InteracTiVoty: The Business of Tomorrow, Today - Mark Risis - MediaBizBloggers

This is my favorite time of the year - the weather is crisp, there's energy in the air, and the sentiment of possibility and opportunity is everywhere. The market is up, negative indicators are less negative than last quarter, and it looks like the world is not going to collapse after all. It's time to let out the breath we've all been anxiously holding for the last 12 months and get back to our "business as usual," right? Wrong!

This is precisely the time to throw all energies into laying the foundation for the REAL growth that's waiting for us around the corner. Just think back to the early naughts, when the Internet bubble burst, the Web was declared an infatuation of irrationally exuberant investors and post-college kids who didn't want to work for a living, and clients pulled the reins of budgets towards the tried-and-true -- TV, Print, and Outdoor.

It was right at that time that the more future-centric players in the agency world began to stake out the juiciest bits of Web inventory left alive, the IAB started pushing heavily towards standards and consistent metric currency, technology companies began to roll out user-level dashboards and process automation tools and viola! - the most explosive growth in media industry history took place only a few short years later.

By then, those that invested in building out future-centric organizations that could take advantage of what was taking place by being both participants as well as contributors to the evolution of digital advertising, ended up way way way on top. I don't want to point fingers at any specific company or individual, but just take a look at the holding company rankings by revenue from 2001 and compare it to 2008. Acquisitions aside, executives from those that grew were the loudest voices in the industry in support of innovation and evolution over the last 7 years.

So here's the deal - this is not the time to get back to "business as usual," because in today's hyper-accelerated marketplace, the "usual" is a constantly moving target. Everyone, from clients to agencies to media companies to publishers, needs to ready themselves for the permanent state of preparation and practice for the "business of tomorrow." (For you bears out there, I'm not talking about jeopardizing the current revenue streams, come on!)

To do so, we must look at the way we structure our organizations, the way compensation and reward is calculated, and the values we place on looking forward and trying things out even if the actual results are not comparable to the "usual" that's keeping the business...well, in business. We must foster nimbleness, speed, and action. Collaboration or individualism - it doesn't really matter how you approach the business of tomorrow as long as it's being put into practice, not just discussed or analyzed until there's nothing left to act on.

Like our kids, we need to go back to school, nay, we need to enter into a permanent state of education and re-education so that our minds and organizations are trained and in-shape, acting like well-tuned athletes with the accompanying flexibility and adaptability to seek out and embrace experimentation and acceptable failure as part of our daily business. That's right, we must embrace failure as a natural part of our education and growth.

As any sales rep worth his salt knows, in order to close one deal you need to knock on a hundred doors. So let's all try a hundred things this fall and in the new year, and even if 99 fail, I can promise you that the one that does succeed will propel your organization to new heights...and then you gotta do it all over again and again....that is the business of tomorrow, today.

Mark Risis is Director of Interactive Advertising Sales for TiVo, Inc.

Read all Mark’s MediaBizBloggers commentaries at InteracTiVoty - MediaBizBloggers.