When the dust settles down…!

Last week the IRS data, (world's largest media syndicated study), for the 2nd round of 2008 finding was released, and within hours of the release, there were frantic calls across media organizations, to the MRUC and Hansa office! Everyone wanted to talk/ask/debate was on “How can Average Issue Readership (AIR), which has been a industry currency for so long, be replaced by Total readership (TR), all of a sudden? How can the Press readership metrics change in an abrupt fashion?”…so on, in almost similar veins.

After the clarifications issued by the concerned parties, the three key takeouts, from those clarifications, seemed to be:

AIR and TR are both reported in the R2 findings.

Only difference was that in the previous rounds data, analysing at a Media Reach levels, other media always used to rely on Reach reported from all the possible vehicles but Press used to report Reach for the medium only from the titles covered in the study.

TR is slightly different from Claimed readership (CR), to the extent that while CR is a measurement metric to judge the loyal and irregular readers at a title level, TR measures the sum (Gross) total of everyone who has claimed to have read any Print title/vehicle. This brings the Reach of Press in parity with other media.

At individual planning/title specific readership metric will still continue to report and analyse on the AIR. Only difference now, is that the software in the initial front end will show the TR, and then subsequently when the planner starts building the plans, AIR will be the metric it will be measured on. This would encourage the Planner to go beyond the initial run of the system.

The above really doesn’t change the planners’ life to a great extent. While previously we hardly ever looked at the CR metric, now it forces the Media professionals, to consider the TR as an important measurement to judge the efficacy of Print in general. While retaining the base of AIR as the most key attribute to measure individual titles on.

Therefore the Media professionals need to still operate on the regular metrics of AIR, to plan, buy and perform the analysis on, but TR allows the medium to be measured in the same base as other media.

Other key attributes of the R2 findings, which have been snowed under by the above issue, which we might like to point out is the higher time spent reading the print vehicle.

While this is definitely good news for the publishers, but we must remember the time spent on individual page/s would have most definitely reduced.

Common sense tells us that with the given volume of an average daily or a magazine going up in the last 4-5 years, through increased paginations, sectional/supplement pullouts etc, there is definitely a “pick- and- choose- the- favourite- sections” factor operating here.

Which brings us to the question on the data on Sectional readership, this ideally should be used with the AIR of the overall title, and decide on the relevant placement of the communication, basis the brand’s target audience. This would at least kick start the thinking on how to sharp-focus on our audience, even on a large & mass based Daily.

We, in our organization , do believe that the time has come for us to move away from Media plans and schedules, to Contact plans and creating engagements.

We need to follow the consumer wherever he goes, whether it’s ATL vs. BTL, classical vs. new media etc… are not even debating points anymore.

We are into the business of building connections with consumers, and engaging them, it doesn’t matter on the format of the communication.





Have Faith ; Rewards will follow...

Jerry Maguire's MS - (resembles very closely to my mindstate...now!)

Just to feel optimistic about life in general and finding an echo of some of my own sentiments, currently running thru my mind and about similarties of Jerry's career with that of my own ...I want to present the most quoted mission statement, ad verbatim :

The things we think and do not say: thoughts of a sports attorney

Miami Hilton, 1 AM
It's 1 AM and this might be the bad pizza I had earlier talking, but I believe I have something to say. Or rather, I have something to say that I believe in. My father once said, "Get the bad news over with first. You be the one to say the tough stuff." Well, here goes. There is a cruel wind blowing through our business. We all feel it, and if we don't, perhaps we've forgotten how to feel. But here is the truth. We are less ourselves than we were when we started this organization.

Sports Management International began as a small company. I was hired by Jack Scully in 1981, I was fresh out of college, I didn't even watch much sports. But a young man came to me, and his name was Bill Apodaca. He asked me to look at a contract he'd acquired to play football for the Atlanta Falcons. Before long I was overseeing the business of another member of the Falcons, and two baseball players. The nuances and the small miracles of professional sports would soon hook me - there was something simple and perfect about the way a stadium felt. The way you felt when a player you'd helped and represented made his stand in front of 54,000 people. And I remember the conversation Mr. Scully and I had by an elevator, standing next to one of those sand-filled ashtray posts, right before he hired me as one of the first agents in this company. "You and I are blessed, he said, "we do something that we love."

