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Our consulting staff at Burkhart/Abrams was always looking
for new, brilliant talent. Lee Abrams told me about a
researcher he had met in Canada who was ahead of the rest.
John Parikhal. I jumped on a plane to fly to Toronto to meet
with John and his (then) partner David Charles. We had
dinner at the main restaurant of the Four Seasons Hotel that
night. As I enjoyed one of the greatest salads ever, I
listened to John talk for hours. He was absolutely
brilliant. We needed John’s research smarts in US radio, and
so we worked out a business relationship in which we sold
his brain to our US clients. It worked just fine.
About twelve years ago, John moved from Canada to the US. He
lives in Connecticut. He has made a large research impact on
a lot of different companies….including MTV, Rolling Stone,
Pepsi, Wendy’s, Molson, CBS, NBC, ABC, artist Bryan Adams,
and major record companies….and, of course, radio stations
not only here in the US, but all over the world.
I arranged for John to do a research project for our client
KFI in Los Angeles. When the results were tabulated John and
I flew to LA to meet with Cox (they were the owners then)
management. We were in a large conference room. The group
assembled was startled to hear John’s statement “You are
losing 15 to 20 percent of your cume every year. You must
promote to replace it, or your ratings will continue to go
down”. Simple truth, but I suppose the management team had
not thought of it in those terms.
John is considered a global leader in media strategy,
marketing and consumer trends. He earned his Masters Degree
with media guru Marshall McLuhan and studied for a Ph.D. in
Language and Perception at the University of Toronto.
Indeed, I was once fortunate enough to sit by Marshall
McLuhan at a dinner. I asked him about John. He thought for
a minute and said, “I think he is the best researcher in
this hemisphere”. WOW!!! Pretty heavy, heady stuff.
John says he is slowing down on traveling these days. Well,
he can kid himself, but not me. John will always be where
the action is…and if it requires traveling he will be there.
One of his current futuristic quotes is, “There is a New
Entertainment Economy emerging. It’s all about control,
connection and convenience—a daring tug of war between
consumers and creators, between the distributors and the
dissatisfied, between those who control the transmitter and
those who want to create their own. The digital world and
the Internet are turning the old rules upside down”.
He has written a lot of articles. You might be interested in
reading his book, “The Baby Boom: Making Sense of Our
Generation At 40”. He is currently writing a new book….check
this title….I am Not My Job: A Way To Get More Emotional
Balance at Work. Now, that should be interesting.
His twelve year old daughter doesn’t understand how John her
father could have learned anything when he was younger
because he was a teenager in a world that did not have
computers, cell phones, video games or the Internet.
Hhhhmmmmm!!
I call John a friend. I hope he feels that way about me too.
I am pleased we could introduce his talents to the US radio
world…and we did…I know….because I WAS THERE!!!!
e-mail Kent
kent@kentburkhart.com
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