Mediaboss Marketing

Illustration by: John Holcroft

This story first appeared in the Nov. 21 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.

The mogul-built media conglomerates Time Warner, CBS, Walt Disney, Viacom and 21st Century Fox were inherited in the new millennium by a cast of baby moguls, employees rather than entrepreneurs and creators. Now these leaders are nearing traditional retirement age, and in a situation usually alarming to shareholders, none of them has an evident heir. At this seemingly most-existential moment, with an uncertain and perilous future just over the horizon, no media company has put in place the person who will manage it there. Instead, each top executive has become more singular and entrenched.

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Time Warner's Jeff Bewkes, 62, having fought off Rupert Murdoch's bid for his company, is more public than at any previous time in his career and personally has committed to advancing his share price. Leslie Moonves, 65, has achieved near-mogul standing, almost as synonymous with CBS as its founder, William Paley, once was. In October, Disney's board extended 63-year-old Robert Iger's retirement date a third time. Philippe Dauman, 60, is as close to replacing Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone who sounded near death Nov. 5 during a CBS earnings call as an executive ever has been. Chase Carey, 60, with the division of the Murdoch holdings into newspapers and entertainment, has become at the latter company ever-more autonomous and crucial.

This is, notably even transformationally the first business generation in which being in one's 60s doesn't necessarily suggest retirement. In fact, each of the media chiefs looks almost preternaturally on top of his game. The builders of the great media companies were forced by age, the reach of their ambitions and attendant controversies to turn over operational control to a strictly managerial generation. These execs were supposed to create more rational, less personality-dominated businesses. Instead, in the process of building more deliberate media empires, each company has become a striking reflection of its operator's logic.

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Bewkes, rising at Time Warner after CEO Jerry Levin's hubris-addled fall and caretaker Richard Parsons' interregnum, sold off the many nonharmonious parts of the company and doubled its share price. Moonves, in addition to launching the CSI and NCIS franchises, single-handedly established broadcast's huge retransmission fees after taking control of CBS in its 2006 spinoff from Viacom. Iger bought Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm (and has been lucky to preside over ESPN's rocketing growth) and is the quiet yin to his Disney predecessor Michael Eisner's Sturm und Drang yang. Carey, while in name the COO who reports to 83-year-old Fox CEO Murdoch, has managed a sports and cable leviathan and, as well, his proprietor and his difficult family. (Carey reportedly was the strongest voice in splitting the Murdoch holdings.) Dauman, too, taking over Viacom after Redstone's temper-tantrum ouster of Tom Freston, has demonstrated singular ability to manage his 91-year-old patron; with his other hand, he has turned Viacom into the leading millennial marketing company.

Most importantly contradicting the influential thesis of investment banker Jonathan Knee in his book The Curse of the Mogul that the long-term prices of media conglomerates inevitably lag the market each man has seen during his tenure a market-beating rise.

It also is very clear that none of them wants to go. Why would they? Not only is running a media company like being prince of a rich nation-state a lifestyle as well as personal-wealth bonanza, with each of the major media CEOs ranking among the most well-paid U.S. executives but also there is a sense that television, the essence of their businesses, is poised for an ultimate golden age.

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Michael Wolff on Big Media: Where Are All the CEO Heir Apparents?

Steven Althaus's moment of digital truth came this past spring. BMW's global director of brand management stood in front of top management, telling them the automaker was about to use a drift mob to help market their new car, the M235i.

Five professional drivers were set to go behind the wheel of the M235is and driftor drive at high speeds, hit the brakes, and turn the steering wheel to spin the car abruptlyaround a traffic circle in Cape Town, South Africa. Their aim was to simulate a flash mob; a staged but seemingly spontaneous performance.

BMW executives fired off questions to Althaus that veered toward disbelief. I presented the idea of a drift mob and they said: 'Is this really going to work?' I had to say, I dont know. Nobodys done it before, Althaus recalls.

BMW wouldnt launch the video as a commercial, but pushed it out through /DRIVE, a popular YouTube channel dedicated to cars. The drift mob was part of a proposed new social media marketing strategy for BMW. Up until that point, the company had done a reasonable job with the first wave of social media tools.

Of course were on Facebook, Twitter . . . says Sebastian Schwiening, a 29-year-old digital marketing manager. He started at BMW in 2010, fresh out of the University of Kiel business school in Germany.

The German automobile company has more than 19 million Likes on Facebook, 602,000 Twitter followers, and a YouTube channel with more than 400,000 subscribers.

But as of early 2014, the company hadnt so much as put a Twitter hashtag into its advertising. Schwiening occasionally found himself having awkward conversations with senior marketing management over social media tactics he was trying, like a short video of two BMWs kissing that went up on Instagram. The video didnt fit in with BMWs self-image, but it did draw 70,000 hearts, Instagrams version of a like.

Hearts werent in upper managements lexicon, though. Normally, we just report use on things like our channels and website, Schwiening says. For me its tricky to explain that its better to have uplift in social engagement than clicks on our sites.

Althaus says he was intrigued by what Schwiening and BMW's online marketing department head, Florian Resinger, were trying with social media. Althaus had noticed during the 2014 Super Bowl that almost all of the other advertisers14 out of 20were using hashtags in their commercials. He wanted to see BMW adopt hashtags in its branding.

How could BMW explore this? Companies know the risks of engaging on social mediathey can damage their brands by pandering to trends, while consumers can say damaging things about brands that go out over a specific hashtag. Adopting hashtags meant BMW would loosen control of its brand messaging.

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The Man Who Convinced BMW To Rethink Social Media

ORLANDO, Fla., Nov. 13 (UPI) -- Nearly three years after George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin, a grand jury is considering whether he violated the unarmed teen's civil rights.

A federal grand jury convened Wednesday to consider whether there is enough evidence to indict Zimmerman, who was acquitted of second-degree murder last July. Zimmerman maintained he acted in self-defense.

One of Zimmerman's supporters from his first trial has turned against him, saying he wants to "make amends" with Martin's family. Frank Taaffe, Zimmerman's former neighbor, says he now believes Zimmerman's actions were racially charged.

"This is a young man who didn't deserve to die," Taaffe told reporters before he testified on subpoena by a U.S. Department of Justice attorney Wednesday.

Taaffe said the recent deaths of both of his sons changed his perspective on Zimmerman's actions.

"If there's a young man not doing anything but talking on the phone, in the rain, sauntering about, let it go," he said, of what Zimmerman should have done the night he saw Martin walking through a Sanford neighborhood. "You know, that's why they have law enforcement. Let them handle it."

Taaffe said he expected to testify about a phone call he received in the days before Zimmerman was arrested. The caller, who claimed to be Zimmerman, made a "racial comment," but the number was unregistered and Taaffe said he can't be sure it was Zimmerman on the phone.

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George Zimmerman grand jury considers civil rights case

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