Tonight, I find those words guiding me back to an important place, and an important truth. I care very much about the fact that I have learned to care less. Now our company is one of the top three in this business, and we represent over a thousand athletes. Over sixty agents work at our huge new office, and I still haven't met all of you. The business of sports has never been bigger, or tougher, or more written about. And we are at the forefront. But I wonder tonight, as we leave our 13th annual conference ... we've talked a lot and partied a lot over the last three days, but I dare say that not one of us, our diet Pepsis and sheaf of papers in hand, have said what we really think.

It is beyond the easy arguments waged against sports, and our business on the editorial pages of the New York Times. It is beyond the huge salaries, the endorsements all our clients now want because "I'm a better actor than Michael Jordan." Beyond the globalization and merchandization of the games. It's more subtle than the baseball strike, more about loyalty than the Colts moving to Indiana, the Rams going to St. Louis, or the Cleveland Browns moving to ... someplace. I'm talking about something they don't write about. I'm talking about something we don't talk about.

We are losing our battle with all that is personal and real about our business. Every day I can look at a list of phone calls only partially returned. Driving home, I think of what was not accomplished, instead of what was accomplished. The gnawing feeling continues. That families are sitting waiting for a call from us, waiting to hear the word on a contract, or a General Manager's thoughts on an upcoming season. We are pushing numbers around, doing our best, but is there any real satisfaction in success without pride? Is there any real satisfaction in a success that exists only when we push the messiness of real human contact from our lives and minds? When we learn not to care enough about the very guy we promised the world to, just to get him to sign. Or to let it bother us that a hockey player's son is worried about his dad getting that fifth concussion.

There is a good bet that I will erase all of this from my laptop, and you will never read it. But if you are reading it, and you're reading it right now, it is only because I was unable to stop. I was unable to forget the quiet questions in the hallways, when some of you, usually the younger agents, or interns, asked me on the side: "How do you keep all these lives, all these clients, separated in your mind?"

Chances are, I didn't say much. I might have told you "it's easy," or, "you're not working hard enough." Chances are, I said something that you expected, maybe even wanted to hear. But it wasn't the truth, and it wasn't what I felt. And if you ever wondered about the drawbacks of being quiet about important things, talk to yourself in the mirror some time, say the truth. Yell the truth to yourself, when no one is listening. See how good it feels?

My father worked for the United Way for 38 years. We lived in San Diego for many years, before I left to move up the coast to Los Angeles. One of the things my father said was: "Every time you allow a problem in your life, you are actually at a point of transformation. Crisis is a powerful point of transformation." (Never mind that he sat at the same chair for 38 years, and when he retired said only that he'd wished he'd asked for a more comfortable place to sit.)

We are now at a point of transformation with this company. But this is not something to fear, it is something to celebrate. Because I come to you tonight, looking out at the dark Miami skyline, not only with a challenge. I come to you with answers too.

But first let us define our position.

Right now we are a breaking point with our client list. We are not so huge that we must hire more agents, and not so small that we have not experienced huge success. We are at a point of neutrality. We are all, right now, neutral. Neutral, as in not black or white. Not bad or good. Even. neutral.

Even in my own life, after 35 years, I feel that I have never done that one thing, that noble thing that defines a life. Even writing this Mission Statement is odd for me. I am used to flying below the radar, enjoying my life and friends. But I have not been truly tested. I have not gone to India to explore my life, as my brother has. I have not been in a major car accident, or fathered a child. I have not created a life, nor have I killed anyone. I am neutral. I haven't started a war and I haven't stopped a war. I have broken even with my life. I have a nice home, a nice car, a fiancee who makes my heart race. But I have not taken that step, or risk, that makes the air I have breathed for 35 years worthwhile. I once had a yellow couch. I got rid of it because it was neutral. My life is now like that yellow couch.

