Don't plan a sequel for your 2017 marketing plan; innovate!

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.

"We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths." That is a quote from Disney that I wish was the mantra for the media industry.