2011 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 Carbon Limited Edition. General Motors©

How would you like to build your own Corvette engine, at the plant? Or maybe you’d like to badge your Subaru the way a Girl Scout might adorn her uniform? Or maybe you’d like to play a version of the old classic “Slug Bug”? These are some of the latest tactics employed by some “old” automotive brands to win the attention of new customers.

Let’s start with what could be the ultimate badge of Corvette enthusiasm: Building your own engine. GM is offering customers who order a 2011 Corvette Z06 or ZR1 to choose an option that allows them to help assemble their car’s LS7 or LS9 engine at the General Motors Performance Build Center in Wixom, Michigan. The retail price is a whopping $5,800 — which is more than a fully assembled 385-horsepower GM Performance ZZ4 crate engine. But that gets you in to build the engine under the supervision of a skilled technician and you will also receive the usual warranty. The customer has to travel to the plant on their own nickel, of course.

Read More From Our Partner, Forbes.com:

World’s Most Beautiful CarsHighest Quality Cars of 2010Cars That Drivers Love Best
Corvette buyers can also attend driving school in Arizona or Nevada, watch their car being built at the Corvette assembly plant in Kentucky, and even take delivery of their new car at the National Corvette Museum. But these ideas are not at all revolutionary. When I was at Chrysler we had similar programs for Viper owners. I have to admit that I think there are plenty of Corvette fans, not to mention lots of wannabes, who are going to jump at this opportunity. Who wouldn’t love to be able to say that they built their engine and get a badge on the manifold to prove it. If Chevy can charge a little extra for this, as well, more power to it.

Speaking of badges, Subaru has introduced a novel idea with its Badge of Ownership. In a social network-like fashion where we join groups or “like” various ideas or products, Subaru has found a way to incorporate this personalization on your car without making it look like a Times Square billboard.

The badges are less vehicle-oriented and more about representing one of your personal interests, while also telling the world how many Subaru’s you’ve owned. You can badge your vehicle with one of many representative icons, from snowboarding to music, animals, the environment, or even to proclaim your sexual orientation (yes, a rainbow for the LGBT community). Subaru is even asking for suggestions for new badges. I wouldn’t doubt if this goes viral among Scooby fans, as the badges are catchy.

VW was hoping for a viral hit with its Punch-Dub game, a “reboot” of the original “Punch Buggy” game of the 70’s. It launched this campaign during this year’s Super Bowl, though we have not yet seen too many people punching the Online you could add this to your social networks, earn points, and win contests. While it is unclear whether this really took off, it was a clever way to try and extend the brand experience. The television commercials were fun, including the one for the VW minivan taking a tour through the neighborhood so the kids can watch the pedestrians sock each other.

This was reported in the NYTimes today and I have to say that I am flabbergasted! Shocked that they would call this “branding” and confounded as to why they would choose this as a way to resurrect the brand. Calling your car a Chevy is one of the most flattering things you can do. It shows a personal relationship with your car. Like when people call me “Jules” instead of Julie. Those people know me well, we have a kinship…to make it a penalty ($0.25 in the “swear jar” for those GM employees who use the word Chevy instead of Chvrolet) is ludicrous and shows a complete lack of the emotional connection of the car and its owner.

The story stated that an email had gone out saying that the use of the word Chevy is no longer acceptable…all in the name of branding. The story also made some great points about other brands that have nicknames…Coke (Coca-Cola), Mac (Apple), and KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken). All of those are great examples of brands that have become strong enough to warrant their place in personal slang – a sign of real ownership and love by its fans. If this is the kind of work that the “newest” agency is doing, then I really fear for the brand.

But I’d probably feel worse if I actually owned a Chevy…

But then I received the invitation to the Facebook group mentioned above. And it was sent to me from someone I know really well. Somehow that made the USA Today survey feel that much more significant. But to boycott gas, or even BP is not to just hurt “big oil” but the thousands of small business, mom and pop franchisee owners that run the individual stations. And what about the tourist industry? Are we willing to sacrifice them too? Or are you and the family going to bicycle your way to your weekend vacation spot?

