Presentation by Kay Osborne,
General Manager, Television Jamaica
Jamaica
Stock Exchange Conference on Investments and Capital Markets
Montego Bay,
JAMAICA January
19, 2006
We are meeting at a time of great excitement, change and
challenge in our region: The launch of the CARICOM Single Market provides new
opportunities for the freer movement of ideas, people, capital, products and
services. And, if we get it right, it can’t be too long before we’re conducting
business in a seamless economic space with the creation of the CARICOM Single
Market and Economy, CSME. Of course, getting it right depends a great deal on
the decisions and actions of people like us gathered here in this room.
There are millions of people throughout the Caribbean region who are depending on us to act in ways
that not only enhance our own businesses and careers but to create opportunities
for them to improve their own lives. I am confident that this conference will
help us get it right.
You have asked me to speak on Media’s Role in Supporting
Business Growth in Jamaica
and the Caribbean. At one level, I can
approach the theme by talking about the platforms that media organizations in Jamaica and the
rest of the region provide to help businesses stay in touch with their
customers and launch new products and services. If I were to take this
approach, I am sure you would forgive me if I spent time talking about the many
businesses, large and small, that gain value from the unequalled platform that
the RJR Group provides with more than 40 percent of a 19-station radio market
in Jamaica and TVJ as the number one station with 48% of the audience and more
than one million viewers who watch Prime Time News each weeknight.
You would forgive me
as well if I mentioned a new and exciting prime time programme that TVJ will
launch next month. This programme titled MONEY will facilitate your
conversations with your customers through sponsorship and advertising
opportunities and through in-programme product placements where features will
focus on your products and services that benefit your customers. Please speak
with me or with your TVJ sales representative about sponsorship and advertising
opportunities on this innovative and original TVJ series!
At another level I could spend my time here reminding you of
the benefits of advertising and providing you with references to a stack of
research and historic studies that all point to a definitive relationship
between increased advertising spending and growth in long-term market share and
profitability.
The impressive body of data clearly validates the connection
between increased spending and increased market share.
I could also warn against the instinctive reaction of some
businesses to spend less on advertising and marketing support when times get
tough or there is a downturn in the business cycle. I would ground this warning
in the fact that credible research consistently supports the view that more,
not less, advertising and marketing support is beneficial in the long run, even
in tough times.
But I am not going to dwell on media platforms and the
benefits of advertising, partly because you know these things already but… more
importantly… because I would like us to have a conversation not so much about how
media currently supports business but how media and business can build a more
constructive collaboration with the society we serve. The persons who comprise
your customers are the same ones who make up our audiences, so we have a shared
interest in their welfare especially at this time of severe challenges from
crime, the slow pace of job creation and only marginal economic growth for the
past decade or more, certainly here in Jamaica.
Before getting into the specifics of the collaboration, I
will set it in the context of what I believe is a most insightful way to think
about media products and the role of media in society. The usual way of
thinking is to regard media products as information, entertainment and
education. And, in a sense, this is correct. We spend every day informing our
readers, viewers and listeners about what is happening in their community,
their neighbourhood and the world around them; we entertain them with comedies,
movies and drama and we delight them with the thrill of sporting competition.
Research also shows that media are the main sources of continuing education for
adults as most of what we know since we left school we owe to the media.
So, informing, entertaining and educating remain the main
products of media today.
We also know that the media—along with institutions like
home and family, school, church and community—play an important role in
socialising our young and shaping their standards of behaviour, their codes of
conduct, their habitual modes of thinking and feeling, the ideals they regard
as good and excellent and worthy of emulation.
But for purposes of this conversation today I would like us
to think of media products not as information, entertainment and education but
as ‘influence’. I am referring here to what is called ‘the influence model of
media’.
There are two types of influence: One is commercial
influence which refers to the size and quality of the audience that we sell to
advertisers and business people. This influence is measured in the numbers of
newspaper readers or the number of eyes and ears watching TV or listening to
the radio; the bigger the numbers, the more the influence.
The second type is societal influence. This can never be for
sale because we are talking about the inevitable influence we have with our
audiences and the consequential effects on public policy, ethics, morals,
values and conduct. This influence depends on and is embedded within the
credibility and respect that we earn from the society we serve.
Media that enjoy a high level of societal influence are of
great value to business because the truth is that the quality of the societal
influence enhances the value of the commercial influence. As one proponent of
the influence model of media puts it: “An advertising message is worth more if
it appears in an environment of credibility and respect”. It does no good to spend your money with
media that is low on credibility and respect in the society.
Put very simply the quality of media content increases the
societal influence of the media. Both drive audience ratings and profitability
for us as media firms. And, for you as business, your commercial messages have
greater value if they are placed in media with strong societal influence.
