Author: David Berzin

March 3, 2016 Data Strategy

We’re hiring @ Viacom Data Strategy!

We’ve got two brand new openings in my Social Media Data Strategy group.  Recommendations greatly appreciated and I’m happy to answer any questions.

Director, Data Aggregation Product Development

Your job is to connect, map and drive insights from a growing universe of internal and external data sets that drive key business decisions for senior Viacom leadership.  You’ll manage the roadmap, development, quality assurance and executive / brand / market-facing reporting products that emerge from Viacom’s data ecosystem.  In partnership with executive management, lead researchers, data scientists and a kaleidoscope of internal and external platforms – ranging from Nielsen to Adobe to Facebook to Rentrak to internal platforms – you’ll modernize and weaponize critical data sets and drive clear business value. link

Sr. Manager, Social Media Data Product Development

Your job is to design, deliver and iterate ground breaking, data-driven social media data products that increase engagement and revenues for Viacom’s brands and advertisers.  You will dig deep in the users, influencers, brands, ad products and APIs of mature and emerging social networks – Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr, SnapChat, Twitter – and steer how Viacom interacts and drives clear business value on these platforms.  You will partner with integrated marketing teams, data scientists and developers to create unique experiences in the market that delight and drive revenues. link

February 18, 2016 Data Strategy

Viacom Viewprint

My colleagues on the Viacom Data Strategy team recently added intelligence to another link within the integrated marketing campaign chain – data-driven campaign design.  We’re blending first party behavioral, attitudinal, and social data to create the best content campaigns for our advertisers.  Learn more about the Viacom Viewprint here:

September 2, 2015 Data Strategy

Breaking things

A good day in the office.

  • .5 billion social engagements
  • ~50 million tweets (250k re. Kanye for president!)
  • ~25 million video streams

Viacom content resonates across all measurable platform — and then some.

March 28, 2015 Data Strategy

Exchange programs aren’t only for Students!

A few years ago, as I entered my second lifetime at Viacom, I suggested to my management that we start up an internal ‘exchange program’ for Viacom Product Managers.  We selected four star performers from different parts of the organization – ex. a product manager from our central video player team, a UX lead from the Comedy Central brand product team – and asked them to switch locations and responsibilities for three months.

The goals were multifold but can be summarized as an attempt to ‘stir-the-pot’.  By stepping into the role tangential but different from your day-job we found that product developers contributed both to their home and away teams.  Central teams received first hand feedback from their brand customers.  Brand teams received a better understanding of the long term requirements and goals that shape central platform “software” requirements.  In both cases, employees shared and learned different styles of getting similar jobs done.

The exchange program is not without challenges.  In many cases, exchanged product managers had to do both their new job AND their old job, since it was impossible to fully on- and off-board their home-team responsibilities.  There was also management overhead added to busy teams with the burn of losing those employees at three months – just after they ramped up to speed.

That said, I believe the benefits of this program greatly outweigh the required extra effort.  Product Management is often called out as a study in empathy.  By switching seats and teams, our best performers not only cross-pollinated some of our best ideas, but got a first hand feel for the requirements of their sister teams.

February 9, 2015 Data Strategy

‘The Real Value of Design’

Business first, user first, design first… There is a lot of great conversation in our industry about the best approach to building products.  I love the healthy debate.

The folks over at motiv have decided to quantify the value of design-centric organizations and compare the yields vs the S&P.  No surprise, design driven orgs win out.

Full Article

 

January 12, 2015 Data Strategy

MTV News responsive redesign – social referrals up 565%.

We’ve worked long and hard here at Viacom to implement best-of-breed social tools on our premium websites.  Our partnership with MTV.com seems to be paying off!

For this effort, we incremented our core social tool kit to be mobile-first and we partnered with the MTV.com brand product, design and editorial team to add features to meet the needs of the rabid MTV News audience.  Feature iterations included pinned comments, editor’s picks, community picks (based on votes) and sentiment tags – the last feature working especially well on mobile touch devices.

More details in this article: http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1939