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Who is the Boss in the Media-Biz?

I’ve worked with many media companies in the print, online, and tv-business, and I’ve worked in media related positions in many companies from other branches.
There is still one question I can not really answer: Who is actually the boss in the media business (ok, it’s not the only question; probably I’m just in the right age to worry about that…).
Are there strategists who are really the big guys, who tell you were to go and what will happen in the next years? Actually I hardly met any strategists in commercial environments. There were a few who had a similar job title, but most of them where either vain outlaws who more or less sacrificed their job for the title (because it always proved to be a dead end road), very ambitious youngsters who disappeared as quick as they had risen, or some old and actually jobless friends of the CEO or the editor in chief or the CMO, who needed a job with a cool title and not too much work.
So should it be the marketing guys? Media marketing people are great in extending relationships, driving reputation and drawing nice pictures in consumers minds – and there is often a big gap if it comes to realization. I hate to say that they usually dont have a cue, but that’s actually the truth. And in most cases, they don’t care – because it’s not there job. If it’s just marketing, then it’s just making people think that something is great, it’s not making things great.
And what about the sales department? They are the guys who bring the money, we all want money, so shouldn’t we listen to them? That takes us very quickly to a very simple view of the business: It needs to be sold. And once it’s sold: Who cares? Advertisers wont get their money back, a few complaints can be handled. and if there is really some trouble – there are enough advertisers as potential new customers. If you remind them of what they actually sold or what plans have been made for the further development of the media, they either don’t remember or they ask you why it has not been done yet. And anyway: they won’t have time, because the have to be out there and sell something.
So there are the creatives left, the designers, the writers. For sure they have a lot of ideas, they know the product and they can realize what they planned; they are the ones who have to do it anyway. But do they know the commercial terms of the business? Have you ever met a designer who can really calculate his business?

The famous media persons are generally the creative ones, usually close to the editors, or some have formerly been editors.
The rich ones are rather from the business side.
That’s no so much astonishing, what bothers me more, is that there are still single persons around, we are still acting as if Mr. F in person had founded this daily newspaper or as of Mr. B. did really have anything to do with the TV Channels he owns, but we know, that it’s simply not possible to combine all this smartness…

That’s another reason why I switched more to online media, and to the more functional part of the media business. Do you know the big names? And do you have an idea of what they are actually doing?
I have the impression that – with highly movable and flexible media – our perception shifts from big guys to big things: We don’t bother what HE does, we think about what features IT provides.
Probably back in the days when everybody was just publishing newspapers, you had to invest a lot in vanity and you had top think about how to stand out personally. Now, there is more space to focus on your product: Make it be something special (that’s the creative part) and make people understand that it’s something special (that’s the sales and marketing challenge). – But still, you can stick with the product, you don’t have to worry so much about yourself.
Why bother? It’s not only that there are no clear paths and visions for your career, there are also no best practices. In a lot of companies I left, the people who stayed are now the big guys. Just because they stayed. In other companies, there were more almost-retiree-strategists than developers. And then, some companies consider you as their hero, if you can do everything: writing, programming, handling Xpress or Indesign, talk with the system admins and talk the business lingo – just because there is nobody else who can keep up with you.

Conclusion: Just keep on doing what you like. The rest is’nt woth bothering in our business. If you really want to question if you’re successful with what you’re doing – keep on doing it and ask again in five years. I think that’s a pretty average time period that should malke you notice some differences…

 

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Applied collaboration – dont always blame me

Image by Pirkka2 via Flickr

I just came back from vacation and there are not so many but still far too many emails asking for things that should not have waited for me. “Could you fix this, do you know how to do that, what’s the name of the guy who works with…” – I’m not the only person around who knows this, but I’m probably the one whom others suppose to know this. There are a lot of colleagues whom you could ask, and I bet you can find a lot of the requested information in the blogs, wikis and other information sharing services I’m running.
I like the idea of collaborating not only in dedicated collaboration environments, but also – or rather way more – in environments that strongly support networking. Yes, information should be tailored to a certain audience – but everybody should have the possibility to be part of that audience.
Public information provides better accessibility, not only of the information itself, but also of the possibilities and responsibilities: Who did what? Who can fix what? Who knows what? I don’t want to skip hierarchies or substitute managers, I’m mainly thinking about intra-team collaboration: Some colleagues have a sense for what’s going on, others simply don’t. They always need help and guidance, especially if they are supposed to get in touch with people they don’t have to deal with every day.
And that quickly leads to fear, prejudice, stubbornness – which again reduces the quality of information. Actually it even reduces the readiness to look for any information at all.

We know the consequences: Colleagues start to blame each other, questions are understood to be suspicions and wrong information becomes harder and harder to fix – you start to believe in things you know just because you know them, and because it seems to be more comfortable than questioning them.

And maybe the colleagues who asked so many questions during my vacation did not want to blame me… , but they really just needed to know something.

What’s the end of it: Collaboration does also stand for networking and documentation; collaboration tools should also provide information on who did what. Or the other way round: every tool that is of value for the community or is used by a community should provide collaborative features that

• provide public information
• show who did what and who can be addressed for what
• are easily accessible and not just an administrator’s secret.

Then we can clearly say that collaboration adds tremendous value to media.

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Does all this new media stuff take us ten years back?

Sometimes I feel like ten years ago: We are creating directories again, portals are as much distibution services as they are integration layers and there are a lot of newbies around, who think that all that is quite interesting, but don’t really get it.

There is also an ugly side in this nostalgia: The veruy old ROI-discussions are coming back, not in terms of “How can we make this more efficient?”, but in terms of “Do we need this at all?”

When I was asked to justify why I recommended this or that media or if I really believed that wikis were something useful a few months ago, I just took it as business as usually: nobody bus anything at first glance, you always have to add some extra spice or – actually more often – you have to give the customers the feeling they are adding some spice, so that it fits their taste.

Now there is more to it: People want to see measurable ROI again, they want to count short term successes in money. Up to how, we had been used to the fact that online media, ecommerce and email are business basics that don’t have to be justified anymore. Now, as short term efficiency rules and social media are complex, diffuse and not easy to understand anymore, I feel more scepticism in companies. They wont tell you that online is crap (actually, some people did already, #anlorenz), but they do already tell that they have to focus on the important stuff now

That’s one of the reasons that gives me the feeling of ten years ago.

The other side is that I’m convinced we have a vast lot of opportunities in corporate media and ebusiness, but also in consumer media. The high amount of communication and media options we have now ask for orientation and moderations – at least for the high number of newbies we have. Where do they come from? In fact, everybody is a newbie. We all can learn everyday, we will always find a lot of new things – and we can easily admit that, because it does not make us look uninformed, but actually very smart.

So I hope to see the rise of some new online magazines soon also in Europe, covering the area of media, their social and theoretical implications, the lifestyle and the business.

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