Missing the Boat On Diversity

During my 45year stint as the President ampamp CEO of Symphony Advanced Media I spent just about every waking hour in front of senior research and strategy executives of all the leading network and cable broadcast firms TV studios agencies and to a smaller degree leading marketers not to mention keeping close tabs on our measurement and analytic competitorsamp160 Without question the most senior influential people I met with throughout the industry are mostly womenamp160 For exampleOur first major supporter was NBC and everyone knows that Alan Wurtzel one of the industry39s best guys ever was our championamp160 But ever since she moved from Turner Linda Yaccarino has set the tone for NBC39s neverending quest to enhance measurement and analytic innovation in support of effective sellingamp160 Sheamp160continues to plow new ground for both NBC and the larger industryAt ABC our main contacts were Cindy Davis and Lisa Heimann Lisa has since moved on to NBCamp160 Both Cindy and Lisa were dynamic thoughtful and great partners who pushed us hard to continue to innovateWe were brought into Viacom by Colleen Fahey Rush who appreciated that we were doing something very difficult but something that the industry neededamp160 She introduced us to many other Viacom stakeholders and helped us to expand our offering to more effectively respond to Viacom39samp160and the industry39samp160needsAmy Carney brought us into Sony Pictures Televisionamp160 Sony didn39t always like our coverage of some of their SVOD programs but I found Amy and her team incredibly constructive fairminded and insightful in helping us more accurately represent the industry39s evolving landscapeFX Networks never became a client but Julie Piepenkotter met with us on several occasions and spent a lot of time with me to deeply understand how we did what we did so that she could effectively communicate our approach to her managementamp160 She was always an upbeat straightshooter something a vendor always appreciatesWarner Bros was another company that chose not to sign up with us but we met with Liz Huszarik and her great team several times and appreciated the rigor and attention to detail they all brought to the partyOne of the hidden stories of Nielsen where I worked from 1999 to 2012 is that women are largely responsible for the continuing success of the Watch businessamp160 Megan Clarken who was my boss when I oversaw Nielsen Online39s business in Japan from 2009 to 2011 is now President of Nielsen39s entire global Watch business and will no doubt be CEO of something big one of these daysamp160 Other stars include Jessica Hogue Kelly Abcarian Sara Erichson Catherine Herkovic Terrie Brennan and Angela Talton and that39s just a partial list of people with whom I spent more timeJane Clarke has accomplished something amazing over the last seven years with the Coalition of Innovation in Media Measurement CIMM amp160SymphonyAM was the recipient of one of CIMM39s grants in 2012 and 2013 and I39ve appreciated how Jane continues to push the envelope in helping the industry understand how cross platform measurement and analytics are progressingSome of the analystsexecutives at Symphony Advanced Media that were responsible for the buzz we created in a few short years included Kerrilyn Curtin Jeilaya Hassan Laura Grover Elif Akcali and Kym Franksamp160 And our product delighted clients through the great oversight of Shankari Panchapakesanamp160 All have gone onto great new chapters in their lives and I know we39ll being hearing more from all of them in the years to comeTwo additional pointsamp160 First this is just a short list of the people that I39ve gotten to know well within my area of expertise and of course the list of major female contributors in our industry is much much largeramp160 Second and most important these women are making massive impacts within their companies and the industry and regardless of their respective titlesamp160everyone knows they are the people who bring highly strategic things to lifeComing back to the CES snafu hereamp8217s the rubamp160 However appropriate it was to call CES out on this it seems to me that the media and marketing industryamp8217s diversity challenges run much deeper than this episodeamp160 While our industry clearly must work harder to ensure that women fill more of its executive roles things are more dire when it comes to the representation of people of coloramp160 One of my hopes for 2018 is that the executives who were so quick to call out CES about the female keynoter snub spend even more effort within their own companies to make their companies and our industry truly diverseClick the social buttons above or below to share this story with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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Missing the Boat On Diversity

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Missing the Boat On Diversity

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