Brands move from TV to connect with customers
Michael Urlocker notes that Australian brewer Foster’s is redirecting its US ad spend from TV broadcast to interactive media. While the amount is relatively small ($5 million), Michael 
sees this as symbolic of an ongoing disruption of traditional broadcast media by new interactive models. He cites a number of sources who reach similar conclusions.
There’s a brand story here, too. I see Foster’s move as part of a disruption that extends far beyond the TV broadcast model. It extends to brands themselves, which for the last 50 years have been heavily predicated on TV advertising modalities. Brands have tremendous capacity to “create customers”—in Peter Drucker’s original sense—but not when they’re hobbled by the top-down, one-way broadcast model.
Brands are not part of the pitch
Today’s commercial TV networks often reduce television to a pitch-box, and that’s bad news for brands. Brands are not part of the pitch. They’re a handshake, a hug, or in extreme moments of good fortune, a kiss.
Plus, a pitch-box makes a terrible brand platform. It goes nowhere. No wonder people are tuning out. The real deal is found in products that work, in companies that listen, and in brands big enough for two.
Thankfully, the brand model is not tethered to the broadcast model.
Interactive media and “disruptor brands”
Foster’s is certainly not alone in its new media direction. The move from TV to interactive media coincides with a reinvention of brands as tools for innovation and value creation. We will soon see “disruptor brands” that will accelerate this process, leaving only the laggards (and losers) bound to TV.
