5 Incredible Strategies for Surviving in Media in 2020
Happy New Year everyone! We’re hoping everyone is kicking off a big 2020, executing on all your resolutions, digging out from under emails, or even hitting the craps tables hard at CES.
It’s going to be an amazing year. But 2020 is going to wield a strong cocktail of sky-is-the-limit potential, mixed with sky-is-falling risks. If you’re looking for an article to help you untangle what’s happening with GDPR & CCPA, advice on how to navigate the OTT Streaming Wars, or a prediction on who’s going to win the 2020 Presidential Election...then you’ve clicked on the wrong article!
Below we’ve jotted down 5 smart things you can do to help you and your team cut through the noise and focus on what matters in the year (and decade!) ahead. First up…
Get Your POV in Public
We know that everyone reading this article is smart. I mean, duh. What we don’t know is what you believe to be true. In fact, we know you have a strong hypothesis about what’s going to work in 2020 and how to get it done. And the most important thing you can do with that hypothesis, is to run it through the gauntlet, hear out other points-of-view, and gut check it against reality.
At Latticework Insights, one of our biggest hypotheses is that *Data Integration is the most important skill right now*. 2020 is going to bring the fallout from GDPR & CCPA; additional widespread “balkanization” in media; companies’ marketing data continuing to proliferate out across literally thousands of tech platforms; and Facebook, Google, and TradeDesk continuing to make things worse. We believe that getting your data centralized and stitched back together again, visualized properly, and in the hands of the right domain experts is the only bet for “Reconnecting the Dots”. In fact, our hypothesis is buried in our in our name:
“You need to build a Latticework, to get to the Insight”
And if we’re wrong, cool. We want to course correct, fast. So we say: get your hypothesis out in front of your colleagues early and often. Not in a tweet or a comment thread, but in long-form posts, in marketing collateral, and in real life conversations. Flesh it out. It’s the best way to receive feedback and work your ideas out in real-time.
It brings up another great point…
Articulate Your Core Values
At the core of your company is a simple truth. And getting to that truth is hard. But when you get there, it’s almost like a form of magic. Rory Sutherland, Executive Creative Director of OgilvyOne, argues for this in his book Alchemy, saying that not only is branding critical to communications, it’s actually a basic human need. A good brand short-circuits logic and drives decision making. Without that core, it’s easy to get lost in the woods.
Your brand should communicate something essential about what you do. And it should speak to your values. Our company puts our skills to work for what we call Latticework for Good. We work to be Transparent, Thorough & Talented in everything we do. It helps us stay focused when things get hectic and confusing.
Which actually brings us to the next big thing...
Abandon Clients That Violate Your Values
You knew we wouldn’t write a post without being at least a little bit controversial, so let’s just get it out there. Occasionally in your work, clients will violate your values. Some of them will do it consistently. They’re not worth the headache. Clip them.
Now look, it’s a wild word out there. People miss meetings, they forget to respond to emails, they go back on promises, or they underdeliver. Shit happens. But we all know the difference between a mistake and a pattern. And the fact is, unless you have an SOW that says “Help Client Get Organized” it’s not your responsibility to fix. In fact, it’s not even really in your power to fix. And the worst part is, eventually it’s going to come back to haunt your team. Eventually they’re going to make it look like it was your fault.
Alan Weiss advocates for this in his book Million Dollar Consulting. And it’s not solely about clients that are low-margin or low-revenue. It’s about clients that take you off of your focus and pull you away from your values.
The opposite side of this coin is…
Put a Ring on Great Partnerships
On the other hand when you do find great partners, clients, and colleagues that align with your values and share your vision for the future, hold onto these people with both arms! There is no greater multiplying factor in business than an external company who spends their time thinking about how to grow your business. We’ve found a couple of them that align deeply with our messaging, and integrate really well into our technology stacks. We sell their technologies into deals, they pull us into system integration projects, and we’re both out in the market speaking each other languages.
Great partnerships - and not the “Hey let’s partner on this” variety - take lots of initial investment. Joint marketing, joint selling, joint education, joint reality checks, etc. Test them quick and push bad ones out fast. And if you start to see green shoots, then go put a ring on it.
And lastly…
Learn Outside Your Comfort Zone
We’ve written about this before. Be diligent about understanding other people’s perspectives. Intelligent people tend to get blinders on, almost by design. They acquire decades worth of knowledge and begin to see the world through a narrow point of view. And it’s tough to snap out of. A great way to correct for this is to not over-optimize on your current skill set, and to learn outside of your comfort zone. It’s a good way to become well rounded. It’s also a good way to understand how other people are going to approach the same problem.
So sure, we’re definitely going to carve out some serious time doubling down on existing skills. There’s a new Python library for doing Time Series forecasting published by Facebook that we’re excited to nerd out on. But we’ve also been reading some of the mind-bending stuff below:
Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss - How to take control of the emotional part of a sale.
Story by Robert McKee - How to identify universal truths that hook your readers & push a story forward.
Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino - A dizzying overview about the parallel realities created by the internet.
Sprint by Jake Knapp - A 5-day process for conceiving & testing new ideas.
We hope this guide was helpful. Now go get cracking on your plan and have an amazing and prosperous 2020. And please drop us a line if we can help.