One of the great pleasures of working at Viacom is being part of the Viacom Marketing Council – a group of about a dozen smart and talented marketing leaders from across our many brands.
We’ve just completed a day-and-a-half offsite at the Paramount lot in LA. The timing turned out to be very interesting in light of the “noise” around our parent company this week. Needless to say, there were many conversations (and much speculation) about it all.
But perhaps the most interesting discussion centered around something we in the entertainment industry excel at: focusing on the good news, while magically ignoring the tougher stuff.
One of our company’s leaders pointed out this paradox during a frank conversation at the offsite. His perspective is that our internal need to brag about successes must come hand-in-hand with an acknowledgement of what’s not working. And like any ‘traditional’ media company in 2016, there are plenty of both.
By our nature, we entertainment industry types are spinners. Whether we are trying to convince someone that talent X is a big star who will bring huge audiences, convincing the press to cover our show or pitching a new project, we are all very very good at pointing out the positive.
“She has 2 million Twitter followers!”
“This show has SO MUCH buzz!”
“Everybody is interested in buying this project!”
What you rarely hear is:
“She actually had 3 million followers a year ago.”
“Everyone claims to be a fan, but no one actually watches it.”
“I’ve actually only pitched it to one other person, who was lukewarm about the idea but wanted to know who else was interested.”
So what’s the issue? Isn’t being a glass-half-full person a good thing?
Absolutely. I’m a big fan of being a cheerleader, particularly when you have a team to motivate.
But our industry’s intense focus on how great everything is often lulls us into a false sense of comfort. And like an addict, because the highs are often so high, the lows are often super super low. And the result is often finger pointing: if I genuinely believe everything I did was amazing, it must be Joe’s fault this project didn’t work.
Google often touts that it “celebrates its failures”. Maybe it’s time for our industry to do the same.
Dispatches from the Exit Row 