Almost every student has watched ESPN’s ‘SportsCenter,’ but few have likely stopped to think about the strength of the brand behind the program.

Glenn Enoch, vice president of audience research for ESPN, does so quite often. His job is to monitor the ratings and popularity of ESPN’s many media holdings and make recommendations to other department heads when problems arise. Enoch made the trip from New York City to the Hill to speak with students in Newhouse I Monday afternoon.

‘Our mission (at ESPN) is to provide sports content to our fans wherever they are,’ Enoch said in his opening statements. He reiterated twice during his speech, which was attended by 15 students, that ESPN doesn’t ‘have viewers, we have fans.’

Enoch’s main function at ESPN is market research, he said. Market research, according to Enoch, deals with more than just what numbers describe the ‘fans’ of ESPN, including how well the brand is being recognized and perceived.

‘When we look at how do we promote ESPN the brand, how do we get the ESPN brand to resonate with people, that’s market research,’ said Enoch, as opposed to media research, which is ‘about how people watch TV. It’s about how people use the Internet, how they read the magazine. Everything else is pretty much market research.’

Many attendees came to get tips on getting hired by a large media company like ESPN. Enoch related his own experiences after graduating from college, which started with an internship. He said he had intended to go to graduate school, but was persuaded to move to New York and take a job instead.

While most people are encouraged to have a clear idea of what they want from an internship, Enoch said that it is OK to use internships just to gain exposure to the different kinds of jobs that exist in the media industry.

For example, Enoch said that he learned definitively that he would never want to be in local news because the atmosphere was too hectic, he said. Being in a newsroom, Enoch learned that he preferred to spend his time with the market research department.

An important note Enoch passed along is the value of seeking ‘informational interviews,’ or informal meetings with people employed in the area. These meetings allow one to gain insight into what it takes to enter a certain field and where the entry level positions are, as well as make connections for the future. He stressed that the purpose of the interviews was not to seek employment, but rather enlightenment.

More specifically, Enoch advised that ‘if you want to get to work for ESPN – and who doesn’t? – you have to be persistent.’

He advised students to ‘call the people that are hiring, not the HR department,’ as human resources offices are often flooded with applications, and do not know the specific needs of the people doing the hiring.

Karen McGee, director of the Career Development Center, says that professor Fiona Chew has arranged for Enoch to speak at Newhouse annually for the past five years. Enoch’s primary mission has been to speak to students in Newhouse classes, but he has also spoken in open discussions.

‘We like to give students who might not have him in class the opportunity to hear him,’ McGee said.

Enoch’s words of wisdom resonated with many students. Michelle Yuan, a second-year graduate student in media studies, said she especially appreciated Enoch’s visit.

‘It’s a great opportunity for me to find out what they do typically in researching media,’ she said. Yuan was very interested by the idea of the informational interviews, she said, as was Marcus Hill, a sophomore computer engineering major who is considering changing his major to a media concentration. He also took to heart the value of creating business links stressed by Enoch.

‘What I learned is that basically you need contacts,’ Hill said. ‘Some people want to go it alone as far they can in the market, but you

Published on April 10, 2005 at 12:00 pm