New Media Expert Advises: Build Brand You

5 Questions

If you want a career in interactive media, you’ll have to be interactive and proactive. Daisy Whitney tells you how to build your media career by building your brand. More importantly, she shows how hard work and dedication lead to success. And for those scoring at home, Daisy is the second expert this month to advise not just meeting … but beating deadlines.

DAISY WHITNEY is a new media rock star. She’s omnipresent, and she’s everywhere with quality content. In her answers below, she credits some of her success to luck, but it’s clear that hard work, dedication, and talent led to her success. Daisy earned a degree in Art History from Brown University, making her path to new media the road less traveled.

She is the new media reporter for TVWeek and produces the New Media Minute (featured above) and an audio podcast. In addition she regularly writes for numerous other publications, including Advertising Age.

Her predictions for 2009 caught my eye, and thankfully she shared her time and advice with us:

1) One of your predictions for 2009 is an increase in mobile marketing. How do you think consumers will react to this increase? Isn’t it the one place left free of advertising clutter?

DAISY: I expect ads on mobile phones to be non-intrusive (think simple overlays on a small part of the screen) and will likely be super-targeted to you and even your location so the hope is you’d want the deals being offered!

2) You make a prediction of consumers dropping traditional cable TV and satellite services for online viewing. After the Internet killed newspapers and with the advent of satellite radio, is television simply the last old medium to die?

DAISY: I’m not convinced TV is going to die just as I’m not convinced papers are either. I think cable operators will be challenged to make their services relevant, and in time they will be forced to evolve and base their business models on being dumb pipes for broadband service. Broadband will reign supreme, and cable operators can deliver that. They will find creative ways to tier their broadband price offerings to make money in the future.

And TV won’t die! We as people love entertainment. Networks and studios are being forced to evolve and offer their programs in new ways and find new ways to make money on their shows. But we will always want content. The smart networks and studios who are nimble and fast will make it.

3) You make a prediction about Grey’s Anatomy. Hasn’t that show just about “jumped the shark”? Seriously, don’t you think that Denny needs to go away?

DAISY: I’m a Grey’s apologist, so it hasn’t jumped the shark for me! Many people think it has, but I love the show as crazy and weird as it is this season. I was loving the Denny storyline at first because I LOVE LOVE LOVE Denny, but now it’s time to do something with it. But I don’t have a problem with Ghost Love in general! I am all about the suspension of a disbelief and never have I expected a hospital drama to be realistic. Remember, this is a show where people get impaled on a regular basis and where doctors perform never been done before brain surgeries after a patient checks in that morning! So realism isn’t what Grey’s is about.

4) You seem to be a renaissance media expert. What advice do you have for college students today who want media careers?

DAISY: If you want a career in media you need a plan to become a brand. Don’t confine yourself to one medium. Develop skills for print, audio and visual. You need to be conversant in all three and you need to smartly promote and propagate your own stories across media. No one else is going to look out for you, so make yourself an indispensable industry resource.

Seek out speaking engagements, post comments on like-minded sites, get involved in social media relentlessly. Never miss a deadline, and in fact, make a commitment to file all your stories early as this will impress your bosses and enhance your job security.

5) How did your multi-platform career get started?

DAISY: Like most things in life I was in the right place at the right time. I was covering technology for TVWeek before it became sexy, back when it was racks and servers and traffic systems. That served me well when the iPod revolutionized video entertainment in 2005 with the iTunes-Disney deal. As I covered new media more I made a decision to actually use the services I wrote about and to write about the usage. Readers enjoyed those reports, knowing that I walked the walk and talked the talk. Because I was covering the transformation of entertainment, it only made sense to do the same with my own career and to also embody the changes I was writing about. I had been actively speaking at conferences for four years, so when my husband suggesting launching a video podcast in Sept. 2007, it made perfect sense.

My first few episodes were awkward, and my delivery was stiff, but I learned on the job and quickly was able to refine my on-camera skills. One thing led to another and I also actively pursued new opportunities, so now I produce on-air reports for KNTV’s “Tech Now,” host and produce the New Media Minute and host an audio podcast This Week in Media.

Links

• Learn more about Daisy on her Web site.
• Follow Daisy on Twitter.

Tagged as: 5 Questions, careers, new media, technology, television