Media Insights Q&A with Betsy Frank – Time Inc - Charlene Weisler

Betsy Frank Chief Research and Insights Officer of Time Inc has a background that spans many different media platforms and businesses from agencies such as Saatchi to networks such as MTV and now to Time Inc and its print and digital offerings In this fascinating six part interview Betsy talks about her background and how the media landscape has changed over the past 30 years She offers some media truisms amp8211 what is constant about the industry amp8211 thoughts and opinions about metrics generational trends and where the industry is headed over the next five years The six videos of the complete interview are as followsSubject Length in minutesBackground 606Evolution 656Media Truisms 756Print and Time Inc 945Metrics 1104Generational Change and Predictions 800The videos can be viewed at wwwWeislerMediablogspotcomClick here to view the videosBelow is a short excerpt of the interview CW What is your opinion about the current economic situation Do you think it is generational like the generation impacted by the Great Depression or do you think that it is just a blip that will correct BF We do a study that is now in its eighth wave that we call The Consumer Attitude Tracking Study It was born at the end of 2008 when we didn39t know how long the recession would last but it was certainly having a big impact on so many things in the country in terms of how people saw themselves how optimistic they were how they saw the new presidency the election which had just taken place the whole notion of optimism and pessimism which has so much to do with how people are consuming At the time we talked to a lot of people amp8211 consumers and research companies amp8211 and we wondered whether this would be a short term blip This was going to affect purchasingamp8230or it wouldn39t This would affect optimismamp8230or it wouldn39t This would affect what people could afford to do in their lives And then I remember Walker Smith from The Futures Company saying to me quotYou know what Human beings are basically aspirational Nobody adopts frugality as a strategy It39s a tactic It39s a tactic for coping As soon as this is over quotfamous last words quotthings will go back to maybe not necessarily to the high living 90s but something approaching normalcyquot It39s not happeningRight now there is no consensus that the economic downturn is actually over amp8211in the latest wave of our study we found very little change in how people view their prospects their opportunities and in fact their optimism But what to me is so interesting is that people adopted certain habits and certain coping mechanisms during the worst of the downturn and now even people who don39t have to do those things anymore are holding on to them It39s become a badge a source of pride I don39t have to spend the way I used to I don39t have to buy as many magazines as I used to I don39t have to shop for expensive brand names the way I used to So I think that the way consumers are coming out of the recession is slower than we anticipated a year ago and suggests that the way we live and the way we consume will probably never be the sameCW Betsy your experience spans several different types of media How does your past experience impact what you do today BF First of all I would like to say that I am extremely fortunate to have stumbled into a career that has been a long and very happy one The way I have been privileged to be a part of the evolution of the media from the early 8039s to the present has been fascinating to me I believe that staying in silos amp8211 doing the same thing for an entire career amp8211 may be perfectly fine but doesn39t allow you to attain a perspective on what brings everything together and what separates each of the media I was lucky that when I started working at Dancer Fitzgerald Sample which evolved into Saatchi and Zenith overseeing just television in the media research area television was exploding Television was going from three broadbased entities that would routinely command 35 shares every night to an explosion of far more narrow personal and discrete cable networks Even though magazines had undergone a similar evolution decades earlier going from mass to niche to experience that with television first hand was great There were no roadmaps There was limited measurement pretty much like what we face with some of the new platforms todayThere was a sense for a while then that the broadcast networks were always going to be dominant The idea that I was there when the trade press and even the consumer press started to be interested in the business of television was another piece of luck During my years at the agency I was fortunate enough to be interviewed on television in the NY Times and in the trade press Everyone was suddenly interested in knowing that was happening to television This was the time that USA Today started to publish the top ten highest rated television programs Prior to that no one thought readers of USA Today would be interested in TV ratings But they were and this is what the 80s were like The media business was everyone39s businessSo seeing the evolution of television and the growth of the internet we embarked on some very exciting very early research on the user experience of the internet I traveled around the world to share what we were learning about consumers and their use of the internet We tried to figure out how consumers would be integrating existing media with new media Many were looking for how the internet would quotkill offquot all other media but in fact consumers held onto all media that were relevant and folded them into their daily media menu That kind of quotzero sum gamequot thinking hasn39t gone away and I continue to face it every single dayInterview conducted by Charlene Weisler Weisler Media LLC She can be reached through her research blog wwwWeislerMediablogspotcom or at WeislerMediayahoocom Twitter wwwtwittercomweislermedia Read all Charlene39s MediaBizBloggers commentaries at Charlene WeislerCheck us out on Facebook at MediaBizBloggerscomFollow our Twitter updates MediaBizBloggerThe opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaBizBloggerscom management or associated bloggers MediaBizBloggers is an open thought leadership platform and readers may share their comments and opinions in response to all commentaries

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Media Insights Q&A with Betsy Frank – Time Inc - Charlene Weisler

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