Latest / Brands, Beats & Bytes / Album 5 Track 17 - What's Poppin? CNN - It's a Branding Problem
Transcript
- DC: What's happenin' Brand Nerds? You know what it is? It's another podcast Brands, Beats and Bytes, a What's Popping edition. And we got one that is timely. We are certain that most of you all have heard about this thing brewing and it happens to be in the world of media. Jeff, what's going on out here? JS: Man, I'm excited about this. Uh, LT, put the topic together, LT, tell 'em what we got. LT: All right, let's do it. All right, gentz. So, yes, we thought about, we thought we would get into a topic that, as DC said, is incredibly timely and current, and that is the news of the CEO of CNN, Chris Lick being fired. Uh, there is a famous TV executive named Don Ohlmeyer who once said, "All questions can always be answered by money." I would like to add to that, I would counter that any business that encounters issues will always go back to a brand positioning issue. Let me give some history here. Uh, gentz, when CNN was founded by the great Ted Turner in 1980, it was such an in innovation to have all news all the time. So CNN was flourishing all over the world into the early nineties when the Gulf War was happening. Literally, uh, it, it was zoomed to our living rooms because CNN was there and they were the only news game in town. But in 1996, everything changed. That's when Roger Ailes came around and they came out with Fox News. And Fox News, uh, came out with a point of view. They said that folks who were conservative in their political views were being underserved, so they catered Fox News toward conservative folks, and then MSNBC came out and they focused their brand positioning on folks who were on the left side of the aisle. So now CNN's in the middle and folks Brand Nerds out there, the worst place to be in any business situation is to be middled. Now all of a sudden, what was once innovative in, in 1980, now CNN is caught out there and they are just in, in the middle and they've floundered ever since. So that's the setup guys would love to hear your point of view as we are now a lot later here in 2023. DC: Whatcha think, J?? JS: I I, I'll go first. Um, Brand Nerds, as you know, we have a brand positioning workshop. We end every workshop with this. You narrow your positioning to broaden your appeal, and that's one of the areas that CNN has not done well. Now, there are many areas in positioning that they, um, That they need to work on. But one of the areas I'm gonna focus on is the "Brand Lover." Given the recent things that's happened over the last month. Let me explain. A Brand Lover is who is the person that represents my brand. Like if, if we had a convention, who is the person that would come to the convention because they love my brand so much, how would you describe them and if they understood that you wouldn't have them bringing the Republican candidates on their station because that turned off a lot of viewers and you saw viewers, um, their viewership go down because of that. So if they had a, a clear positioning and understood their brand lover, then they can begin to grow the network again. And from what we've seen, um, you know, over the last, you know, over the last year, that's an area that they need to start in. Um, and so my thought is, get your brand positioning right, start there with your Brand Lover and then execute against it. Not, not. And then, and then there's another bigger issue. Cause you gotta have the right leadership in place. That's a whole nother thing, LT: right? JS: The right leader define your brand positioning and then execute against that brand positioning. And that's how I think they start to get back, uh right, uh, back on track. Dee, what you got? LT: I love that Jay. I love that. Jay, uh, Dee, before you go, I just want to put a couple facts in place. Um, CNN is by far the number three network out of, uh, CNN uh, Fox News and MSNBC. And actually News Max is another conservative outlet in some key, uh, demos and key and key, uh, date parts is actually beating CNN. So in some instances they're fourth. So this goes back to again, we're not espousing any political view here. We're just talking business. So, Dee, go, go ahead. I just wanted to put that out there. JS: That's great Larry. DC: Thanks for adding that, Larry. Both of you have talked about brand positioning and both of you I believe are spot on. We have a saying in our business, you know, this Jeff and Larry, position or be positioned. This is really what it comes down to. What happened is before right now, but leading, leading up to this CNN got repositioned. You talked about Roger Ailes and Fox and here's what happened. And oftentimes with brands, your category can change and you're not paying attention to the category change. What Ted Turner wanted to do, like the goat, is he wanted there to be, as you said, Larry, 24/7/365 news, news. What Roger Ailes and uh, Fox did is they said, I, I, I, you all can report the news. We're gonna report opinions. And so what happened is opinions became the ruler of the day, not necessarily news. Exactly. And so they shifted the, the landscape, the category. And here is CNN the, the, the tagline before they, I think, uh, Jeff Zucker, uh, had a change, uh, this one. Is that the most trusted name in news, they were still thinking about news. LT: Yep. DC: And so once Fox said, no, it's opinions, then you could go to personalities who had the most provocative opinions, who were most relevant to their Brand Lover. This is what happened to CNN. Exactly this, this is will have. And so they lost the plot on the category. Mm-hmm. They are not definitive in terms of owning their position and their positioning. So as a result, as you've said, Larry, they find themselves in the middle. Here's another example, again, going back to the brilliance of Ted Turner. So you all know that, uh, it was CNN and then Turner Broadcasting Networks and uh, that kind of thing. This is what Turner started. We had an old Coca-Cola colleague named Steve Kunan, who's now the head