Generations of Advanced Executive Program alumni have seen John Lavine take a nicely folded stack of cash from his left pocket and dramatically put in into his right pocket. For 14 years, it has been Lavine’s way of illustrating his point that media companies could get into new ventures (taking their money from one of their pockets and putting it into another) or they could let someone else take the money.

The simple illustration may have sounded otherworldly in 1990, but today almost everyone in the media have the word “convergence” on the tips of their tongues. As the leading thinker on media strategy and the founding director of the Media Management Center, Professor Lavine has been cajoling, nudging and goading media leaders to think beyond their own platforms. His work on strategy projects with newspaper, magazine, Internet, broadcast and cable television companies and his leadership on industry-specific research projects has led to a unique approach to cross-platform and pure-play media strategy. It has also fueled his evangelistic drive that permeates the Advanced Executive Program curricula and is punctuated by special classes on media strategy.

Lavine’s classes take participants beyond the traditional strategy approaches of …“a detailed plan of reaching a goal or advantage” or “the science or art of directing large organizations.” He classes push participants to build on the textbook approaches to strategy by thinking about what is special about the media — like journalistic values, fragmenting audiences, emerging populations and talent demands. Lavine also makes a strong argument that there are things unique to the media that make media strategy different from textbook strategy; they include the separation of church and state in news organizations and brand in all media organizations.

Lavine’s approach is that strategy is an ongoing change process that consistently builds audience by providing customers with products, ideas and services that have differentiation, relevance, value and a winning brand. Lavine puts audience before advertisers with the belief that “If you build an audience, advertisers will come.” The winning brand provides the media company with the ability to aggregate audience share across media platforms.

He argues for cross-platform innovation with a vivid phrase: “If you don’t eat your young, someone else will.” It is this cross-platform approach to strategy that gives rise to the money illustration. “Would you rather have the money pass from one of your properties to another, or would you rather give it to someone else?” he asks.

You can almost see him putting the money in his right pocket.

 

			John Lavine Director Professor of Journalism, Medill School of Journalism Professor of Management and Strategy, Kellogg School of Management Director, Readership Institute More Center News