Advertising and media expert says we must understand the dynamics and realities of change, pursue innovation and let passion lead us.

Jack Myers, publisher of the Jack Myers Report, is well known in media, advertising, entertainment, financial, political and social circles for his unique spin on the pop culture and business of media. For 25 years, Myers has explored all aspects of media and advertising, contributing to his ability to provide unique perspectives based on first-hand experience. He's had deep experience in solving issues for eleven types of media. Myers was responsible for the development and implementation of an innovative economic model for advertiser funding of television content, producing five broadcast primetime specials on behalf of a consortium of major national advertisers including General Motors, AT&T, Reebok, Campbell Soup, Sears, McDonald's and Coca-Cola.

In an iMedia Summit keynote presentation in Scottsdale, Arizona on Tuesday, December 2, 2004, Myers will describe what he believes to be the true drivers of successful media and advertising companies and the seven strategies we need to use to achieve innovation. He will also reveal results from his recent consumer research study on the impact of TV and online technology on brand perception.

iMedia's Rebecca Weeks asked Myers to explain why he believes marketers should be more proactive about enacting change.

iMediaConnection: What can marketers focus on today to plan for a successful tomorrow?

Myers: I believe there are three major components to ensure success: 1) understanding the dynamics and realities of change, 2) pursuing innovation and 3) using our passion.

First and foremost is the need to embrace and understand change. Everybody talks about change but we have to look at where we stand on a continuum. We have to proactively move from mass to targeted marketing, one-way to two-way advertising, commodity to partnership, opportunistic to strategic, focus on competition to obsession on customer, data to knowledge, and efficiency to effectiveness. Ten years ago, 98 percent of total spending in our business went towards mass efficiency and today it's around 92 percent. The shift is accelerating towards partnerships and two-way advertising, so in a few years the split will become 85 percent mass/15 percent modern. So it's not that we're replacing the old ways of doing business, but the model is changing. You have to decide where you want your company to be in the future and where you want to be as an individual.

Second, we need to pursue innovation. We need to understand the implications of new technologies, such as behavioral targeting. There are seven core strategies that you can use to achieve true innovation and to focus your company on the growth marketplace.

1. Play the relationship market, not the stock market. Focus on long-term investments, such as building relationships with valuable clients, versus short-term profitability.
2. Use next-generation targeting, including media navigation, social networks, behavioral targeting, etc.
3. Focus on innovation, not optimization. Optimization in a commodity market prices your product as cheaply as you can to achieve efficiency, but innovation allows you to expand your marketplace and take risks.
4. Have a vision towards the future, not the past. Our research today is historical, such as how we measure behavior. Modern research will use new metrics and instead be used to predict behavior and evaluate those behaviors in advance.
5. Ban the old one-way marketing approach and develop two-way marketing communication.
6. Join the creative revolution. Don't be afraid to break creative rules. Ninety-eight percent of the creative product today is not working. Everyone needs to be engaged in the creative process, not just the creative department.
7. Organizations should be center-led and customer-focused. While rules have to be directed from top management, everyone else should be focused outwards to customers. This is the time to be communication-centric.

Third, passion has to be at the heart of what we do. My personal story is a good example. I was not exposed to TV until I was 7 years old. When I was 15, my city was one of the first ones to get cable TV and what an impact it had on my life! Being at this infant stage of television's growth is part of the reason why I have passion for this industry. Growing up I could hardly imagine life without TV. But now, if we look at the realities of today, the new generation would rather give up television than the Internet. The next wave of digital technologies is at its infancy. We will look back with wonder at how primitive we were in so many of these technologies.

iMediaConnection: How are you able to develop such a high-level perspective on the media industry?

Myers: The 25 years of practical experience I gained in a variety of media allows me to take a holistic position, not just theoretical. I worked in senior sales and marketing management positions for CBS-TV, ABC Radio and Metromedia Outdoor between 1970 and 1982. As the lead advisor and consultant to General Motors, I helped the consolidation of its media planning and buying and the creation of GM MediaWorks and PlanningWorks. For the next 16 years, I helped agencies, advertisers and media companies interpret marketplace trends.

So you can sense that I've been in the trenches through the early stages of television, but I've also consulted to online businesses such as AOL, MSN, NBC Interactive, CBS Sportsline, eBay, Women.com, ESPN.com, as well as interactive television businesses including ICTV, OpenTV, Wink and TiVo.

My point of view today leverages all of this practical experience and is now focused through a daily newsletter.

iMediaConnection: Why do you call yourself a media "evangelist?"

Myers: Media will forever be in constant change, nothing is static. Today's advertisers, agencies and media companies are frustrated in restructuring their relationships because they realize they need to be more marketing-centric instead of media efficiency focused. I'm an evangelist for the industry and want to make sure that the new directions we decide to take we actually fulfill. The decisions we make today are important because in five years we'll look back and be glad that we didn’t let things stay the same.