of, uh, the Hawks. Yep. And he went to, he went to Turner, as you all know. And so he had TBS and TNT, these two different networks. He immediately gave each of them a definitive position in the marketplace. Mm-hmm. For TBS he said, that's very funny. So you could see all of your sitcoms and that thing. And then on TNT , it was about drama. And that's when you saw sports, cuz drama plays out in sports. He picked a position. Yep. A positioning for each of these brands, CNN, they need to go back to what is their position because you guys have already, uh, stated. And how do they find their way back to that in a way that says, we have an opinion, we're gonna hold stronger opinion. You can love it or hate it. Shout 50 Cent in, uh, 50 Cent in The Game, but this is who we are. So that's, that's what I think about this subject. LT: Yeah. Not the, the whole point of if you don't position yourself, the marketplace will do it for you, and they won't be Happi complained about it. That's really what we're saying. And so the, the whole landscape shifted, uh, and they have never responded to it. Mm-hmm. They still wanna hark back to, oh, to your point, the trusted name and, and news. But quite honestly, the consumer doesn't give a, you know, what about that anymore? Yes. Yeah. I wanna talk about another category which, which I think really hammers home the point you all remember, Absolute Vodka in the 1990s was the super premium vodka, right? It was the brand. You all remember that It was. DC: I remember. Yep. Okay. LT: So there was no such thing in va in the vodka category. There was just vodkas. Smirnoff was the number one vodka Stoli, which was a Russian, you know, that would became a more expensive product. That was the first real super premium vodka and then Absolute came in and destroyed Stoli. They, they did an incredible job of, of creating a situation almost like Starbucks coffee, right? Where our brand is, is so great that we're, you're gonna pay a premium for it. And they called it the sup. They started a new category, super premium vodkas. Well, you know what happened to Absolute, a whole bunch of other folks came into that area, into super premium vodkas and actually with more expensive in, in, at least in brand positioning and in ways better product than, than Absolute and absolute never responded. They got middled in essence because they, they got ah, yeah. Cause there was more super premium than, than them. And there was cheaper than them. So the worst place to be is in the middle. And that's where absolute was. Yeah. And they never responded to that. And while this is a completely different situation, to me that's what happens to that. That's what's happened to CNN and to what we're all saying is they need a real brand positioning. They need, they really should call us the the, they need a brand positioning that's really going. To, uh, to connect with people in 2023 and beyond. Um, and while they can build off their legacy, it can't be about the past. It's gotta be about the future. JS: I, I, yeah, lt it the, their attempt to be everything for everyone. Now they've become unimportant to all, and that's the issue. DC: Great point, Jeff. LT: Perfect point. Jeff. DC: I'll, I'll add this one. Uh, one thing, um, I bet. Something you'll never hear in the marketing meeting for, uh, uh, for Fox News in any of the shows. You're not gonna hear this. Uh, how are we going to get more liberals to watch our programming and like our brand? You're never going to hear that gonna right. You're never gonna hear that because they are going to super serve those that love them. And they are going to pull in more people because of that, they are willing to sacrifice the folks that hate them. Yeah. CNN, what they have said in the, in, in, in this last few months in particular, they said to your point, Jeff, we don't wanna sacrifice anyone. Yep. We don't want to sacrifice anyone. This is the home for everyone. And folks have said, oh, you don't want to sacrifice, we're going to sacrifice. You. Click, click, click LT: the bricks. JS: Yeah. They're the forever 21 of the, of, of the news category, right? DC: Yeah, they are. Yes. Yeah. LT: Well also, but I wanna make this point before we leave, and I think we've pretty, we, we've hammered this almost to, uh, where we need to get to, but I, I think. Part of why, in my opinion, MSNBC is number two, clear number two, but Fox is the clear number one, and I think MSNBC maybe cuz they're connected to a, you know, to Comcast, they're owned by Comcast. They struggle with being a liberal network. They don't fully embrace that. Right. And that's why Keith Oberman was, Keith Oberman had the greatest ratings. And yes, Keith Oberman is a difficult guy, but they should just, should have just kept him and let Keith be Keith. You know? That's why they have Joe Scarborough in the morning who used to be a Republican. Like what's, you know, again, I know he gets good ratings, but there's mixed messages there. There's, to your point D, there's no missed messages at Fox. They're not doing anything. To say, gee, we need to get more liberal folks. Whereas I think the MSNBC meetings, they do think, how could we get conservatives to tune in? I think they think they might, JS: and yeah, and that's, and we've seen so many brands make that mistake. LT: Have we beat this one? DC: Topic. Good topic, guys. LT: Great topic. Um, so Brand nerds. Thanks for listening to the Brands, Beats and Bytes recorded virtually on zoom and a production of KZSU Stanford, 90.1 FM radio worldwide at kzsu.org. The executive producers are Jeff Shirley, Darryl "DC" Cobbin, myself, Larry Taman, Joseph Anderson, Jade Tate, Hailey Cobbin, and Tom Dioro. DC: The Podfather. LT: And if you are listening to us via podcast, it would be great if you can please rate and review us. Additionally, if you do like the show, please subscribe and share. We hope you enjoyed this podcast. And we look forward to next time where we will have more insightful and enlightening talk about marketing with another great business leader as our guest.