Can't find the right spot for your comment? Post it here, in this open forum. Real Time Comments: parked here, 24/7. (Earlier editions.)
Thursday, February 14, 2013
48 comments:
Jim says: "Proceed with caution; this is a free-for-all comment zone. I try to correct or clarify incorrect information. But I can't catch everything. Please keep your posts focused on Gannett and media-related subjects. Note that I occasionally review comments in advance, to reject inappropriate ones. And I ignore hostile posters, and recommend you do, too."
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Hallo.
ReplyDeletePay attention to the Gannett site and leadership team. Banikarim does not oversee advertising -- just a free ride as CMO.
ReplyDeleteMaryam Banikarim
Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer
In March 2011, Maryam Banikarim was named Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of Gannett Co., Inc. She is responsible for all companywide marketing, communications and research efforts. She also serves on the Gannett Management Committee.
Prior to joining Gannett, Maryam served as Senior Vice President for Integrated Sales Marketing at NBC Universal. She worked across the company’s vast portfolio of content to develop custom, innovative marketing solutions on behalf of clients. As part of this role, she spearheaded marketing for Women at NBCU, Green is Universal and Healthy at NBCU. She also oversaw the company’s in-house creative agency, which leads, develops and implements the company's corporate marketing strategy and supports the company’s cross-platform sales initiatives.
Previously, Maryam was the chief marketing officer of Univision Communications Inc., the premier Spanish-language media company in the United States. She oversaw marketing and communications activities across the Company’s areas of operation, which include television, radio and online, representing a combined $2.1 billion portfolio.
Maryam led efforts to raise Univision’s profile within the business community, and helped connect clients with the growing U.S. Hispanic market. She joined Univision in 2002 as senior vice president, Strategic Marketing, and played a key role in growing incremental sales and revenue for the company.
Maryam has more than 15 years of broadcast, publishing, multimedia and advertising agency experience. Previously, she provided management and marketing consulting services to a variety of clients including Time Warner, Deutsche Bank and Bacardi Ltd. Her experience also includes roles as Publisher at Macmillan Publishing and General Manager and Marketing Director for Citysearch. In addition, Maryam was a member of the first integrated marketing solutions group at Turner Broadcasting. She began her marketing career in account management at Young and Rubicam.
Maryam earned a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Barnard College, where she won the Harry S. Truman scholarship. She also holds an MBA and a Master of Arts in International Affairs from Columbia University.
She has received multiple accolades over her career, and was most recently named as one of CableFAX’s “Most Influential Minorities in Cable (2010).” In 2009, she was recognized by The League of Women Voters of the City of New York as a Woman of Distinction and selected by Multichannel News as a “Women to Watch.” In 2008, Maryam was honored by the Girl Scouts Council of Greater New York as a Woman of Distinction, by the New York Post as one of the “50 Most Powerful Women in New York” and by Crain’s New York Business as one of their “40 under 40” rising stars. In 2006, Maryam was selected as one of Advertising Age’s “40 under 40” up-and-comers, and earned a place on Fast Company’s “Fast Fifty” list of corporate trailblazers and trendsetters.
Maryam sits on several boards including Advertising Week, Promax, Mt. Sinai Adolescent Healthcare Center and Prep for Prep. She has lived and worked in several countries, including Argentina, Brazil, France, Iran and the United Kingdom, and currently resides in New York City with her husband and two children.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteDoes USAT just pull videos off YouTube and slap a logo on it? Is that the bright video future they tell us about, that and reporter produced videos with a thumb over the lens and them talking over the subject? Most of the time you can do one thing well or two things poorly, and after though quota videos ate not going to save newspapers.
ReplyDeleteStealing videos, ripping off AP stories, this poses no ethical dilemma or quality issues for the leadership at Usa Today. No way to build a sullied brand, either. Oh well. Managers continue to collect fat paychecks and bonuses while their heads are in the sand.
Delete*are not going to save newspapers.
ReplyDeleteNothing is going to save newspapers.
