This made me smile. On Friday, I was digging through my external drive with archived papers from my Ph.D. classes. Completely randomly, I came across a project that I pitched to consulting firm Booz, Allen&Hamilton - actually, to Randy Rothenberg, who was really nice to me and connected me with others at BoozAllen.
So, anyway, the project's called "The Evolving Role of Marketing in Media Companies", and the time is January 2005. It's sort of awesome how this question is still very relevant today.
Some highlights from the doc:
Media companies today don't take the full advantage of their internal resources and market opportunity. This is because they lack organizational structure, incentive, and functional areas to extract the maximum value from their resources to meet customers' needs. As media market changed, internal organizational structure and dynamics of media companies did not. For a company to effectively alter its offerings, a real internal change must occur - and because marketing is well positioned to strategically link external consumer information and company's internal assets, it has a key role in this process.
Two main organizational challenges in today’s media industry are how to achieve the organizational flexibility capable of adapting to a an environment with a high degree of uncertainty and what are the new strategies for value creation necessary given the evolved relationships between media companies and their markets. Specifically, the main organizational challenges are: a) How can media companies internally restructure such that their organization empowers a business model which meets the need of the fast-changing and complex media market plays? b) What kind of functional and organizational consolidation will cross-platform deals foster? c) what incentive structure need to be in place to encourage these behaviors, i.e. how to motivate and foster interdivisional collaboration that will enhance companies' potential for innovation and responsiveness for changing demands of the market?
There is a strong need for a coordinating unit that is strategically well positioned within a firm and to the market to leverage the company's internal assets allowing for adaptive and continued responsiveness to unpredictable environmental changes. Marketing departments can achieve such strategic position and that they will have an increasingly important coordinating role within media companies. The new role of marketing in media companies will potentially ensure both leveraging firm's assets and its competitive position in marketing services and/or with traditional marketing services providers.
All of this sounds terribly, terribly familiar. Just replace "media companies" with _______.
:)