NATPE: The Marketing Message

It’s 12:51 a.m. and I’ve got my feet up after a full day of meeting mobile content producers, multiplatform executives, press delegates and … Jeff Zucker.

In a few hours, Jeff will deliver what is sure to be an inspiring and insightful keynote address to a room full of television pundits eager to hear about the future of this powerful medium we call television.

As it turns out, Sir Zucker (Jeff to close friends) also was here to present a special honor to his longtime mentor and friend, Bob Wright, chairman of GE and former president of NBC. The honor came in the form of the Brandon Tartikoff Legacy Award, which is meant to recognize leaders in television programming. Also accepting awards were Nancy Tellem of CBS Paramount Network Television Entertainment Group, Peter Roth of Warner Bros. Television and Mark Itkin of William Morris Agency.

What struck me about these awards is not only that the impetus behind them appeared appropriately genuine, but also that the recipients seemed truly honored. There are a lot of awards out there in televisionland, but these particular ones waxed truly poetic with sincere acceptances, honest appreciation and an air of gratitude rarely seen in awards presentations. Of course, I never knew Brandon Tartikoff, but after this heartfelt reception, I sure wish I had.

The rest of the day was devoted primarily to pitches and presentations from some of the leading mobile content providers in the Mobile++ segment of NATPE. Sitting with some friends from one of the leading branding agencies to the television market, I found it to be a familiar dynamic to watch the hawkers of well-funded, trailblazing technologies touting the fundamental benefits of their wares and claiming their piece of the television business economic pie.

Truly, it seemed as though we were transported back to the late 1990s, where presentations abounded touting the potential and possibilities of interactive television.

During these presentations, we often would be treated (and in some cases, we’d be the ones treating) to a display of all of the capabilities of iTV. Whoa—look at all the things you can activate through VBI! Every presentation was an exploration—or explosion—of everything available to the particular box we were demo-ing. Looking back, we made some pretty radical mistakes in pitching this business.

The truth is, we should have positioned our (or any) technology, not as an alternate or more compelling medium to traditional television, but rather complementary ... a marketing and promotional tool that helps (local or national) stations to drive audiences back to the core brand.

Like much of the mobile content demonstrations I saw today, we were showing everything (and I mean everything) you can do on that particular platform. Unfortunately, we didn’t learn until much later that, just because you can do something, doesn’t mean that you should.

Don’t get me wrong. Having the capability to broadcast news or information content on a mobile device is nice. But as a network affiliate or local station, if you can show me how to consistently drive eyeballs back to my channel … well, that’s better. A lot better.