Veteran Media Director Takes Helm at MZD

Rick Doyle recently joined MZD Advertising of Indianapolis as the agency’s Media Director.

Prior to joining MZD, Doyle was a Media Director and Partner for GMI Partners in Fort Myers, Fla. He developed integrated media promotions using retail focused communications and local market saturation through the combination of national and local broadcast, print and interactive media for several national and local advertisers.

At GMI Partners, Doyle also combined the affinity of targeted radio, special interest cable television and other offline media with performance based accountability of online and other digital media to deliver performance based promotions for their clients.

Previously, Doyle also worked at Whitney Information Network, Cape Coral, Fla., as its Media Director.

“When I first got into this, the only pay premium channel on cable that was big was HBO,” he said. “I knew a long time ago that the growth of cable television would surpass the growth of interactive television. Back in the late 80s and early 90s, there was a lot of talk about interactive television being the next big thing, but watching television is a passive activity, not an interactive one.”

Doyle was accurate in his prediction that more people would embrace satellite television.

“I also thought that TV would end up being popular to watch on your computer,” Doyle said.

“It will be interesting to see how the social media will take off,” Doyle said. “I am very impressed with how the mobile phones have taken off. The smart phones seem to be the wave of the future and the technology is there for a lot of people to make this even more successful. The infrastructure is growing.”

Doyle has also seen a lot of interesting trends in the Indianapolis television and radio media.

“In the radio area, there are a lot more portable people meters,” Doyle said. “With the Arbitron rating system you used to be able to fill out a diary. The people meters have changed all that. They are a lot more accurate measurement of the popularity and tell us more about the actual amount of listeners.

With TV, the local people meters are allowing more in-depth viewership measurements.”