A big theme at the Media and Money conference the last two days in New York (as, no doubt, at all kinds of conferences in money capitals all over the world), was how the economic trouble is going to make things suck.
In the opening keynote — you know, that rally the troops, rah-rah session that sets the tone — Les Hinton, CEO of conference co-sponsors Dow Jones in the opening minutes mentioned the crash of 1929, the crash of 1987 (calling it “minor” compared to what’s happening now), and cracked an old Eddie Cantor joke about how buying a stock for his old age made him an old man in weeks. On the first panel, Merrill Lynch managing director Jessica Reif-Cohen said the recession would last 18 months, and since advertising is a “lagging indicator” for the economy, things in media would be bad for a quarter or two past that. And Miles Nadal, chairman and CEO of marketing communication firm NDC, quoted a CNBC commentator on the Squawk Box show as saying “we’re in a 10-15 year climate of this kind of decline” and talked of a “precipitous decline in print spend.” ContentNext research analyst and Kent State professor Lauren Rich Fine said media will underperform the GDP in coming years because the profligacy of content will keep ad rates from rising.
Of course, many of the folks talked about why THEY were in position to do well during the downturn. Wenda Harris Millard, the president of media and co-CEO of Martha Steward Living Omnimedia, said she was glad she worked where she did, because of the strength of their relationship with their consumers. John Squires, EVP of Time Inc, thanked Reif-Cohen for recommending their stock and said that even in down times consumers would take high-quality magazines like the ones Time Inc. produces. Dow Jones execs talked up the brand, noting demand for their high-quality business information. And nearly all the digital folks said they would keep growing because their media efforts were more measurable at a time when folks wanted proved return on advertising investments AND because there’s growing audience, and growing ad dollars, moving to online. Susan Whiting, EVP, Nielsen Company, and Chairman, Nielsen Media Research (Nielsen were the conference co-sponsors), bolstered the DJ execs’ claims, saying traffic to the online financial trading category was up 20 percent during the crisis news; WSJ.com, Yahoo finance and such were up 30 percent, and traffic to general news and information sites spiked 14 percent around the time Congress was rejecting the first