And yet, as I sit here in the wonderful Miami Hilton, I have never been so happy to be alive. I have said "later" to most anything that required true sacrifice. Later I will spend a weekend reading real books, not just magazines. Later I will visit my grandmother who is 100 and unable to really know the difference. Later I will visit the clients whose careers are over, but of course I promised to stay in touch. Later later later later. It is too easy to say "later" because we all believe our work to be too important to stop, minute to minute, for something that might interfere with the restless and relentless pursuit of forward motion. Of greater success. Make no mistake, I am a huge fan of success. But tonight, I propose a better kind of success. I could be wrong, but if you keep reading and I keep writing, we might get there together.

Sports Management International, founded in 1981, was dedicated to the then-rock solid notion that athletes deserve a decent home with decent pay. The original client roster existed of four athletes, one of them was the first American Frisbee Champion, Chester Savage, who was actually born in Australia.

* * *

Now of course we all know that we possess the job of the decade. Last year, when a poll of college students was taken, our occupation, Sports Agent or Sports Attorney ranked number two to Rock Star. But rock stars, like sports stars, have a limited time in the spotlight. Nobody likes an old lineman or a bald rock star. But sports representation can give you a career into your 80's, like the original sports agent Dicky Fox, who died on his way to a Chicago Bulls playoff game in 1993. He died gloriously, right by the B gates, a happy man who had actually written a book called A Happy Life. Taken by a heart attack, he left a loving wife and family, and a home next door to his first client. And we won't talk about the two guys who stole his playoff tickets, right out of his pocket as he lay on the cool floor of the 'O Hare airport. They were yanked from Dicky's seats in the first quarter, and two guards kept the seats empty in tribute to him.

A Happy Life.

And to those young agents who never met him, Dicky Fox always said the same thing when asked for his secret. "The secret to this job," he said, "is personal relationships."

We are agents. To some, that brings with it the image of a Slickster. A Huckster. Someone profiting off the efforts of others. For many of those we've met or observed, that is what we are. I know an agent operating in this very state who regularly gets the phone numbers of college athletes by calling school offices and posing as a tutor who has lost their student's contact number. He is often successful in acquiring athletes, but none for very long. Privately, an agent can be a father, a friend, an inspiring force in the life of a young man or woman. We are sometimes as important as priests or poets, but until we dedicate ourselves to worthier goals than getting a illegal phone number, we are poets of emptiness.

Somehow all this has been bubbling up inside me. A man is the sum total of his experiences. And it is now that I am interested in shaping the experiences to come. What is the future of what we do? Give me a goal, and I will achieve it. That has been my secret design for most of my life. Perhaps you are the same. We're all goal-oriented, so I hereby present a goal.

How can we do something surprising, and memorable with our lives? How can we turn this job, in small but important ways, into a better representation of ourselves? Most of us would easily say that we are our jobs. That's obvious from the late hours we all keep. So then, it is bigger than work, isn't it? It is about us.

How do we wish to define our lives? So that when we are sixty, or seventy, or eighty and we're sinking down onto that cool floor of O'Hare airport, with playoff tickets in our pockets, perhaps we too can know that we led A Happy Life? Is it important to be a Person and not just a slave to the commerce of Professional Sport? Do we want to be Remembered?

Or do we just want to be the guy who sold the guy who sold shoes that came with the little pump?

Recently I was asked by the son of a client, in so many words, "What do you stand for?" I was lost for an answer. At 14, I wasn't lost for that answer. At 18, I wasn't lost for an answer. At 35, I was blown away that I had no answer. I could only look at the face of a 12 year-old boy, concerned about his dad, needing my help, just looking at me for the answer I didn't have.

The look on that kid's face is a part of me now. And the feeling I had, and have now, is pushing me forward, in writing this Mission Statement.



Have Faith ; Rewards will follow...

An Eye Opener

Consider this...a you know a person for a very very long time.
You think you know that person,almost as well as you know yourself..inside out!!

