Paint By Numbers: Network Ratings

It’s odd to read Susan Whiting, president and CEO of Nielsen Media Research, write about “Anytime Anywhere Media Measurement,” and not just because it closely mirrors the “Anytime, anywhere, from any device” positioning statement that we developed for the National Emergency Number Association’s Next Generation 911 System several years ago.

No, it’s mostly odd because the new Nielsen “everyone counts” concept doesn’t resonate with people who will watch Jericho Season 2, who once watched The Black Donnellys, or who once watched a half dozen other programs that have since been slashed for poor ratings.

“We’re not on the same channel. Isn’t that great! Well, maybe, if you’re particularly fond of revolutions. Remember when were all over the “dial?” Well, there is no dial. Digital took care of that. So we’re surfing with the remote. Not always. Sometimes we timeshift by watching what we want when we want.” — Susan Whiting

Sound familiar? The language reads like the scores of testimonials from Jericho fans ever since we noted Nielsen was feeling some fallout months ago (except the fans wrote better). Back then, it was these fans who learned for the first time that their show was going to be cancelled because the Nielsen system fails the most important criteria of a sample: it is not random in the statistical sense.

Simply put, the ratings game is a crapshoot. The sliver of a difference between keeping a show on the air today or not is so statically insignificant, sliced all the more thinly by targeting select demographics, and completely negating any audience that might watch shows in a group setting (bars, college dorms, etc.). And yet, the rating system is why we watch the Super Bowl in February (during sweeps, when the most viewers are surveyed), dictates advertising rates, and is the fuel for most entertainment columns.

Not to worry, Nielsen says, it’ll have a whole new system by 2011. How well that will work is anybody’s guess. Sure, Nielsen has some good ideas, including its social network buzz network monitoring device “Hey! Nielsen,” which is currently being beta tested by employees.

But at some point, somebody still has to ask what do these numbers mean anyway? Some might live by them, but others are becoming less certain. For a long time, HBO completely ignored the numbers and produced award-winning heavily watched shows, and its message “It’s not TV, it’s HBO” really stuck.

Nowadays, it doesn't seem that way, which is why HBO might find its roots again. Increasingly, HBO is measuring its success both by how many viewers a show accumulates over multiple plays and by how well a show performs with its on-demand service, where viewers order specific episodes. We hope others follow suit with new measure methods, because while we maintain Nielsen does have some relevance, shifting the decision-making process might save us from more paint-by-number programming and nuttier Nielsen concepts.

For example, Nielsen recently released that local people readers (non-sweeps tracking) were employed in the top 10 television markets, which supposedly accounts for 30 percent of all television households. (What’s missed is the tiny number of households tracked in those markets). In other words, Atlanta,
Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Washington D.C. have a little more weight than the rest of the country.

This is especially significant to Jericho fans because looking back over our own analytics during the peak of the cancellation protest, Jericho fans seem grossly underrepresented in these markets when compared to the greater United States (to say nothing of Canada and other countries). When you think about the show, it almost makes sense. It doesn’t seem like an urban powerhouse as much as it captures the rest of the nation’s imagination.

But what does that mean? It means what it has always meant. Attempting to paint by numbers to give shows a leg up in the ratings (or even critical review) is fraught with peril. In the months and years ahead, especially as broadcast-Internet convergence moves forward, networks will be better served by creating and marketing the content that they believe in, which is how some cable players like HBO and even some network shows have succeeded.

If you create a great show and support it, the numbers will follow — with viewers, DVD sales, and Internet engagement. Anything else is just guesswork. Just to illustrate the point, someone looking at Southwest Airlines on Alexa might notice it is down 11 percent in reach over the last three months. Do those numbers mean anything? Not if I count $150 million in ticket sales attributed to the widget that is part of its social media marketing program. Go figure.

Needing Redemption: Glenn Renwick, Progressive

“At Progressive, we have a stated set of Core Values that we use to guide our decision making and actions,” says Glenn Renwick, president and CEO of Progressive. “One of these Values is the Golden Rule — treat others as you would like to be treated.”

