On the Future of Media: A Puzzle Within a Puzzle Within a Puzzle

By The Myers Report Archives
Cover image for  article: On the Future of Media: A Puzzle Within a Puzzle Within a Puzzle

It's an incredible honor to join MyersBizNet as Editor and Lead Analyst for The Myers Report, the Gold Standard of Excellence in B2B research and forecasting.  Throughout my career, Jack Myers' insights in his TomorrowToday column have been incredibly useful to me as I have charted the future for the clients of my agencies.  My goal as I assume the responsibility for this weekly column is to maintain our high standard of knowledge, integrity, value, challenging the status quo and providing occasional industry charging inspirations.

I'm a big fan of puzzles.  In fact, I once spent three months completing a puzzle created by the world-renowned Israeli artist Yaacov Agam, in which every piece of the puzzle was the exact same shape.  The only way to solve the puzzle was by hyper-focusing on the nuance.  Where on the puzzle piece did the blue end and the red begin, and did that match exactly to the other piece in your hand?  After much determination, and a lot of trial and error, I was able to match the piece and move on to the next until, months later, a beautiful piece of art appeared.  Now imagine puzzle pieces, but with ever-changing imagery.  Yes, there is a matching piece, but if you don't catch it just in time, the piece in your hand will change along with a select number of other pieces.  In the short term the changes to the overall picture will be subtle, but over time profound, until the puzzle you finish looks nothing like the puzzle that you started.  This is our current media environment.

In an era of "exponential change," 2019 truly stands out.  Our industry is getting more complex just as marketers are craving simplicity, transparency and clarity.  The Myers Report is also changing, expanding and evolving as we research, cover, forecast and share knowledge and insights about this incredibly challenging and exciting era, always with a focus on the future.  Think of The Myers Report, MediaVillage and TomorrowTodayas a "Knowledge Exchange" as you go about assessing the calculus of the future.  Successful organizations need to act with agility, vision and a deep knowledge of the marketplace and ecosystem as they navigate the mega-mergers (Disney/Fox; ATT/Time Warner - with more to come); the imminent launch of Apple, Disney+, NBCU and WarnerMedia OTT services; the rapid rise of Amazon as a media powerhouse; plus the likely push of Walmart into the advertising business.  The creative community is finally responding to the gig-per-second download on-demand addressable world in which their messages compete for time and attention.  Custom, immersive, predictive, interactive multi-panel, 8K HDR video will lead to reimagined creativity across all media.

For more than 35 years The Myers Report has served as the industry's navigational guide to the future.  We're insanely curious about how consumers and customers learn and make purchase decisions about companies, brands and organizations.  We're constantly surveying the market to assess the performance and value of leading media, agencies and brands in matching the pieces to help marketers solve their puzzles.  At MediaVillage we're a positive and optimistic voice in a sea of "the sky is falling" articles about the media world.  We believe the puzzle is taking shape and the puzzle pieces are becoming clearer and more stable.

For the past 25 years I've had the honor to work with some of the leading global agencies (Ogilvy, Rapp Collins, OMD and Omnicom Media Group) and incredible clients (IBM, Intel, Clorox, McDonalds, CBS, CW, Showtime, Disney, Nissan, Hilton and many others).  Along with an amazing team of peers and mentors, I've been able to provide revenue-driving guidance during every major wave of disruption during the digital era.  Thanks to Jack, I'm here to help guide the conversation with you through this next wave of change and beyond.  If you know me from social media at @mediawhiz, you know I much prefer a conversation to a lecture.  I'm really looking forward to engaging with you all.

But wait, there's more!

How can we best share knowledge to help guide your decisions and investments?  What are the formats that you'd prefer to consume our content (audio, video, text, data tables, interactive graphs)?  If you have ideas on research and topics you'd like to discuss, please reach out to me at jeff@mediavillage.com.

Photo credit: Gino Crescoli -- Pxabay.

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