• by David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, March 2, 2011

Jon Mandel's pick-up truck is big enough that a stranded driver of an 18-wheeler might flag him down and say: "I don't know if you can give me a pull, but can we give it a chance?" For years, Mandel has enjoyed a sort of bifurcated life. While fighting fires for CMOs, he also did it for the good citizens of Long Island. He would negotiate with sharks at the networks and then ones on the high seas.

 

As a co-CEO of MediaCom, he was also the volunteer assistant chief at the Kismet F.D. Yes, the community is on upscale Fire Island, so his duties didn't exactly involve rushing into high-rises. But like at the sprawling MediaCom, he was on call 24/7.

Mandel had a second home on Long Island and a huge boat loaded with amenities, so luxury was there. But he continues to give the impression of someone who keeps his success in perspective -- a guy personable and nimble enough to be a mayor of Madison Avenue or Madison County.

While spending $12 billion in ad dollars for massive clients, he'd relish time away to hang with the local mechanic or drink some cold ones while deep-sea fishing. Gosh knows, what else Long Island getaways brought. He was given the nickname "Mad Dog." (He declined all comment on the origin.)

"I think some of them know it, but they don't believe it," he says of the media elite's understanding of his life away from Manhattan. If they didn't, his 50th birthday party offered insight. There were studio chiefs and heads of sports leagues mixing with cops and postal workers.

Now, after leaving a CEO post at Nielsen, he's formed Dogsled Enterprises (the name comes from his boat). The business has him consulting with research companies, content providers and packaged goods marketers. And he's serving on a variety of boards of advisors and directors.

He misses the camaraderie of an agency. But the work could have him spending 90% of the day dealing with problems, and 10% with opportunities. That's flipped.

Lately, as a member of Citadel Broadcasting's board of directors, Mandel has been burrowing into whether the company should sell itself to fellow radio operator Cumulus Media for $2.4 billion. Citadel, which operates what was the ABC Radio Network, rejected an offer from Cumulus last year.

Mandel is set to be named chair of the board of directors of Proximic, a Silicon Valley company that specializes in online targeting, based on contextual patterns and language -- what's known as "semantic targeting." The company tries to go beyond keywords when steering placement.

In the mobile space, Mandel is on the board of advisors for two companies. He has similar roles at eXelate, which is in the online behavioral targeting space; media inventory management company InVision; and Indoor Direct, which has a place-based network of screens in restaurant chains such as Arby's and Wendy's.

Mandel's long-held passion for research also has him consulting with TiVo on how it can upgrade its business selling viewing data culled from its set-top boxes. Similarly, he's worked with cable operators on how they can maximize their STB data.

Within consulting, his clients allow for sort of a virtuous circle. Since he works with networks and marketers, he can help advise TiVo on offering better data. In turn, he can take insight from the data to help advertisers and programmers with strategy.

By any measure, Mandel's career arc has been impressive.

He walked out of Vassar and into Grey Advertising in 1974. After being offered a job at ABC in his mid-20s, he headed Grey's broadcast buying. He persuaded a network to allow a Playtex ad to show a woman wearing a bra, not just a mannequin. When the industry established media-only agencies, he helped form and then led Grey-spinoff MediaCom in the mid-1990s.

Mandel, however, may be proudest of creating a culture that seeded some of the industry's top executives. Two are running sales at networks: Geri Wang at ABC and Marianne Gambelli at NBC, while Donna Speciale is head of MediaVest. "I didn't teach any of them anything," he says. "All I did was create an environment where they could learn and thrive. 

He cheerfully says he would often solve the world's problems over a few drinks with colleagues -- then return the next morning to implement the epiphanies. He says he didn't mind people branding them as alcohol-infused stupidity -- but objected to anyone dismissing them out of hand without considering the proposed ideas.

During his 30-plus years at Grey/MediaCom, Mandel held more titles than a British royal. Along the way, he was outspoken in the press and even in Washington representing industry interests

In 2006, he left as co-CEO MediaCom and moved to GroupM briefly. Then, he became CEO of a fledging Nielsen unit. As a buyer, Mandel had a passion to improve the always-criticized Nielsen. In a perhaps quixotic move, he and Turner sales chief Steve Heyer mounted an effort to try and buy the measurement company and have the industry run it.

At the time, much of his NielsenConnect work was considered cutting-edge. Now, some appears anachronistic -- such as a system to measure viewing across TV, the Web and mobile that ESPN used. There were also efforts to link media consumption with sales results. He wanted to make research more practical and actionable, he says.

Mandel left after two years, telling MediaPost he fulfilled the commitment he gave and had accomplished much of what he wanted to. Nielsen discontinued Mandel's unit, but said many of its products were being merged into other operations. Mandel was offered a senior marketing position, but opted out.

On exiting, he told MediaPost's Joe Mandese that after years at a freewheeling agency, his tenure did make him understand "the humor in 'Dilbert' cartoons." Former colleagues apparently flooded his inbox with humorous commentary.

At Dogsled, Mandel's current roles often have him at odds with Nielsen. He doesn't pull any punches when discussing the company's panel-based ratings. "Basically, they have a system that's set up for "Ozzie and Harriet," he says.

Now that he has access to data from reams of set-top boxes, Mandel says he's seen situations where the Nielsen numbers are grossly off. (Nielsen and others maintain there are issues with the accuracy of STB data.) As for Nielsen's local-market data, Mandel says it is "totally unusable," noting there are inherent problem with its use of diaries, and the problem of recruiting people for panels who only use cell phones.

Mandel's client TiVo has tried to launch a local-market system of its own that has apparently fizzled. Nielsen is looking to deploy STBs as part of a new product. Its competitor Rentrak has been building a significant STB-based local-market service -- and Mandel thinks it's plausible Nielsen may look to buy Rentrak.

These days, Mandel doles out much of his advice from a sun-splashed Long Island home with a view that includes his moored boat. Would he return to an office with the risk of running into "Dilbert" characters again? Maybe. But he says it's no longer about "money, authority, position." It's about the people and the passion. "The definition of the right offer has changed," he says.