancy at your current job, my advice is to understand what you need to understand. Don’t get sidetracked and don’t try to improvise your way through it. Embrace digital media in small “bytes” and make it the frosting on your lemon chiffon media cake. Life is long, make it prosperous and make it delicious. It’s ok to lick the spoon.
Matt Feinberg
President
MattFeinbergMedia, inc. A media and marketing consultancy specializing in multi-channel media/ marketing strategy, business development, web design, and traditional media planning and buying.
[email protected]
917-445-4627
