David Kenny, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Diversity
Officer, Nielsen,
shared his perspectives on the media landscape in a fascinating MediaVillage Collective
Leadership Conversation with Jack
Myers. Kenny is an early pioneer in digital with a career that has spanned
agencies, networks to technology and data. His current work at Nielsen is an
eclectic mix of data, technology and human resources development that, as he
explained, will enable Nielsen to “work smart.”
Kenny, as
well as others at Nielsen, understands the need to move the industry forward
and maintain a leadership position in measurement. But it is not easy. He
explained that, “When you are the industry currency and you advance that
currency forward, you have some people who lean in and some it affects in a
negative way.” He is charged with bringing Nielsen’s innovations to the next
level in a massively changing media environment that is becoming, “digital
first, streaming first platform.”
The Workplace Shift During COVID-19
How can a company
that was launched during the Depression to measure CPG pivot successfully
during normal times and now during extraordinary times? “In order to do that I
need to allocate resources to the highest opportunity,” Kenny explained, “and
the most important resources I allocate are human beings’ amazing talent.” Under
his direction, employees are expected to, “contribute to their fullest
potential.” Some of this disconnect was the workplace environment, he conceded.
Now, with a new work environment, he wants to be able to, “give everyone the
best chance to impact the business,” which is why he took on the personal
responsibility as Chief Diversity Officer, “to ensure everyone here can bring
their whole self to work and contribute their whole self to the work they are
doing,”
Interestingly,
Kenny noted that the pandemic has shifted the workplace dynamic as more
employees work from home, leading to his reassessment of the need for office
space. But, he realizes that this has greater ramifications than just square
foot rent. “It affects a lot of things because it is not just real estate. If
less people are in an office that affects restaurants and public transportation,”
he explained. Yet, until we can be
assured that it is safe to be in an office, Kenny remains on the side of
caution and Nielsen will adapt to that. Interestingly, Kenny has not been a fan
of remote work but has since revised his opinion. “When everybody works this
way, we are actually cognizant about everybody being up on the grid view,
calling on everybody. We are actually making better, faster and more inclusive
decisions in this environment than we were before.” He advocates being, “plan-full
about a change of everybody. When everybody is doing this it makes sense. We
call it ‘working smart’ … and it will change the way we work with clients as
well.”
Measurement Quality During and Beyond COVID-19
Hardware
that is pivotal to capturing data sometimes breaks down. How is that handled
during a pandemic? According to Kenny, “the quality metric (in-tab rate) in the
last two months is at an all-time high. The Nielsen families around the world
have risen to the occasion to say, ‘this work matters.’ Their votes matter.
They are working with us to keep things operational.” Nielsen is finding ways to fix meter lapses by
troubleshooting remotely with panelists. Sometimes it is just a matter of, “hitting
the reset button or put in a new HDMI cable or reset their router.” Kenny added
that the MRC has been monitoring this process and has given their seal of
approval on it. “I see no issues at all with our ability to get this done because
our field organization literally turned, over a weekend, completely how they
work,” he concluded.
In data, planning
ahead has always been important but never more so than the unpredictable now. “How
can you predict that campaign will have that result?” he asked. “It’s great for
me to talk about the value of advertising and brand building but those are big
investments that CFOs have to look at a period of tight cash flow. I think
those decisions will be made with good probabilistic work.” Kenny explained that when he worked in Weather,
they predicted based on probability. “We managed to get 3 billion people a day
to make decisions based 80% likelihood of rain or20% likelihood of a hurricane
in your location.” What this bodes for Nielsen in an age of attribution is, “giving
people a forward view. We measure backwards, we measure what’s happening and then
predict the future.” This is a seismic change for Nielsen which has always been
a strictly objective data provider. “The more we’re comfortable acting on high
probabilities, the smarter we are going to be,” he stated.
Maintaining and Accelerating Innovation
Kenny
advocates for encouraging innovation from all levels of the business and has been
engaged in what he called, “the Founder Mentality, making sure that everyone at
Nielsen thought about the business the way Arthur Nielsen would have thought
about it.” This idea launched into an internal campaign called, “Find Your
Inner Arthur,” where employees post their innovation ideas on the company’s
intranet.
One
fascinating area of innovation is the introduction of the nanometer as a
replacement for the current hardware to better address the rapid acceleration
of streaming consumption. The small and compact nanometer is designed to facilitate
a single origination point for cross platform data collection instead of the
current process of measuring via parallel panels where the data must be merged.
“We are actually able to have a total view of the total audience. Getting one
meter that can do everything and have one panel for all of the parts of Nielsen
is where we are going.”
This, along
with a full range of other innovations in upgraded technology and understanding
streaming, was being developed prior to the pandemic with an expected launch
data of 2021 and 2022. “We made the decision to go faster, to work with the MRC
and auditors Ernst and Young to make sure we advance the industry currency
quicker,” he explained, “We pulled things forward.” In fact, the impact of the pandemic
has moved things forward much more quickly.
COVID-19 Usage and Media Business Trends
When it
comes to programming, Kenny sees an interesting, understandable spike in local
news consumption across all platforms, especially in-home. “As folks are dealing
with a pandemic, it’s almost like a weather crisis – you go back to local. You
want to understand what is happening in your community,” he explained, “There
is a lot of trust. It feels de-politicized.” There is also more, “comfort
viewing with resurgence in old shows,” and a great adaption by sports networks
which are airing, “classic, epic games,” and, “the spectacular,” NFL draft
coverage.
Nielsen, as
the industry currency, works with both buyers and sellers. Now, the need to
better understand changing consumer behavior is critical to the future of the
business. “The buyers, the agencies and their client are trying to understand what
is going on with the end consumer, not just what she is watching but the
mindset,” Kenny noted. So the focus is on attribution in a higher use and much more
fragmented viewing environment and, “how we connect that attribution back to
the media plans.” Further, it goes without saying that all of this information
needs to be easily accessible and easy to use for working from home.
On the sell
side, the challenge for the media owners during this unusual upfront is to
figure out, “how to value their total portfolio, how to make it to the point
that they are selling through this fragmentation, that the content is breaking
through and how to get all of the Nielsen data baked into some really advanced
media selling systems.” No matter what
side of the business you are on, Kenny sees that the industry is facing the
realization that, “we might have to do this – run this whole economy from home
for a long time, maybe for a whole other year.”
For both
sides of the business equation Nielsen plays a crucial role in making the
economy work. “Measuring independently by a third party in the same way so that
you can trust each other is going to be key,” he added, “Maintaining trust in
the system at a point where we have seen unprecedented cancellations … is a
starting point.”
Maintaining Optimism
Kenny
referred to the past to fuel his optimism for the future. “More patents were
filed right during and after the Great Depression and right after WW2 than ever
and so we will get to this point where innovation will really matter and those
innovations need to be communicated at scale to people. There will be a
solution here… and advertising plays such an important role. You don’t see a
really strong economy built without brand building advertising.”
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