How to Approach Social Media? Pretend it’s 1949
An era of upheval: the dominant systems of broadcasting are scrambling. What is this new media that’s popping up? Everyone seems to be gravitating towards it, “traditional media” giants are getting pushed out. Brands wonder how they’ll have a lasting affect here; how can they stay in the discourse.
Worse yet, this new media is full of strange dynamics: New screen sizes? Alternating lines of resolution? New specialized technological jobs? Live audiences being broadcast? Unpredictable, regular people?
Of course, this isn’t the dawning of the social Web, but the beginning of TV networks’ full slate of programming sixty years ago: when there was enough critical mass to have four national networks, and the need arose to be able to fund the new technologies. Brands found how persuasive short demonstrations of their product were, and how dramatically they lifted sales.
In a great article posted this week, Let History Repeat Itself, Syracuse profesor Robert Thompson makes these associations brilliantly. Would Milton Berle chatting about Texaco with audience members be the same as paid blog posts today?
Even more to the point, brands in the golden age of television were ultimately responsible for funding technical development and quality programming. This allowed the technical development of television to contune advancing, as well as the narrative development, production quality, and dare I say: the user experience.
So as much as things change, they stay the same. Personalities from old media are helping drive new adoption, and brands have drastically new and dynamic ways to use lower technical barriers to bring people, perspectives, and personalities to demonstrate their products. And people creating new strategies for those brands, like me, need to know where we’ve been as a society using mass media, and how to combine the strategies from past eras into the better services for the ways technology and discourse can help people today.
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Interesting questions here Michael. My favorite brand/show interaction was Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. I was just a kid so had no idea what insurance was, so I focused on the cool animals and the pleasant host. The key aspects were world class content and unobtrusive advertising.
Whenever I see old clips of Milton Berle or other shows from that era I think that I like the content *despite* the ad discourse. The most important thing there was that the advertiser allowed the personality to be themselves as Uncle Milty was.
Interesting questions here Michael. My favorite brand/show interaction was Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. I was just a kid so had no idea what insurance was, so I focused on the cool animals and the pleasant host. The key aspects were world class content and unobtrusive advertising.
Whenever I see old clips of Milton Berle or other shows from that era I think that I like the content *despite* the ad discourse. The most important thing there was that the advertiser allowed the personality to be themselves as Uncle Milty was.
Interesting questions here Michael. My favorite brand/show interaction was Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. I was just a kid so had no idea what insurance was, so I focused on the cool animals and the pleasant host. The key aspects were world class content and unobtrusive advertising.
Whenever I see old clips of Milton Berle or other shows from that era I think that I like the content *despite* the ad discourse. The most important thing there was that the advertiser allowed the personality to be themselves as Uncle Milty was.
Interesting questions here Michael. My favorite brand/show interaction was Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. I was just a kid so had no idea what insurance was, so I focused on the cool animals and the pleasant host. The key aspects were world class content and unobtrusive advertising.
Whenever I see old clips of Milton Berle or other shows from that era I think that I like the content *despite* the ad discourse. The most important thing there was that the advertiser allowed the personality to be themselves as Uncle Milty was.
Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom is a great example — makes me think of all the stadium naming rights of the past 20 years. And of course your larger point about whether that familiarity bred disposition when it came time to purchase is valid.
The big difference now is that when a brand facilitates entertainment, information or utility, the presence is actionable: you can find out more about the brand instantly and become a part of that discourse.
On your Uncle Milty point, I think what allowed personalities to be themselves is the one-to-one match between the brand that pays for the show and the producer. In television's “golden age” you were creating content with one sponsor to answer to — but generally you wouldn't get sponsored unless there was a general consensus between the programming, audience, and brand. Through the scatter era, shows and network entertainment departments are creating a programming slate based on what they think a number of advertisers *may* be interested in buying spots on. This just being one dynamic that has killed conventional television programs.
Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom is a great example — makes me think of all the stadium naming rights of the past 20 years. And of course your larger point about whether that familiarity bred disposition when it came time to purchase is valid.
The big difference now is that when a brand facilitates entertainment, information or utility, the presence is actionable: you can find out more about the brand instantly and become a part of that discourse.
On your Uncle Milty point, I think what allowed personalities to be themselves is the one-to-one match between the brand that pays for the show and the producer. In television's “golden age” you were creating content with one sponsor to answer to — but generally you wouldn't get sponsored unless there was a general consensus between the programming, audience, and brand. Through the scatter era, shows and network entertainment departments are creating a programming slate based on what they think a number of advertisers *may* be interested in buying spots on. This just being one dynamic that has killed conventional television programs.
Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom is a great example — makes me think of all the stadium naming rights of the past 20 years. And of course your larger point about whether that familiarity bred disposition when it came time to purchase is valid.
The big difference now is that when a brand facilitates entertainment, information or utility, the presence is actionable: you can find out more about the brand instantly and become a part of that discourse.
On your Uncle Milty point, I think what allowed personalities to be themselves is the one-to-one match between the brand that pays for the show and the producer. In television's “golden age” you were creating content with one sponsor to answer to — but generally you wouldn't get sponsored unless there was a general consensus between the programming, audience, and brand. Through the scatter era, shows and network entertainment departments are creating a programming slate based on what they think a number of advertisers *may* be interested in buying spots on. This just being one dynamic that has killed conventional television programs.
Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom is a great example — makes me think of all the stadium naming rights of the past 20 years. And of course your larger point about whether that familiarity bred disposition when it came time to purchase is valid.
The big difference now is that when a brand facilitates entertainment, information or utility, the presence is actionable: you can find out more about the brand instantly and become a part of that discourse.
On your Uncle Milty point, I think what allowed personalities to be themselves is the one-to-one match between the brand that pays for the show and the producer. In television's “golden age” you were creating content with one sponsor to answer to — but generally you wouldn't get sponsored unless there was a general consensus between the programming, audience, and brand. Through the scatter era, shows and network entertainment departments are creating a programming slate based on what they think a number of advertisers *may* be interested in buying spots on. This just being one dynamic that has killed conventional television programs.