October 6, 2014
Cool Jobs: BET’s Ken Gibbs Jr. Talks Innovation and the End Of the Internet
As someone tasked with raising awareness, getting clicks, and ensuring that the audience is engaged – what type of budget is optimum for the best success? Please hip the audience to how CPCs and CPMs can affect a website’s reputation.
It’s really not about budget, but ingenuity. Lots of the latest brands started from the bottom with nothing. Budget comes into play when you start seeking to create content executions, of whatever type, that have a higher production value. Why you NEED a higher production value could be driven by many factors: the competition may have stepped it up and increased the audience’s expectation, you may be courting advertisers whose target demo requires the higher production value, or you may have advertisers that require it for a deal you’ve already sealed. Ultimately, the CPC/CPM isn’t going to impact your reputation with audiences because they don’t know that info.
With you at the helm of BET’s OnTV operations – walk us through how your day-to-day activities are and what you feel is your impact upon the company overall. Also, please detail how managing the company’s digital strategy may change the more we become interconnected with devices and mediums.
I start my day with the numbers from the day prior, wanting to see if there were any surprises. Were there any unforeseen spikes? Did a particular video not resonate as strongly as I thought it would? What are the top search terms on the site? What is the audience looking for from the network that we’ve done such a bad job of positioning that a number of people had to search for it? After that I’m taking stock of what happened on the set of whatever shows are taping at the moment. Are our videographers getting what they need for us to be able to support the show digitally during the season? Did something hot happen that we should push to the audience now? As for the future of the strategy: tighter integration of the web and all other screens, as well as bringing the interactive experience of the web that the audience loves to our shows in way that improves the experience for all.
Original web programming is a tough nut to crack. What are some tips or advice that you can offer for the burgeoning creative looking to pitch an idea to you or a big league company?
There are few new ideas under the sun, so be sure that you’ve done your research. The last thing you want to see in a new pitch is an old concept that’s already been done by someone else in the space. Be original, but also examine the companies current offering and try to fill a void/meet a need they’ve got.
As an innovative creative what is the most nagging thing that you feel gets in your way?
Understanding. I’ve worked on the web for 15 years, but now the internet is becoming a big part of what traditional magazine, TV and radio companies do on a daily basis. This often means you’re collaborating with people who have solely focused on mastering their medium and may not have had the time, interest or insight to pay the web much attention. So while kids are growing up with smart phones and are basically born digital, there’s still lots of education that has to happen at the traditional media companies. Sometimes you feel you could move faster and see results quicker if this weren’t the case, but the flipside is that the dialogue that occurs during this education is invaluable for both sides.
Over the course of your career, you have been responsible for helping a lot of young scribes cut their teeth in the career. What was your most memorable “put on†and your most regrettable?
I don’t really look at it as putting people on. The nature of what we do is collaborative, and I’ve been lucky to collaborate with people that have gone on to do great things. I’ve got no regrets, but my most memorable is probably Bomani Jones, who is now doing his thing on ESPN with his show HQ. We began working together when he was a writer for Africana.com. I’m not a sports guy, so our exchanges were mainly music and culture, but we shared an understanding of how the web could create opportunities.
On the next page, Ken talks about the future of the web…