DeleteBanikarim’s Five Segments of U.S. Consumers elicited a fair amount of commentary that some here attempted to deflect by assigning it to a few ex-Marketing types.
ReplyDeleteWell, if that truly is the case, then that really doesn’t speak well about Banikarim’s marketing prowess, nor the obvious time and effort she’s spent since her arrival to build her personal brand.
It’s a line of defense her protectors should abandon as pursuing it really only suggests few pay attention to her at all which is highly doubtful.
As always, Banikarim only pretended it was her research. She had no more to do with it than I did. It's another example of how she places her name on other people's projects and passes them off as her own. She's the ultimate pick-pocket.
ReplyDeleteWant proof that newspapers are in a terminal state? The Los Angeles Times will discontinue daily TV listings later this month.
ReplyDeleteDaily TV listings are an absolute waste of space.
DeleteYou know, people aren't "defending" Maryam here, simply objecting to the endless attacks on someone who is not the reason for USA Today's troubles nor the answer. She's simply in Marketing.
ReplyDeleteBanikarim is not "simply in Marketing", she's the Chief Marketing Officer of a publicly held company and one of its top executives.
DeleteHence, she, like Martore and the other suits charged with leading Gannett are more than fair game, to which Banikarim's recent article opened up direct discussion about it and her.
If she looks poorly from it, then people in the know should "defend" her by sharing measurable results beyond her trite purpose walls and columns.
And, perhaps some Washingtonian political speak would work...like "Banikarim helped save and/or create tens of millions in revenues that would have been lost where it not for her efforts". : )
For a six-figure salary, I could come up with better buzzwords.
DeleteAnd look better while at Cannes.
Though our Gannett site says otherwise, Banikarim does oversee advertising and that is failing. Who cares what she does or does not in marketing. Marketing has no budget and her Micek sidekick has no energy or insight (Banikarim has sufficiently bound her hands and talent). Just ask any "legacy" sales reps. It's a sad state of affairs when we're sitting here wishing for the days of Lee Jones to come back.
DeleteDo all you people who harp on the death of newspapers still work for Gannett? You shouldn't. And if you're already gone, good for Gannett.
ReplyDeleteDo any of you actually see people on their toys reading news on them, or are they on Youtube or Facebook, etc.?
Newspapers will live through this, and always be relevant. If not, this country's in worse shape than anyone realizes.
In case you're one of the skulls full of mush who doesn't think the country's in worse shape, I suggest you re-read the top headline on 1A in your Gannett rag from 11/7/2012.
DeleteIs that supposed to mean something to someone other than you? Of course this country's a mess but if papers did their job...the one they used to before prostituting themselves to big everything, more people would know what's going on and maybe could have kept it from happening.
DeleteFrom Nov.? Really?
2/14/2013 1:42 PM - Spoken like the soldier stranded on the island, still fighting WWII.
DeleteMaryam's done well for herself in working the game. That 'Five Segments' piece sure sounds good, but it also did the countless other times marketing / research types trot out similar profiles to prove that they've been busy with 'consumer insight'. Yes, there was a similar study by Lavington and Arnold. Seems a good way to make a name for yourself is to spend time re-doing work to spit out glossy presentations filled with marketing-speak that justify your salary and consultation. Whatever - good for her for milking it and raising her profile to move on to something else sooner or later. The real success though will be measured in revenue and audience gains...but that sure ain't happening at USA TODAY. With the industry and media consumption as it is, there may not be much anyone can do, but Maryam et al's smoke and mirrors must prove a nice distraction for Gracia.
ReplyDeleteI'm sad every rare time I look at the paper or the site these days. Whether or not there are spots of improved quality or 'reader experience', it doesn't matter...there aren't any ads. The only one making any real money these days are the Reps for the remnant ads, and I cringe everytime there's a house or Sportsonearth ad online. No one's buying anymore...how long will it last?
Oh, it will not last much longer. That is a fact.