Given this quote is pulled directly from an ill-advised statement after the The Atlanta Journal-Constitution broke a story about how private investigators working for Progressive tape recorded church sessions, it's hard to believe.

Why were investigators recording church members who confessed about abortions, sexual orientation issues, drug addictions and other dark secrets? It seems the company was hoping to discredit a couple who were in an ongoing lawsuit over a traffic accident. The couple has now filed a lawsuit that charges invasion of privacy, breach of confidentiality, emotional distress, fraud, and other issues.

“For the past 70 years, we've built our business by building trust,” Renwick continues. “Trust that we will do the right thing on behalf of our customers — every day, every time.”

Coincidentally, trust seems be the buzzword behind Progressive’s TripSense, which allows Minnesota drivers to get discounts if they can “prove” that they drive less. Given that simply asking for an odometer reading might work just as effectively, one has to wonder just how "progressive" the definition of trust has become.

“We make sure we always fall well within the law," said James Purgason Jr. and Paige Weeks of Merlin Investigations, the investigators who were contracted by Wisconson-based Progressive Northern Insurance Co. "How it's interpreted from there isn't up to us."

But not all private investigators feel that way. When reporter D.L. Bennett asked Glenn Christian of Coastal Investigations in Savannah, who serves as president of the Georgia Association of Private Investigators, what he thought, Christian said that some companies would never do that. He said there is a fine line between what might be legal and what is moral.

To be fair, it seems Renwick was personally unaware of what Wisconson-based Progressive Northern Insurance Co. was attempting to do to win its case and there seems little to be little doubt that he is appalled. However, he was clearly aware of the statement that now decorates the Progressive Web site. And frankly, he should be appalled that he signed off on it.

There is only one statement that may have not turned into what Collateral Damage calls one of the more obvious definitions of a public relations nightmare. It would have been the one that skips the messages about trust and company history and cuts right to the chase. Something like this...

Upon learning that Progressive Northern Insurance Co. and contracted investigators, Merlin Investigations, breached our company’s values two years ago, Progressive will be settling this case as quickly as possible. (Um, insert a line about restitution for the couple, the church, AND all those other people who were there). As a company, we are appalled and apologize to all those impacted.

To ensure this never happens again and to send a clear message to all of our divisions, we will be releasing all parties who were aware that this investigation was grossly overreaching for evidence. I only wish that the incident would have been brought to my attention two years ago so we could have acted promptly then and protected this couple from tactics that clearly cross the line of ethical and moral decency.

The end. No gratuitous 3-paragraph company cut line required.

Sure, it isn’t perfect, but even this 3-second solution reads as more genuine than the original. Or, in other words, one can only hope Progressive covers “communication ignorance” because this statement reads like a pileup. Once again, it's never the incident as much as the aftermath that gets companies in trouble.

Ending Fairytales: Judge Denise Langford Morris

According to the Associated Press, Judge Denise Langford Morris has temporarily ended the reverse Cinderella story that took misguided advertising star and self-proclaimed change agent Julie Roehm to the brink of mayhem marketing celebrity. Right, the pumpkin coach she was riding in could not find the right home at midnight and the court unceremoniously dismissed it because Roehm's case against Wal-Mart should have been filed in Arkansas and not Michigan.

In sum, for all that nine months of vicious spin, counterspin, and missteps, the original case seems to have accomplished nothing more than personal brand damage: forever branding Roehm as the former Wal-Mart marketing executive who allowed her judgment to lapse as she leveraged her position for fun and profit. Worse, along the way, she has played virtually every part to create one of the most inconsistent personal images ever, from a heartbroken head of household to a relentless and scrappy street fighter.

As if all this wasn't enough, according to Advertising Age, a spokesman for Roehm said she and her lawyers hadn't yet decided whether to file in Arkansas. No offense intended, but when your best hope is to slowly reverse an impaired image on Facebook, it's probably long past time to focus on the book deal rather than the glass slipper.

