don't freak out

When people can just change the channel by thinking about it due to their new TVoIP system with brainwave control functionality no-one’s going to watch any ads. Which will be a great thing in lots of ways but there’s valuable dollars in advertising that ultimately come back to fund good content between said ads. They are a crucial enabler of the content that we want to see.

I’m down with associative campaigns. Is there some other ad buzz word for this that I don’t know about? Perhaps its just program sponsorship? Anyway, commercials that are not about the products themselves but valuable pieces of video content or even a show that the company can support and shout about and bask in their reflected glow. “This show proudly brought to you by…” is nothing new but stronger, more direct relationships between the advertiser and the content creators are evolving where the companies can virtually become enablers or patrons of the idea, such as with TED. I use TED as an example as I’m only really talking about the web. Actual TV is rapidly fading into the background here.

All this has been happening for a while, with such things as BMW funding the Italian Job remake to promote the Mini but the point is that it seems to be more necessary to think of marketing in these terms as everyone switches off the traditional channels.

Sure everyone has different tastes, but it’s the spirit of thing that matters – perhaps we need to make it worth watching, or expect it to be ignored.