Brand Direction and Ad Sales at MTV and Viacom

Last night, Allison Rube, senior manager of brand sales and partnerships at Viacom Media Networks, spoke at Newhouse as part of the Syracuse University PRSSA speaker series. The ultimate goal of her presentation had two main parts: First, to share her experience at Viacom and talk about what the company does and what her position within the company is. Second, to talk about career paths, specifically how hers has changed and grown over time and how ours will do the same.

She began by describing her position as someone who deals with Viacom’s sources of revenue, particularly in regard to ad sales, but as we know making money through television ads that no one wants to sit through and watch is getting hard. Rube then went on to talk about what her position in brand sales is doing to combat this declining revenue source and come up with new ideas to replace it.

Photo explaining the internal set up at Viacom, taken at the lecture

While Rube’s job seemed like it would fall under the advertising category much more than the public relations category, she definitely mentioned many skills that overlap between the two. One key point of her position that shows how the two overlap is that she is responsible for being the liaison between the channels area and the sales area, making sure that the two sectors of Viacom are communicating with each other and sharing goals to best drive revenue. She also is the liaison between sales and press, making sure that information is consistent and positive in order to prevent advertisers from dropping their ads.

One project that Rube spoke about in her lecture that relates most directly to public relations in terms of shaping the media landscape was MTV’s “The Real World” Facebook show. Rube talked about how the media landscape was shifting from dependence on ad sales to the new sources of revenue from acquisitions, partnerships and evolving content strategy. “The Real World” project is a great example of how Viacom is building a partnership between MTV and Facebook by becoming a content creator on platform other than television. The two companies built a mutually beneficial relationship where Facebook users who watch “The Real World” will be inclined to check out what else MTV has for them to watch and Facebook monetizes the revenue made from ads during the show.

Photo taken at the lecture showing Rube's career path

Outside of talking about her position within Viacom and the company’s projects and goals, Rube led a very interesting discussion about career paths. She represented her vision of a career path with a quote saying, “careers are a jungle gym, not a ladder.” This means there might not be one direct path to your ideal career, but each job you have influences where you go from there. Even if you don’t end up with the job you want at first, the skills you learn can help you grow professionally until you reach the position you want or could change your mind and lead you somewhere you never expected to find yourself. Either way, skills learned in the public relations field can be applied to many areas of one company, just like Rube described at Viacom and MTV.