So the first part of the constructive collaboration I would
like us to agree on today is that we have a shared interest in creating and
delivering high quality media content, on a consistent basis, to the audiences
we serve. Hence it is important for your business to help us earn and keep our
credibility and respect. It is something that we guard jealously at TVJ and the
entire RJR Group because it is the basis of the trust we have developed with
our audience for over half a century.
In practice, this means a commitment to independent, fair
and balanced journalism. This means protecting the public interest from abuse
of power by those entrusted with the responsibility of the public purse. It
also means protecting consumers from harmful products, corrupt business
practices, unfair pricing and environment degradation. We do not report stories
of this nature to ‘attack business’. We report them because part of our
responsibility—as media engaged in selling the product called ‘societal
influence’— is also to hold corporations accountable to the commitments they
make to their customers and the regulatory standards which they are obliged to
uphold.
The second part of the constructive collaboration that I
advocate relates to the implicit contract between business and society. In a
recent article in The Economist, Ian Davis, managing director of the global
business consulting firm, McKinsey & Company, makes a convincing case for
businesses to think not only in terms of enhancing shareholder value but in
working with the communities they serve and integrating social issues that
affect these communities into businesses’ core strategies. It is not enough to wait until social
pressures directly threaten the core business and then to respond. Strategies
must be developed to include social issues into the core values and core
competencies of the business.
As Ian Davis says; “Businesses need to introduce explicit
processes to make sure that social issues and emerging social forces are
discussed at the highest levels as part of their overall strategic planning.”
Among other things, Caribbean CEOs should become much more actively involved in
society debates in the media on social issues that shape their business
context.
What are some of the things we can do to give practical
effect to a more constructive collaboration with the society? It seems to me
that a good place to start is with the pressing social issue of crime reduction
and inner city and community renewal. Here in Jamaica the daily diet of news
catalogues an excessively high murder rate. Most of these murders are
perpetrated by young men who are outside the economic mainstream and occur in
marginalised communities where poverty and neighbourhood blight are major
contributors to crime. These same issues concern other Caribbean
territories as well.
At TVJ we have a commitment to going beyond the mere
reporting of the news. Through programmes like, ‘Your Issues, Live!’ we are
engaging communities with the search for explanations and solutions. The
enormous turnout and active participation of citizens is a measure of the
success of the Your Issues Live series to date. The positive response of
official agencies to some of the concerns that citizens raise also means that
those in authority are listening. At a minimum, businesses need to support
these and similar efforts by other media organisations through sponsorship and
advertising.
But we need to go further. At TVJ, we are committed to
developing strategies that ensure the inclusion of social issues into our core
activities. We do so because we are media. But we also do it because we are a
business with a commitment to all our stakeholders—including shareholders and
audiences. Similarly, I believe it is important for all businesses operating in
Jamaica and the Caribbean to develop and implement their own strategies
for tackling social issues because we have an implicit social contract with the
community we serve and from which we get our audience and customers.
As I indicated earlier, one important social issue is
reducing crime and violence. Obviously this would have a direct benefit to all
of us in business because a lot of what we spend on security plus the high cost
of absenteeism and low productivity due to violence-related stress would
instead go directly to the bottom line. But we should not develop strategies to
reduce crime and violence only because of what’s in it for us. We must do it
because we have an implicit social contract with the community we serve and
from which we get our audience and customers. To the extent to which we can
help to empower them and improve their lives we would be giving practical
effect to the contract.
Naturally, crime reduction strategies will vary from company
to company. Some may focus on investment and job creation in poor, depressed,
inner city communities; some may focus on rebuilding family life or on
community development; and for others the focus may be on intellectual or
material support to improve law enforcement and the justice system.
What’s important is that the strategies must become part of
your core activities to be truly effective. And that’s my plea today to all
businesses—big and small, private and public, local and foreign owned, retail
and wholesale, net importer and net exporter,
tourist dependent and those with no relationship to tourism, high tech
and low tech—I urge you to let all your major, corporate tools reflect your
decisions and actions on inner city and community renewal.
- Let your vision and mission statements, corporate values and
culture reflect your decisions on crime and violence reduction. - Let your corporate goals and objectives reflect your decisions
on crime and violence reduction. - Let your corporate strategies and the strategic initiatives
that you fund and track reflect your decisions on crime and violence reduction. - Let your annual reports reflect your decisions on crime and
violence reduction.
We in the media are uniquely placed to support these
strategies. Let us together, businesses and media, constructively collaborate
with the persons who are our customers and audiences in the certain knowledge
that if we make a more effective contribution to stamping out this monstrous
evil within our midst we will leave a lasting legacy to the society that we are
privileged to serve. Let us do it now!
