Vanguard Awards: Jonathan Hargis

Executive Vice President, Marketing, Cablevision Systems

By Janet Stilson -- Multichannel News, 6/13/2011 12:01:00 AM

High atop Jonathan Hargis’s wish list of things he’d like to do is running a full marathon. Which one would that be? “New York would do well,” Hargis, Cablevision Systems’ executive vice president of marketing, said.

In a sense, Hargis has been engaged in a very full New York race ever since he stepped foot in his Cablevision office in 2000. Although the MSO recently purchased systems in the Rocky Mountains region from Bresnan Communications, Cablevision’s claim to fame has been in the greater New York area.

It’s arguably the toughest competitive environment for multichannel distributors in the nation. Hargis’s 100 staffers are up against marketing warriors at Verizon Communications, AT&T, Dish Network and DirecTV. “It’s a constant knife fight,” John Bickham, president of cable and communications at Cablevision, said.

MAXIMUM PENETRATION

Yet Cablevision leads the U.S. cable industry with the highest penetration rates across all of its services, according to the company. Its stats for this year’s first quarter show a 66% rate of penetration for all customers passed; 60% for video; and 53% for high-speed Internet. Phone penetration stood at 53% of all lines in service. The phone dominance comes after being in the business for only six years.

Little wonder, then, that Hargis is picking up the Vanguard Award for Marketing at The Cable Show this week.

“Jon and Cablevision have boldly provided innovative products and services — like being the first to introduce free long-distance calls to Puerto Rico; using movietheater tickets as a retention device, or making interactivity a cool tool to buy cars or houses,” Char Beales, CEO of the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing, noted.

In recognition of the MSO’s marketing achievements, CTAM added Cablevision’s iO: Interactive Optimum digital-cable service brand to its marketing Hall of Fame in 2008.

Hargis has expended a great deal of energy to earn those distinctions. “Jon puts out the most complete, comprehensive mass direct-marketing effort in the industry, and it’s soup to nuts,” Bickham said. He noted that Cablevision doesn’t have marketing campaigns, as such, because the effort is constant.

Hargis places his stamp of approval on more than 100 pieces of video content every year. That’s in addition to hundreds of versions of direct-mail pieces and all the Cablevision imagery on trucks and buildings, to say nothing of other media ads. “He also has lots of influence on our packaging and pricing, and how that fits in with our market-facing propositions,” Bickham said.

Hargis is pretty unique among marketers because “he’s a creative quantitative marketer,” according to Bickham. He explains that it’s common to find marketers that are creative, but lack the quantitative research skill set — or vice versa. But the combination of the two is rare.

“Marketing is as much math as it is creative,” Hargis contended. “Yes, you create pretty pictures, but you better have the analytics and the tracking behind it to know what works and doesn’t work.”

Hargis started honing his marketing “chops” long before he arrived at Cablevision. Th e Dayton, Ohio, native is a 20-year veteran of AT&T. He showed up on Cablevision’s radar when he was asked by his AT&T bosses to implement a loyalty program between AT&T and Cablevision, which the two companies’ chairmen had sketched out over dinner.

“I got to know the great people [at Cablevision], and some months later, after that program was in the marketplace, they made me aware that this position was open. And here I am,” Hargis said.

In looking back on the lessons he’s learned as a marketer, Hargis noted that it’s important to experiment beyond one’s comfort zone. “There are often things that I think are going to work really well that are so-so. And there’s some things that I personally don’t think are going to work that well, but they do.”

He remembers deliberating long and hard about one TV commercial in particular before he was willing to actually air it. Dubbed “Reggaeton Beach,” it displays the tongue-in-cheek, colorful and very musical style that characterizes many of Cablevision’s TV commercials. Th e Spanish-language spot features three dancing mermaids, pirates and sea monsters as it touts the triple-play offering.

“I sat in my office many days before we launched that one thinking, ‘This is a very big risk,’ ” Hargis said. “I was extremely nervous because that [kind of spot] doesn’t come naturally to me as a tactic. But I had a team member who pushed for it. And we tested our way into it.”

The commercial became the most successful spot Cablevision has ever run. As of this writing, it’s been viewed more than 96,000 times on YouTube.

CREDITS HIS TEAM

Hargis believes that one of the real keys to his success has been building the right team of people, including Gemma Toner, senior vice president, marketing and business development, and Joseph Leonard, vice president, mass marketing. “I really have a great, talented team,” Hargis said. “You need to set goals and clear roles and responsibilities.”

Added Bickham: “He’s the kind of person that people like to work with. He moves easily within the organization sideways, and up or down. He doesn’t do it with a lot of fanfare, but with tremendous credibility.”

Taking an even-keeled approach seems to be what Hargis is all about. “I try to stay pretty balanced. There are some really good days, but you can’t get too high on those highs. And there are some days when things just aren’t going really well. But you can’t get all down about that.”

After all, he added: “This is a marathon. It isn’t a sprint.”