The results of the 2015 TVNewsCheck/Market Share survey of local TV creative services directors, marketing execs and promotion managers are in, and over the next few days and weeks, we’ll be sharing them. In some of the questions, we asked open-ended questions for the respondents to answer. Although it’s harder to tabulate the results, we […]
The results of the 2015 TVNewsCheck/Market Share survey of local TV creative services directors, marketing execs and promotion managers are in, and over the next few days and weeks, we’ll be sharing them.
In some of the questions, we asked open-ended questions for the respondents to answer. Although it’s harder to tabulate the results, we think it’s important to hear their thoughts in their own words.
Question 19 asked the survey participants, if you became the VP of Marketing for your broadcast group, what’s the first thing you would do to improve the quality of the marketing and promotion?
As a former VP of marketing and promotion for a top-15 broadcast group, I was particularly interested in hearing what the local TV marketing execs want from their marketing VPs.
When I was hired to be the marketing VP, it was a new position at corporate.
My first mandate was to go to those stations the regional VPs or COO thought needed marketing help the most.
Beyond that, there was no job description, no infrastructure, no system of communication.
Each station was, in effect, an island from a marketing perspective.
But I knew what they wanted. Establish and share best practices. Institute regular communication between the CSDs. Visit their stations and meet with their management teams. Unite and share the brain power of the group. Be an advocate and consultant. Listen.
For example, after surveying all the station CSDs early on, we discovered that some stations had little or no fixed on-air inventory. The COO, in a rare corporate edict, set a company-wide, minimum threshold for fixed on-air inventory.
Keep in mind that VPs of marketing also have obligations to their CEOs, regional VPs as well as the station general managers and news directors. So it can be a delicate balancing act to be successful.
So what do the local marketing execs want from their corporate marketing VPs?
By far, more than anything else, they want you to share work, resources, and success stories, establish best practices, meet and/or communicate with them often and with each other.
Progressive broadcast companies have set up systems to easily share news stories, successful sales presentations and news image work so that any other station in the group can duplicate and customize without having to start from scratch.
Beyond that, what else do marketing execs want from their marketing VPs?
In order of importance, they want you to leverage the power of the group to get better deals on outside media, both cable and radio, graphics, software and other vendor-supplied resources like stock footage, music, etc.
Station CSDs want more training and development opportunities, like how best to buy and use digital media and assets.
They need your help in staffing recruitment and retention.
They want more autonomy locally. They want you to visit their markets. They want more interaction with you. And of course, they want more — more staffing, more money in the budget, more outside media, more on-air inventory
Here are a few interesting quotes:
Find out about competitive spending in each market and make sure I get the resources to match or outspend the competition.
Push for ad agency help in each market.
I would actually listen to individual markets instead of dictating procedures.
I don’t mean to sound like a suck-up, but we have a strong group leader. He faces the difficulty of answering to the needs of large market stations, as well as the very small markets. They offer resources, training, assistance to all. That’s tough, because creative that works for one market may not fly in another. They have to know the nuances for varying audiences.
Emulate Suzanne Grethen, VP, promotion & marketing, Hearst Television. She’s doing it right!
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