DeleteAnd what many people know and are talking about (and not just behind the scenes) is what a terror Blue Balls Banikarim is with the people who work with and for her. No one really likes to work with her. The only people that like working for or with her are the one's she got job for when she come into the company. Everyone else is just forced to tolerate her because they dare not challeng her. Anyone who challenged her is no longer with the company. And Gracia stupidly thinks she's the greatest thing since the invention of the wheel.
But, she will soon see how wrong she is. As all things with Gannett, it will reap what it sows. Gracia loves to hire people who help her think she's smart. It will all come back soon enough when they see how much revenue is not being generated as a result of Blue Balls and rest of her bunch.
USAToday revenue will never be what it was regardless of what they do. The product is old, stale and a 'has-been.'
I don't get how Banikarim is still employed by Gannett. How can Gracia not see that the results are not good? It's called metrics, measurements and accountability -- something that Gracia should be all too familiar with due to her financial background. Banikarim is a failure.
DeleteNice job with USA Today in the new delivery partnership. Was just contacted by an old store account that had rates of .90 for a USA Today,2.50 for a Sports Weekly, and $4 on a Special edition. He made about $8 in profit a week off the products. The partner now has rates at .98 for USA Today, 2.90 for Sports Weekly, and $4.75 on a Special edition. The store now makes less than a buck a week and the owner is pissed. I then stopped for a bite to eat and saw the shell of a USA Today box with no door at a sparkling newly constructed restaurant. You reap what you sew USAT, the joke is now on you. Partnerships don't work.......
ReplyDeleteDo we still have that idiotic "partnership" with Starbucks? How many low-end hotels are left with us in their hallways and stacking them in restaurants?
DeleteBetter to get this "national rag" digital now rather than keep draining the company. But then Kramer wouldn't have an excuse to milk out another TRANSFORMATION.
Excuse me but people keep on bashing Print. Why? It still makes far more profit than Digital ever will, and will for years to come. Unless top management who appear not to care about print at all ends it now.
DeleteA future NY Post headline writer:
ReplyDeletehttp://jimromenesko.com/2013/02/14/headline-of-the-day-5/hedhed/
You all must be hating life today. Stock market is down yet GCI is up. USAT making plan and USCP not doing furloughs. Oh my that hurts. No wonder Jim has to resort to taking about Knight Foundation and a guy who hasn't been here for awhile. Ouch!
ReplyDelete2:53p - On Feb 14 2004, the price was $88.38. It hasn't even been in that ball park in years and will never be there again. Let's keep this all in perspective. After all the lay offs, furloughs, and cost cutting and even marketing, it's just now squeaking out $20/share? Hmm...let's compare GCI to other companies....how does it compare with AMZN?
DeleteThis is all short term. Let's see what GCI looks like at the end of a non-Olympic-Politics year and then you might have something to talk about. The market will do what the market does and GCI will do what GCI does and that's focus on the short term. Any savvy invester realizes that and will take whatever it can get from GCI in the short term b/c they know that's what they are focused on. They will dump it soon enough like most of us did. I see it less than $12 at the end of Q3.
You should remembering all the good people that were laid off by Gannett. Not because the corporation was going bankrupt,not because the corp. was losing billions in the red column.
DeleteNo,those great and loyal employees were put on the unemployment roles because the profit margins were not high enough.
Do you suppose all those folks have reasons to be haters?
More than likely,with print revenue tanking the way it is, there will be many,many more haters on the street.
Whether you're on the staff, fired advertising people, bitter ex-marketing people, whoever. STOP please STOP posting about Banikarim.
ReplyDeleteNothing is being accomplished and you can be assured she is loving every bit of the attention.
Maryam Banikarim is a blight on Gracia Martore. Any other responsible CEO in any industry would have long ago terminated an employee such as Ms. Banikarim. She is an ineffective, non-producing, difficult and disruptive executive to Gannett. Also as a shareholder, I implore Ms. Martore allow Ms. Banikarim the opportunity to resign.
ReplyDeleteMaryam is doing just fine, thank you. All this caterwauling about her from the ousted former regime just shows how effective and strong she has been in building a new marketing department.
ReplyDeleteAnyone who doesn't realize this is a petty peanut gallery doesn't understand human nature, the business world or how the Internet works these days: A world where a few voices can sound like many.
