Steve Jobs, Mark
Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos are all inspiring business leaders. They are icons of
the business world that have shaped, reshaped and adapted to the digital era in
which we live. And yet it has been a couple of quotes from a different person
from a different era that has been on my mind of late.
The life of
Walt Disney is a fascinating one, and a story that has been told many times in
a wide variety of ways. My first exposure to the passion of Disney might have
happened during a radio broadcast of the "Rest Of The Story," a five minute story of intrigue with a
twist at the end that was skillfully written and voiced by radio legend Paul Harvey.
Tom Hanks portrayed Disney brilliantly in the movie "Saving Mr. Banks" in 2013. More recently, PBS did an in-depth
biography of the media giant on their "AmericanExperience" series.
Disney was a
smart businessman, who was laser focused on innovation. Though he passed away
in 1966, his passion continues on at the company he founded along with his
brother Roy. Disney was an innovator in creating customer experiences, and was
very quick to put new twists on old ideas. Media companies could learn a lot from just those two Disney concepts.
Newspapers
are slow to change when it comes to special sections and promotions. Disney
faced that "we've always done it that way" problem early in his
career too. Disney found great success with The
Silly Symphony cartoon "Three
Little Pigs" and he was being urged to do more of the same. Though not
a fan of sequels, he relented and Disney produced two follow up cartoon shorts,
neither of which found the commercial success of the original. Disney's original
response was, "You cannot top pigs with pigs" which turned out to be
right.
With the end
of the year rapidly approaching, many of us have turned their focus to the 2017
calendar. The challenge is to find originality in the sales promotions and
special sections that will be a part of the plan for next year. It is easy to
run out the same list as last year, and simply change the deadlines and run
dates to match the 2017 calendar. But too often, much like the Disney example,
the commercial success turns out less than the original.
We face a
lot of revenue pressure in the newspaper industry, some of which is beyond our
control. But running out stale promotions and special sections and managing the
decline is within our control. Simply accepting less each year by doing the
same thing over and over is lazy.
Our job as
marketing managers is to find new opportunities. Opportunities that make
money for our company and for our advertisers. This isn't an easy task to be
sure, and not one to be tackled alone. Every sales rep on your staff should be
challenged on how they will work differently with accounts to innovate and
expand opportunities for success for their accounts and your business.
