Spotting Bubbles and Surviving Disruption

The launch of AccelerateSG has shown what a powerful platform LinkedIn can be.?For the last eight years, I’ve been using it primarily to repost my monthly marketing column in MediaPost.?Because 2021 is a time of new beginnings, not only will I start to widen the lens of that column a bit, but I also plan to use this space to occasionally talk about other subjects related to business, finance, investing and careers.?I think of it as both a broadening and deepening of a conversation I started with many of you a long time ago.

I began my career in media research 25 years ago, when the biggest disruption was cable.?I made this my primary focus about two decades ago, and for about 15 years, I made a great business of it.?I always prided myself on being able to spot a bubble a mile away, from the dot-com boom of 1999-2000 to the sub-prime bust of 2007-2009.?But I must admit, I was slow to see the bubble in my own backyard.?Over time, I took for granted that the cable conglomerates would add more and more channels…charge more and more in carriage fees…and collect more and more from consumers.?Every time a Current TV, Hub, Pivot, Fusion or Al Jazeera America would launch, it was a great business opportunity for all of us, and I thought it would go on forever.

Concurrently came the scripted series bubble.?After “Sex and the City” and “The Sopranos” made HBO a pop culture phenomenon, and AMC scored a hat trick with “Mad Men,” “Breaking Bad” and “The Walking Dead,” every network wanted their own high-end scripted series to put them on the map.?Suddenly we were testing expensive musicals, supernatural thrillers and period pieces for MTV, CMT, WGN America and many others.?Everybody wanted the buzz, ratings, reviews, Emmys, CPM’s and carriage fees, and they were willing to pay dearly to get them.

For me, the tipping point came in 2013.?In January of that year, the Dodgers signed an $8 billion contract with Time Warner Cable to form a new regional sports network.?The idea was that Time Warner would sell it to all the other cable operators to add to their basic tier, for $5/subscriber.?But all of the other major operators said no.?Viewers could no longer watch Dodgers games on broadcast TV, and only the minority of households in the TWC footprint could even access the games.?It took seven years for AT&T to finally agree to carry the channel, getting it to a majority of LA households.

From there, it was a slippery slope.?There weren’t enough eyeballs to go around to support all the premium fare on all these basic cable channels.?Subscribers started pushing back on $300 cable bills and cutting the cord in favor of streaming and OTT services.?DVR usage started wiping out entire dayparts.?Social media took up more and more share of attention…and starting in 2015, when the news became stranger than fiction, what scripted drama could compete?

Over time, some of these channels folded.?Many abandoned scripted programming, in favor of low-budget reality shows.?Some picked their most popular show and aired wall-to-wall repeats of it.?The days of $100K program tests, million-dollar advisory panels, and taking a team of a dozen network research people out to expensive dinners, were now over.?I got my last job on the strength of a budget promising a lot of that revenue, and the very next day, my biggest client announced a sweeping re-org that wiped out most of that work.?Whoops.

Since that time, we’ve had many opportunities to work with linear television clients to reinvent their business and their brand.?Launch their own successful streaming service.?Become a true multiplatform destination. Of the ten engagements I’m most proud of from the last four years, four fit under this rubric.

We’ve also gotten some great opportunities as clients leave linear television and go to work for streamers and digital-first brands. We’ve been able to continue testing content and creative, in the US and around the world, and help them with some of their biggest business, brand, PR and regulatory challenges.?The remaining six highlights in my “Top 10 greatest moments” fall under this rubric.

But I’ve also seen quite a few clients and colleagues leave media and go into entirely different verticals. Pharma, finance, automotive, retail, QSR, CPG, DTC, you name it. It’s been an inspiration seeing them reinvent themselves and apply to new sectors the skills they developed in media, and the lessons they learned from seeing that world completely disrupted and transformed.

It’s my fondest hope that all three types of clients find a welcoming home at AccelerateSG. That we can continue helping linear media clients accelerate the ongoing transformation of their business.?That we can help digital and streaming clients keep their foot planted firmly on the accelerator as they expand around the world.?And that we can also serve brands in other sectors as they push out content, creative and messaging to increasingly young, diverse, digital, mobile, social consumers, who see EVERY brand as a de facto media brand, and use every form of media at their fingertips to tout or trash it.

We want to help all of these clients look around corners; anticipate the opportunities and challenges that await; and pro-actively address them, so that they become the disrupters like Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google, and not the disrupted like that ill-fated Dodgers Channel. Once you survive a bubble in your own backyard, you become a little better at spotting one in somebody else’s.