“We Worship At The Altar Of Our Audience”

That’s something that MTV President Stephen Friedman (who brought me to MTV almost 8 years ago) always says.  It means this: If our audiences don’t love what we do, they’ll go away.  And if they go away, we’ll be gone too. 

We all have the same boss.  In the case of MTV, that’s abuot 80 million Millennials.

Guess what? They don’t care about the difference between programming time, commercial time and promo time. It’s either good and I want to share it, or it’s bad and you lose.

ProMax BDA recently posted a clip of me answering a question from Michael Benson, Time Warner Media’s Global Chief Creative Officer, from their 2011 conference.  Michael asked, where’s the line between “content” and “commercial,” and “when will the audience say, ok, that’s enough?”

Here’s my answer:

P.S. I make a comment in the video about “intent to purchase,” a metric we continue to see tracked and reported by marketers, publishers, media owners, agencies and producers.  Well, intent to purchase is horseshit.  A useful stat if you’re trying to save your job.  And if you’re trying to save your job, chances are you’re not doing your job.

 

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