But surprise, surprise...suddenly you come across something completely unexpected and totally out of the blue, about the same person which is an eye opener.
A hidden dimension of that paticular person unfolds in front of you. You thought you knew them..! But its almost like a new revelation, a new hidden image of that person, comes out in front of you.

I had that same experience today. I felt numbed and i felt ashamed about pre-judging someone, pre-deciding on their qualities, their strenghts and weakness. All based on superficial levels of interactions. I am more than convinced about the fact that, underneath of our external layers of behaviour and superficial characteristics, lies the real 'us'....With our insecurities, faults, fears and apprehensions...I saw something about a very close person, whom i always judged wrong. But iam making a promise today..Never to prejudge, predecide and hold a prejudice against anyone ever..!

So God give me that strength.





Have Faith ; Rewards will follow...

Cases of Desperation

Some people might say, that desperate situations demand desperate measures. But i would like to offer a counterpoint : Desperate situations, need a quiet and a well thought out measures. Acting in haste, always seem to be a half baked solution. But reacting at your own charmed time means...well the time has passed, and the solution might seem to be a little out of context.

So the balance of well thought out course of action, and at the same time reacting/responding in time to the situation has to be achieved. For e.g. if the teacher has complaints regarding your child's behaviour in the classroom, one must react positively, firmly and in time. No need to rush in and scream at the child, nor is it appropriate for us to wear velvet gloves and act like the 'friend' of your child. An all around assesment of your child's hidden motivations for the behaviour needs to be unearthed. It's easier said than done..!

For e.g, if a client calls for an emergency meeting, since his TV advertising campaign is not making his sales graph zoom northwards. I guess most of the communication experts will blame the creatives, the schedules of the TV plan, the sudden drop of TV viewership etc. But do we look inwards at our own distribution strengths, our pricing strategies, our timing of entering into a campaign (is there a seasonal purchase downturn)? There is a problem somewhere...Hence we do the easiest thing that's possible. Pump in more investments into media, re-jig the TV plan, create shorter edits of the creatives and achieve more frequency..But the real problem is somewhere else..! Did we investigate enough?

Sometimes, we don't have time for well thought out responses. Look at how our powers-that-be react to a natural disasters that hits our country from time to time. In Bihar, recently, the government machinery swung into action, only after 10-15 days of twiddling their thumbs. But at the other extreme are the NGOs, private enterprises which start donating, collecting and distributing at the very whiff of a disaster. Which course of action do we subscribe to?

There is a subtle difference between a Reaction and a Response. Medical emergencies, natural or manmade disasters require reactions. The other so called serious/emergency situations require a response. But this is my take on this topic. What's yours?

Have Faith ; Rewards will follow...

Do it now or regret !

Sometimes life offers you a unique moment to be able to, give, receive, speak, listen, share, enjoy, regret, forgive and just about any other emotion or actions, which due to overbearing pressures of time and attention, you let it pass by. As we all know that unique moment will never ever come back to you again. It might return but with a different force, importance or in a different situation, but that unique moment is lost. Therefore postponing things, which you can do right now, seems so fragile. Each breath of life is unique in its opportunity and its importance. How many times have we wished, "I shouldn't have said this to him" or
"I wish i could have completed that task yesterday" et all...But the sad part is, regrets don't change the facts, that you have missed that moment. I don't want to sound too gyani on this..! Iam the biggest procrastinator in town..! But iam going to change that..right here and now..!




Have Faith ; Rewards will follow...

Being light and love

People are often unreasonable, illogical,
and self centered.
Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind,
People may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives.
Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win
some false friends And some true enemies.
Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank,
People may cheat you
Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building,
someone could destroy overnight.
Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness,
They may be jealous.
Be happy anyway.

The good you do today,
People will often forget tomorrow.
Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have,
And it may never be enough.
Give the world the best you've got anyway.

You see, in the final analysis,
it is between you and God.
It was never between you and them anyway.

-- Mother Teresa










Have Faith ; Rewards will follow...

A Brief Introduction - Eve of a client meeting, and i was confined to bed..!