Maryam is neither a "blight'' nor "disruptive.'' She is part of the Gannett team and is doing, when all is said and done, just fine.
What does "doing just fine" mean?
DeleteBanikarim was named chief marketing officer on March 14, 2011 -- nearly two years ago.
In 2012, her first full calendar year in Gannett, overall revenue rose 2.2% -- almost entirely because the broadcasting division benefited from enormous election-related advertising that drove the division's revenue up 25% from 2011.
It is unclear what role, if any, the CMO had in those revenue increases.
Meanwhile, national advertising revenue is still falling a year after her department assumed responsibility for national sales.
However, I don't see the Maryam supporters denying that Maryam has ripped- off/plagarized the work of Lavington and the ex-marketing team.
DeleteFor the record, I am not a bitter ex-employee and I am not in marketing. I have just been around long enough to remember the work from Lavington and her team. I find it amusing that Maryam has been recycling Lavington's ideas and presenting them as her own. I don't know what it says about her marketing skills, but it does show me that Maryam isn't a very original thinker.
3:55,
DeleteI've been at USAT a very long time. I've seen several marketing execs come and go. Trust me when I tell you: the marketing department is no better today than it has been. In some ways...worse.
"A world where a few voices can sound like many."
Delete"We've got 'em surrounded, Davy!"
What's happened is all the best people have been pushed out or resigned leaving behind the core of Gannett which is full of Worms, and Maggots.
ReplyDelete1:57 Wow. You sound reasonable and credible. Are you saying Banikarim took Lavington's old research study and repurposed it? If not, are you saying she might have spent money doing the exact same study all over again?
ReplyDeleteEither way, Banikarim would be in essence stealing someone else's content.
In Journalism, we call that plagarism. What do you call it in marketing or business?
1:57 here...
DeleteI'm not accusing her of purposefully regurgitating info that was sitting around. I'm accusing the consultant / marketing industry of repeating itself. Today's "news omnivore" was yesterday's "new hound", which was called something else by some other brand consultant / research company. No one except the marketing agency that came up with the term cares about those 'omnivores' unless you prove they're a gold mine of audience growth and revenue. Trust me, 5 years from now a Marketing person will unveil some new study about another 5 sets of reader types, and present it like it's revolutionary.
It's a cottage industry: your business in trouble? Then a commissioned study is in order to move stuff around, until someone comes in and moves it back. Bring in a consultant at high cost to tell you how to move it around. Hire an agency to tell you what readers to go after, and how much better your logo would be if tweaked. Lots of money made in the game of being an expert on how to improve business. Wish I was capable of saying all that marketing speak with a straight face. Oh well.
Poster 3:55 says:
ReplyDelete"Anyone who doesn't realize this is a petty peanut gallery doesn't understand human nature, the business world or ..."
That's the pot calling the kettle black. Banikarim doesn't understand the first thing about human nature and leadership, which at its foundation is about motivation, inspiring others, and shining the light on a team....not demoralizing, firing, caring only about oneself, and taking all the credit.
Let me try to answer.
ReplyDelete"Doing just fine" means a major relaunch of USA TODAY's brand and branding, a new print design, a new web design, new tablet products, new partnerships.
Print advertising is actually meeting or even ahead of plan (for now), digital ads are lagging but that seems to be industry-wide, and a variety of new products are emerging that will boost needed revenue.
There are major problems, yes. The redesign in print has hurt circulation, the web redesign is still a work in progress.
But generally things are looking up at USA TODAY. Some of that results from the reinvigoration of the brand pushed by Maryam; part of it has nothing to do with her. The ad side appears (again, appears), to be finally getting its act together. we'll see.
But making Maryam the hero or scapegoat or villain is absurd; were the gains of the 90s or the crash o the '00s due to the Marketing Department??? Of course not, as someone else has said.
This is my first posting on this. But I must say I agree with those who say the majority of anti-Maryam posts are from ex-Marketing Dept. people. Or even current people who are not thriving.