Sure, I know more than one person has extended their sympathies to Roehm, but all along I've been miffed by this misadventure. Why? One of my colleagues summed it up nicely. "We were part of a Wal-Mart pitch once and they told us up front, before anything else, 'Wal-Mart is only interested is delivering the lowest possible price to its customers. If you send us a gift, we will send it back and kindly ask that you deduct the amount from our bill.'" It doesn't get much clearer than that.

Bridging The Gap: Where Social Media Can Miss

Only one question keeps coming to mind when I read about the anti-critic sentiment expressed by the MyRagan team, the lack of communication and customer service that underpins Facebook, and (in contrast) the sending of flowers and the power of forgiveness. Is there any room for ‘high touch’ customer service in the rapid-fire world of the Internet or social media?

A few years ago, when I asked Curtis Nelson, president and CEO of Carlson Hospitality Worldwide, he certainly hoped so. He saw technology as a way to enhance guest expectations and the high touch service provided by hospitality employees.

“Information is an advantage, but informed decisions will depend on how much you know about your customers and how strong of a ‘high touch’ relationship they can establish,” Nelson said. “People make decisions (including purchases) based on emotion,” which is why customer service plays an increasing important role in terms of value and the profit of repeat customers.

In the hospitality industry, he wasn’t the only one who thought so. Virtually every executive I spoke to had the same message and similar warnings despite the fact that the hospitality industry was investing as much as 3.4 percent of its total annual revenue in technology at the time.

“Always remember, no amount of technology can provide guests an informed opinion,” offered Nicholas Mutton, then senior vice president of Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts.

Consistently, they all pointed to simultaneously increasing guest services and technology because they viewed such investments as a critical part of their and strategy of the operation. Now, a mere five years later, is it any wonder why hospitality continues to be one of the fastest-growing industries in the world.

Not only did hospitality have an ideal environment—one where more governments assist their tourism industries by consolidating efforts and collecting vertical and geographic buying patterns, trip motivations, and psychographic profiles (information made increasingly available because of technology)—but the best of them always remembered what so few seem to remember in the world of social media.

“Some things must remain very, very human,” said James Brown, then president of Rosewood Hotel & Resorts. “The last thing I would ever want to see at a concierge desk (for example) is a guest asking for a good Italian restaurant and someone looking it up on a computer. A concierge should know it — serving as the buffer between the technology.”

Given the advent of technology with social networks and various social media platforms, I can only imagine that those who remain vigilant in bridging the gap between high tech and high touch will be those left standing two or three years from now. In other words, once the excitement of something new erodes, the rush of new members begins to flatten, and the initial purchase based on emotion gives way to logical review, all that remains is the collective impressions created by the individual, firm, or company.

In the lead above, only one seemed to get it. For the other two, they might remember that as big as some companies or social networks might get, none is exempt from losing ground as fast as they gained it.

Advertising Conundrum: America Online

If you are still wondering why content is king on the Internet, even beyond blogs, consider that American Online (AOL) continues to lose ground after reducing its reliance on subscriptions and shifting to an ad revenue model despite having what once was the largest place to connect on the Internet.

So what happened? As made all too apparent by Miguel Helt in The New York Times on Monday, ad revenue alone cannot replace the splendor AOL once enjoyed as the darling of online subscription services. The Internet has changed and AOL changed too late.

What is not clear in the article is the true culprit behind the AOL slip. Its slow transition from subscription to ad revenue hastened the pace of member defection. Basically, its members left because it didn’t make sense to pay for advertising-infused services that they could get elsewhere. Then, as its members left, AOL had fewer numbers to pull down ad deals.

It has been a long time since I visited AOL (not counting yesterday), but I did two years ago. What I found made me realize my decision to leave was a good one. Chat rooms, once a core service offered by AOL, were overwhelmed with little lines of advertising and bothersome bots, leaving people to wonder if anyone was real. (Probably not. Real people were using Instant Messenger.) Hardly something worth using let alone paying for.

And that brings us to today. According to the article, the newest idea to save AOL is to re-engineer the site so its customers can choose various channels and services they like and then include them in their blogs, personalized home pages, or favorite social networking sites. (In other words, they still do not get it.)

