The Beginning Of Our Visit to Vegas
Since we wrote our last column about the end of our trip to this year’s NAB Show, let’s rewind the time machine to the start of our trip to Las Vegas last Friday.
From the moment you step off the plane at McCarran…sorry, Harry Reid International Airport now, it just smacks you right in the face. The electronic sounds of slot machines fill the air. One first chance to get your cash on the way in and one last chance to take it from you on the way out.
Then it is the crowd. No matter when we arrive, it always seems busy here. The throng at the airport’s rideshare pickup location left no doubt that this time would be the same.
Once upon a time, back when we were on an expense account, we would stay at the Wynn or its twin property, Encore, which seems to be the unofficial hotel of the television elite. But since we are now on our own dime, we booked a room at the Westgate. The Westgate’s main appeal is that it is immediately adjacent to the mammoth Las Vegas Convention Center, where the NAB Show is held.
The Westgate is, to put it in the best possible light, a little careworn. It is a remnant from when Vegas was a smaller oasis in the desert. Not the 50s or 60s Vegas of the Rat Pack era, but later, when Elvis arrived here. His shows started here in 1969, when the hotel was known as “The International.” The King would rule here for two extended runs each year until 1976. Much of the place feels like he never left, even if Barry Manilow is the name in lights on the marquee out front.
We arrived to find a long line to check in at 9 pm on a Friday. When we finally got to the desk about twenty minutes later, the very nice woman at the front desk asked us if we were in town for the NAB or for Wrestlemania. There was a pause as we considered which answer might be better. She recognized our hesitation and said, don’t worry—there is also a national dance team competition at the hotel this weekend.
The confluence of WWE fans, pre-teen dance team members, and NAB Show attendees was interesting enough. Then we heard that the band Phish was on night three of a four-night stand at The Sphere.
As someone once said: “Only in Vegas, man.”
The NAB Show didn’t start until Sunday, when the event officially gets underway, and the show floor opens. So we took Saturday to connect with some friends for brunch and dinner. That, and to adjust to the travel, the time change, and the lack of any ability to produce tears in our eyes for at least 24 hours.
Sunday morning, it was time to rise and shine, and “take care of business” as Elvis would say.
The good folks at TVNewsCheck.com put on a one-day conference called “Programming Everywhere,” which covers a wide range of television-specific topics. Their event kicked off with a 9 AM session featuring new research findings from Magid titled “The Omni-Media Landscape: Mapping Reach, Affinity and the Future of Media Monetization.”
For those readers who may not know, Magid has been doing media research and consulting since well before we entered the business, and they have expanded out to working in “empowering businesses” across many different disciplines. But research, both quantitative and qualitative, is at the core of what they do.
This opening session featured Magid COO Jamie Spencer presenting the company’s insights from its ongoing “EmotionalDNA” work applied to the U.S. information Media sector. Or, as the company press release states it: “tracking over 150 news brands for over 40 emotional-connection attributes predictive of brand love, against 14 proprietary points of engagement, in speaking with over 2,000 consumers in the initial wave.”
As an experienced attendee of Magid research presentations over our decades, we downed two cans of Red Bull before finding the meeting room and taking a seat.
Magid’s Spencer took to the podium right on time, and we were off. If there is research, then there is always a PowerPoint “deck.” And right on the first slide after the title, there it was:
“We are competing in an attention economy. The playing field is massive.”
Probably should have washed down a couple of Advil with those Red Bulls. Our brain momentarily flickered back to years ago and working with sportscasting legend Warner Wolf. Warner was famous for throwing to every highlight clip, saying, “Let’s go to the videotape.” When his highlights told the story of the game, either good or bad, he would often say, “Turn your sets off right there.”
(And mind you, this was three days before Perry Sook would publicly predict that only two or three companies would ultimately own all local TV stations. Talk about turning your sets off “right there.”)
But Jamie Spencer isn’t the COO of Magid without having some serious ability to be “droppin’ some knowledge.” And there were some definite “points of interest” to come.
Like how the average American’s media diet is to consume 13+ hours of media content each day. And we aren’t likely to grow that figure, so the battle is for the attention of the consumer. (What social media marketing guru Gary Vaynerchuk dubbed “the attention economy” a few years ago.)
“Attention is greater than consumption.” This should be obvious to anyone who has witnessed the consumption of media in a busy family’s household anytime recently. Thus, media brands want to understand why consumers invest their attention. And according to Magid, well, it’s all about PIE.
Sorry, not the apple or cherry kind. We just abbreviated the three areas that Magid’s data highlights: Passion, Intention, and Efficiency, to being simple to remember as just PIE.
And studying the elements in PIE, it is Magid’s position that we can say farewell to the Breaking News era. And that we have now fully arrived in the Context era. And the biggest loser in the era of Context? Trust.
That’s because, in Magid’s determination, “attention-winning brands today capture passion through comfort,
confirmation, and context.” Being “trustworthy” doesn’t show up in the top 25 “emotional attributes” of news brands. (Better pull those promos with the news anchor talking sincerely about trust. We’re looking squarely at you, Tony Dokoupil.)
Actually, Tony’s boss at CBS, Bari Weiss, might find a lot to absorb in this Magid presentation. We aren’t going to try to capture all of it here for you, but if you are interested in taking a deeper dive, you can read through their entire presentation by clicking on this link
The closing slide of their presentation offered some hopeful thinking. It stated, “The Omnimedia Landscape
delivers significant opportunity.”
So we went in search of both that landscape and whatever opportunity the NAB Show floor presented as it opened at 10 am. We’ll have more for you on what we saw there, coming up in our next dispatch from Las Vegas.
And now we’ve realized just why we have had a craving for some coconut cream pie (our favorite) ever since Sunday.
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