Read each post and you'll see as people push back they get more and more Maryam-is-evil and hateful. The debate reveals their true nature: Jealous haters who either have gone onj to other things or who don't get the latest plans.
Maryam is a plus, and things are finally beginning to show results.
Anyone who sends out a company wide memo regarding USA Today's Blue Balls is hardly a plus. How can you even type such a thing without choking on your words a little bit?
DeleteOh stop. The "blue balls memo" was absurd, but hardly the calamity described here in the Blog.
DeleteThe reality here is not the reality in the corporate suites, nor in the offices or newsrooms across the company where people are working harder thane ever to somehow succeed.
This other "blue balls" scandal nonsense is just noise.
5:42p obviously works for Blue Balls Banikarim. Awwwww, bless your little heart. Now, let's discuss a few of your points defending the so-called talented and brillant CMO - BBB.
Delete"The redesign in print has hurt circulation."
>>This is an understatement. The print redesign was a complete disaster and will never recover. Consumers hated it and still do.
"The web redesign is still a work in progress."
>>Progress? Uh, there is no progress. It will need a complete re-redesign for there to be progress. It's clunky, slow, poorly organized, and the ad experience horrible, hence no advertisers want to buy it. The web redesign was and still is a complete failure.
"But generally things are looking up at USA TODAY."
>>What things are looking up actually? Not revenue - print or digital. Not circulation. And most certainly not consumer engagement. Partnerships? ha!
"Or even current people who are not thriving."
>>No one is thriving under BBB. She does not want that to happen b/c that would mean people would actually share insights to help the company that she doesn't share herself. And, that's not allowed. Or as she puts it, "You can send us your ideas about x,y,z. It may not mean that they will be acted on, but you're more than welcome to send them to us." [translation: We say we care about what you think, but uhh, not really. Your ideas will just stay ideas.]
The new people she's hired have no backbone to challenge her and are just happy to have a job. The only person that's thriving under Blue Balls Banikarim is Blue Balls Banikarim.
Here's what you should know. Most of the people who post here have direct and specific knowledge of the way BBB operates and/or have been on the receiving end of her harassing, hostile, narcissistic sociopathic behavior. And that's putting it lightly. No one curretly working for her will speak the truth. They just bow down and take it. The only person that really needs to hear about it (the CEO) isn't listening. To her, BBB walks on water. So, the words in these posts come from people who know. And, these people just want to make sure others are aware. The "reality" here may not be the reality around Gannett. But, a great deal of the information contained in many of these posts is real and the truth.
"Jealous haters who either have gone onj to other things or who don't get the latest plans."
>>Rest assured, no one posting here is jealous of Blue Balls Banikarim. No one is jealous or 'hating' on someone who operates in the manner that she does. No one is jealous of narcissistic sociopathic behavior. She can have all that she has. She's done a good job convincing people she's this great marketer. That's what markters do. No one blaming anyone her being "successful." It's the way she's done it and still does it that's the problem. But, of course, that assessment is subjective. Those who defend her obvisously see the another side.
The fact remains that no one posting here wants to touch anything she touches with a 10ft pole. It's a shame that people have to wake up everyone and walk into an office and work for and with her.
At the end of the day, we know that what goes around comes around and Gannett will reap what it has sown with Blue Balls Banikarim. It may not happen this year or the next, but the day will come when Gannett will regret hiring her.
"Maryam is a plus."
>>Blue Balls Banikarim is a plus in the mind of the CEO.
Ok, here's the deal: sitting at my desk making up things to do. There is no way that Gannett is going to let this go on while paying me. I know they're paying some pretty hefty salaries to a lot do-nothing managers. I'd much rather be busy with some real work but it's just slowed down so badly. Why is Gannett not at least doing furloughs? Any thoughts?
ReplyDeleteBecause they laid myself and several hundred others off to save enough money to prevent furloughs.
DeleteDoes this site design look familiar? Is this flattery or just plain stealing? http://www.aksam.com.tr/
ReplyDeleteHaha...it's definitely not flattery.
Delete