TV and social media

Attached is a link to a very interesting article in the NY times Media and Advertising section. It describes an interesting transmedia execution connecting social media with TV for the purposes of helping drive up the ad value of programming on TV. Some of what is covered here speaks to new approaches being put into market where the audience member's cell phone is used during ads or during programming. Here's a quote from the article:

As Cyriac Roeding, chief executive of Shopkick, put it: “The cellphone is the only interactive medium that you carry with you while you’re watching TV and while you’re shopping in the store. The cellphone is therefore the only interactive medium that can function as the bridge between the TV screen and the store shelf.”

Because technology, transmedia, Hyper-mediation and more, are all new possibilities (or at least new in the tools and choices available on a weekly basis), it's incredibly interesting to see the different models being developed and brought to market.

I would love to see more thinking and execution around narrative and meaning itself being the connective tissue leveraged for commercial success in addition to coupons, bonuses and purchase incentives. Those are certainly valid and make sense for an advertiser to find very attractive. They may even be very successful as this all evolves.

There is, however, the opportunity to not interrupt the narrative reasons that the audience is participating in your show but instead enhance it to bring them to other places (including social). There's a fair amount of experimentation going on there as well amongst the networks and IP owners.

It's important for us to remember that the audience that comes to social media doesn't spend a lot of time passing along advertising for the sake of sales. It's about connecting around common interests, light social touch, lots of humor, personal expression and meaningful declarations of self.

Networks Try a Social Media Spin at the Upfronts