“We are not trying to build yesterday’s portal,” said Ron Grant, president of AOL told The New York Times. “We are trying to build a network of sites that users can combine or do whatever they are most comfortable with.”

Where is the added value? When you consider our shiny new object syndrome that tends to sweep the Web every few months (or is it weeks?), our apparent desire to customize as opposed to accept package deals, our disdain for intrusive advertising (which AOL has built right into its new page layout), and our thirst for fresh content, AOL really is only offering yesterday’s portal today.

Look, the Internet is not hard to decipher. There are three distinct offerings that attract customers to any platform and portal (or even blog): exclusive content, exclusive products, or exclusive services. Google: exclusive services. eBay: exclusive products. The New York Times: exclusive content. Sure, there are other examples that can be plugged in and other ways to make an impact. For example, Southwest Airlines attributes $150 million in ticket sales generated by a widget.

Once you have exclusive content, products, or services, a growing number of members, subscribers, and consumers will follow. In time, this following will be more likely to pay for a product, service, or submit to some mysterious amount of advertising (assuming you have the right audience). Even AOL, once upon a time, had all three ingredients, which justified the subscription fee. For many of us, at least for a short while, it was also the only connection game in town.

But as the world grew up around the company, AOL's once exclusive services began to erode, its content became more generic, and its products were improved upon by others. Worse, its branding all but imploded under the weight of aggressive control and generic content, increasingly sophisticated customers, poor “user” service and cancellation policies, and an inability to leapfrog the competition.

Ho hum, if AOL wants to remain relevant today, it seems to me that it might forget trying to build a better mousetrap to be all things to all people. A better strategy would be to focus on the next bright shiny object. And, given the amount of space it has available, who knows? Maybe this shiny object could be solving the broadband limitation ratio of “many to 1,” which is the last known hurdle in true convergence between traditional media and the Internet.

Redefining Reporter Finesse: Steve Friess

The last time I saw Jerry Lewis, it was years ago and in passing at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas. Most people didn’t recognize him because he’s an unassuming traveler. There was no entourage. There was no fanfare. He was in a wheelchair; the medication he was on at the time was less than kind.

He is good to his fans; it is not impossible to write him a nice letter and receive an autographed picture on request. He personally donates funds to the MDA and as most people know, he is the MDA national chairman and will be leading the Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon.

But credentialed local freelance writer Steve Friess wanted to write about something different. So Lewis’ publicist Rick Saphire passed, mentioning that Lewis had a sizable fee unless the interview was related exclusively to MDA. Friess, in turn, wrote about his experience on his blog, which has since landed over at The Huffington Post.

Yesterday, Saphire was fired. Lewis agreed to the interview. His team noted that the fee was never intended for mainstream U.S. media, but merely an attempt to cut down on the number of international interview requests. Some celebrities, as you might imagine, could make a full-time job of doing nothing but interviews.

Most people seem to be celebrating Friess securing the interview out of the misunderstanding. In truth, it seems to me only Lewis handled this right. Saphire might have known the facts, which makes me wonder why he was on the payroll. Yet, Saphire wasn’t the only one mistaken.

As seasoned as Friess is, with by-lines appearing in USA Today and Newsweek (among others), he knows well enough that interviews are almost never so restricted. Our credits include the Los Angeles Times and The Denver Post, and we know it: a little finesse during an interview can go a long way.

So where does all this drama lead social media? When freelance writers cannot get the interview they want, is the appropriate action to publicize the rejection? I hope not. It seems brutish to me. Not to mention, the rejection seems to be getting a lot more mileage for Friess than the update. And, unfortunately, that comes at Lewis’ expense.

Simply put, Friess could have contacted the MDA publicity team, arranged the interview, and had a different experience all together with no harm done. Instead, it seems to me that he set out to teach the publicist a public lesson, and mirroring yesterday’s story, that seems to say a lot about his reporting style. It also seems to demonstrate once again that news creation is alive and well in Las Vegas.