• by Michael Kokernak , December 24, 2007

There are bookstores filled with advice on how to reinvent your business. Network television is filled each week with feel-good stories of against-all-odds, everyday folk who overcome tremendous obstacles to win. It is a common theme in life to possess the desire to achieve and move yourself -- and perhaps the world -- a little bit forward.

As a child traveling with my family, I vividly remember visits to our country's great historic landmarks and national parks. These summer trips drove home to me the massive amount of building that has taken place in the United States. From the ultra-wide interstate highway network we traversed, to gargantuan landmarks such as the Hoover Dam and Mount Rushmore, generations of Americans had built and designed some of the most impressive structures in the world. Being 12 or 13 at the time, it was only natural to be visually overwhelmed by the sheer scope of these projects. I knew big things probably cost a lot of money, but little did I know the level of emotional investment and collaboration among disparate teams of individuals that would culminate in the construction of such massive projects -- and how they impacted each and every citizen of our country in some form or fashion.

Today it can sometimes be hard each day to pull yourself out of bed, plop those feet on the floor and get instantly motivated as you get ready for the day ahead in the television advertising field. For many of us in the field it is a calling more so than a career path. The ability to entertain and educate the masses during their time in front of the television is a very common motivation. Somewhere along the way I wonder if we have temporarily forgotten this drive, as the problems within the current TV advertising business model have caused many of us to question the long-term viability of the television medium itself.

The challenges in the television business today are extreme. An industry that was built on the blockbuster show is no longer easy to find, and the back-office processes to valuing the remaining audience costs more sometimes than the exposure itself. A general lack of faith in Nielsen Media Research that is whispered in every corridor has created a technology gulf inside Madison Avenue.

While the world around us has changed, massive building efforts have resulted in DVR proliferation, video on demand, and cheaper and cheaper high definition flat-screen televisions -- all as we have continued to sit perched on our island of traditional mass media television advertising, hoping that somehow a technology life raft would not leave us behind.

There is reason, however, to maintain hope: Life is about change, and this generation will not leave barren tracks for the next. However, will our industry -- now finding ourselves divided on multiple fronts battling for budgets, such as the online world versus the traditional media world -- be able to come together in cooperation to build a major piece of technology? Our TV advertising business needs reinventing. There are libraries filled with books about how to restart the corner grocery store; even the charismatic yet abrasive Chef Ramsay can rescue the local diner to prove once again to us that businesses can be reinvented.

Thinking of the change our industry is about to undergo reminds me of staring up from the ground at Hoover Dam. It was immense, yet somehow elegant and calmly reassuring: a project done well with the cooperation of tens of thousands of workers and a grateful public waiting for the ribbon-cutting. As an industry, we need to find that common, fundamental level of cooperation -- and I am certain we will, in the process, bring television advertising right back into focus. We owe it to our grateful public -- and we owe it to ourselves