RE: (@GRLitman ) Gregg Litman's Post, Rants N Raves: Can Social Media Save TV? {Reply by Desaraev AKA Desarae A. Veit | Agency Couture}

First and foremost I don't think Twitter is just a fad, that ship has sailed. It's here to stay, but the way that the medium exists and serves us may be ever changing. Google buzz may be one example of the change.

Social Media and Television Living Happily Ever After
Social media and television are interesting beasts and media outlets that can happily co-exist (pause for gasp) even compliment each other. Although, I firmly believe that both media outlets must and will change. Social media and televisions will constantly adapt to the public's needs or they will die in the battle for our attention. This is a fact that newspapers are trying to fight tooth and nail but will learn to accept just as the ship goes under water. Understand that I'm NOT saying that journalism OR news is dead, just in their current dying states. Feel free to argue with me on this fact, but revenue and readership numbers back up my statements more then any emotion based rant ever will.

A Not So Quick Fix For A Big Syndication Problem
So do YOU video/newspaper/journalists want a cure for what ails your loudly vented woes? Of course you do because when the going gets tough, the tough get going. If they don't get going towards a solution they get going into quick sand. That is a choice for each journalist, news reporter, television station and brand manager to make for themselves. Live and let live.. try to ride out a problem or cut ties and reinvent your self. Clearly any brand can continue to use old forms of marketing and will get some results, but if your quota for success is larger than the statistics received from spam email marketing campaigns, well keep reading.

The news, television series, movie, journalism and media fix is not hard just different. It will take a different mind set and will force the norm to change. I have a few ideas of how this would work, but would also love to hear what my readers think. What do you want to see from your television channels? Do you like paid programming or ads breaking up your movies? Here are my thoughts:

• Paid programming should cease to exist. Info-mercials can exist on one channel for those of you who like them. Make it the home shopping network.
• Advertising cutting up television shows and news should also cease to exist. If we walk away from them, are annoyed by them or are dvr-ing them out.. who are they benefiting? The too stupid or too lazy to not watch them? Well do you think that person is your target, just saying? IF you like watching commercials, sorry that wasn't meant as a jab, I watch commercials but not on television. I watch commercials on Ad Age (not even on TV, they are the top award picks of the week). HBO is a great example of this. Plus I pay for cable. It's not FREE, so give me my moneys worth. Yes this would cost people more, but the number of people who pay attention.. I bet will also be more.
• If ads are going to exist, then only the best should be allowed to stay. They should be beautiful, well thought out stories that last for up to two minutes. Only one commercial should be played at a time, not a series of them. These stories should be played once a week for a max of a month between programming and then disposed of. I don't want to memorize your commercial. I want it to teach me something new, entertain me, tell me a story, surprise me and then let me move on. I don't want to watch the same commercial 50 times like on Hulu. It actually makes me resent your brand to have to see the same commercial 50 times, even if I liked it the first time. If you think you can afford to run good ads only once for the super bow then you can afford to do it the rest of the year.
• A cure for no ads can be product placement. I've wanted product placement to replace ads for nearly 5 years, if not longer. I want to be able to pause the program, click on the screen and purchase anything I want. I want to hire the program's interior designer, buy from their grocer (Coborn Delivers?), see what they say the movie character eats, buy her shoes, the chair, the painting and so on. What better advertising then to see the product, hear about how it works and then see it on my favorite star? Let the product speak for itself. So what if this means you have to be a little more creative in the way you set up the studio. 
• News reporters want an idea of product placement for you? Don't read off of paper, read off the new iPad. Let us know who your local tailor or barber shop is. Where did you buy that cute makeup or suit. What a nice painting in the background, auction it off the WCCO website. This isn't demoralizing this is connecting your viewers to what they want. Positive marketing that isn't annoying it just calmly co-exists.
• I don't want ads to necessarily be in my face the way that Google AdSense is in my face. I don't want to search for something and then see it a hundred times. I want to know what similar people search for. I want to know what is hot, new, exciting, cutting edge and for sale. I want it brought to me and sold based on features. Teach me something, intrigue me, excite me about your brand and I will sell myself dammit.
• If you are a service and want to use advertising today, a tip: Make a bunch of video ads or postcards but do something different. Teach people about your service. Teach them how to be you in a short clip. They probably aren't going to replace you, they are going to hire you because they know that you know your shit. At the end of the clip add your logo and contact information then wait for the calls to roll in.

These ideas are only the beginning. You may hate them. You may hate me and they may never come to fruition but I stand behind them. Why because who would disagree with me and tell me that they actually want their sports or television show interrupted. The only reason you'd say yes is because you want a bathroom break. Am I wrong? Tell me why. Make your argument fact based please. I welcome it, if its a reasonable argument I may even join sides with you. Don't just tell me this is unrealistic, because its not. Unrealistic is thinking that you can force your brand down someones' throat.


Bravo to Gregg Litman for writing such a thought provoking post. Thanks for your insights. You can read Gregg Litman's guest post here.

Photo Credit Pink Sherbet Photography

Learn more about Listia from one of my blog posts, click here.

As always you are more then welcome to use any of my content, repost it, rewrite it, and broadcast it all I ask is that you link back to where you found it (http://interactivemedias.blogspot.com)

I would also love to hear YOUR comments, questions or concerns of my posts and reviews! What do you think, its ok if our opinions don't match up! Leave a comment or let me know what you would like to learn more about and maybe it will become my next blog post or video blog.

Also don't forget to subscribe to my video tutorials (on youtube or itunes) as well as subscribe to my blog posts on here so you can have the latest web tips, tricks and book reviews delivered directly to your inbox!

Thanks for reading!

--Desarae A. Veit
Agency Couture