Build the brand, success will follow
NEW YORK--Robert Pittman is way too charming to come out and say it aloud to a room packed with online heavies. But if his speech at a recent online onference had a working title, it probably would have been, "it's the brand, stupid."
April 21, 1997, Robert Pittman Build the brand, success will follow |
Some say that's naive, that the online business is different than any other, but Pittman will argue that people are the same wherever they go. They'll be loyal to an online company for the same reason they're loyal to a restaurant or an amusement park.
But what about all of AOL's problems? At the time of the interview, AOL was still under enormous pressure from its customers for having failed miserably to predict what kind of impact going to flat-rate pricing would have on the service. Within hours of going to the new pricing, members hogged the access lines so much so that millions more were left out, blocked from entering the service by constant, frustrating busy signals. They yelled, they sent email, and they wrote letters. Then they sued.
When things got really ugly, Pittman, who had joined the company the same day it announced that it would be moving to flat-rate pricing, stepped up, calling members of the press himself, and acted as the calm spokesman in the eye of the storm. In fact, in a masterful move of spin doctoring, he turned the whole thing around into something positive.
It was the company line, but coming out of Pittman it sounded sincere. Members, he said, "held our feet to the fire, but you know what? That's like a family."
If people didn't like AOL, they'd simply leave and go somewhere else, he said. But many stayed. No matter how much criticism is thrown at the often insular and sometimes defensive company, it can always point to the simple mathematics of the situation. Customers come and go all the time, but the sum total keeps increasing. Right now, AOL has 8 million customers worldwide. That's a lot more than anyone else out there.
That's the prize and you can be sure Pittman's got his eye on it all the time, trying to make that number grow until AOL reaches some lofty goal. While critics question whether Pittman has the right stuff to run an online company, he'll stay focused and continue to do what he knows how to do best: build brands. Then when he's judged it a success, he'll be onto the next venture.
NEWS.COM chatted with Pittman at America Online's New York offices during the Jupiter Communications Consumer Online Services conference in March.
Pittman: I was on the [AOL] board and [CEO] Steve [Case] started talking to me about joining management. I was very taken with the point at which [the company] was at. It was a business that was breaking wide open. Clearly, there was going to be mass market and mass culture, and AOL was the only brand in the consumer space.
So this time you don't feel like you have to start from scratch?
AOL's brand is built. I'll only take jobs where the brand is already built
and there's plenty of room for growth ahead. I went through building brands
with MTV and Nickelodeon. I never want to build another brand as long as I
live. It takes about a billion dollars of marketing and about five to ten
years. I swore to God I'd never build another brand as long as I live. It's
the most miserable, time-consuming, awful, nerve-wracking experience that
you could possibly imagine because you never know until the end of the day
whether you will succeed.
Once you already have a brand, it's something people can't take away from you. So then you can begin to use it and to build your product bigger and bigger.
AOL has infrastructure in place. We've got great technology people. They understand making the experience easier for our members, whether it's buddy lists or searching profiles or getting stuff to the consumer faster. It all plays into the real mass market.
NEXT: Critical mass
Stats |
Age: 43 Claim to fame: Creating MTV and "getting out of Mississippi." Career goal: To build and strengthen companies. Famous attributed quote: "We don't just shoot for 14-year-olds; we own them," in reference to MTV. (Pittman neither admits nor denies having ever said this.) Hobbies: "Anything that goes fast, is a machine, or is outdoors," including flying, skiing, canoeing, and motorcycle riding. |
April 21, 1997, Robert Pittman Critical mass |
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April 21, 1997, Robert Pittman Content deposed |
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