Bob Pittman: Don't Chase Trends, Chase The Consumer

Bob Pittman

In an interview at Further Future festival outside of Las Vegas over the weekend,  iHeartMedia CEO and MTV co-founder Bob Pittman shared his revolutionary ideas on finding the next big thing and where media is headed in the future.

According to Ryan Stabile at axs.com, the discussion started with Bob Pittman being asked, “So, what turns Bob Pittman on?” to which he replies in a very Bob Pittman fashion, “Like most people, curiosity… Regrets in life are not about what you do, but what you don’t do."

As to What happened to MTV, “When I was there, we had some real conscious discussions as to whether we should grow old with this generation or whether we should be the voice of young America, and in the end we decided to go with the voice of young America. What that meant was that we had to deliberately stop doing things that we knew were successful. We had to make change a constant part of the daily process, which I believe is true of any business – you need to evolve or die.”

When it comes to the future of media, Pittman stated, “People chase trends, and I think it’s wrong. I think the only thing people should be chasing is the consumer. The consumer will tell you what they want you to do. They tell us two things: they buy brands and they’re looking for convenience. If you can take anything people already do and make it easy and save them time, they will adopt your product.”