The answer is obviously in new technologies and the scaling of these technologies. It is in the hope of the Chevy Volt, of the fixes for and continued success of the Toyota Prius, and of all the new vehicles that will use alternative fuels. The unintended consequences of trying to punish oil by curtailing travel without a viable alternative is in many ways, irresponsible. So is the lack of prevention that allowed the oil to leak in the first place. But let’s face it, any of the big oil companies could have been the one in this position. And the real concern should be first, cleaning up this mess and then how to prevent future spills.
Then, let’s decide how best to move forward progressively. Going cold turkey does not seem like the answer as too many people are affected negatively from these rash decisions. Does shutting down oil drilling help gas prices? Make energy cleaner? Make us less dependent on cultures whose business practices we disagree with? Are we best served by punishing, fining, boycotting or even shutting down BP (or an oil co for that matter) or by perhaps using this tragedy to engage BP in development of alternatives that can be brought to bear more quickly?
BP’s public perception has obviously been greatly damaged by this event and they will likely be very open to going above and beyond to correct it. So, can we not take this negative and turn it into a positive by using this public awareness and energy to get BP and their counterparts to the table to not only prevent future tragedies but to figure out alternatives? Or have we become a society so bent on punishment, fining and regulation that we can’t begin to trust that a large company might want to use its vast resources to find alternatives that are good for the environment, the economy and themselves too? Just food for thought as you sit in your car on your way out of town this weekend….

http://www.lavarow.com/2010/05/03/julie-roehm-talks-innovation-autos-as-social-platforms/

Toyota’s response was typical: A calculated surprise that betrayed a more general confusion. The initial statement offered to the media read, in part, “Lexus’ extensive vehicle testing provides a good indication of how our vehicles perform and we are confident that the GX meets our high safety standards.” This textbook case of corporate blah-blah-blah was followed up with a promise to retest all its SUV’s and Crossovers, while its PR staff worked overtime giving reporters vague answers to questions about the situation, most of which boiled down to, “We don’t know.”

Frankly, from someone who watches marketing and PR responses as carefully as I do, this was a bigger train wreck than the problem itself. Toyota did manage an admission by the end of the week and we can consider this a step in the right direction — at least the company seems to have learned something from the $16.375 million fine levied earlier this month by the NHTSA, punishment for its failure to notify the agency of “sticky pedal” defects. A recall of the GX was then issued on Monday, and regardless of the alacrity displayed by the engineering side of the business, I still think Toyota hasn’t mastered the art of professional crisis management as well as it should by now.

I have written a few times in this blog about steps that could be taken by Toyota to mitigate these issues before they spiral out of control. I keep watching to see if its response strategy will improve, yet I’m still waiting. Toyota and Lexus still have the same, lame Facebook pages that boast over 160,000 aggregate fans, but are rarely updated — a missed opportunity. The Toyota Twitter account has gone from 18,000 followers last month to just over 20,000 as of today, but by comparison Ford has nearly 30,000, and Southwest Airlines blows them out of the sky at 1,000,000. Toyota does have information on the recall on its Web sites and seem to make it easy to contact the company with questions or issues, but this is pretty basic stuff. Where’s the real outreach to a public that has grown legitimately skeptical?

If Toyota simply asked for people’s thoughts, ideas on how to better engage with them and re-assure them — even if it decides not to take the advice — I think the company would be well on their way to shedding some of their cold, closed, uncaring, image. I hope they are at least tracking public reaction via social listening tools, a simple first step towards being proactive.

As part of my current work as a marketing consultant I meet with agencies and vendors that work for Toyota. Just the other day I was with such an agency that serves some of Toyota’s markets outside of the U.S. In discussing this issue with them, I kept coming back to, “Why are they not being radically transparent?”

The response from the agency was that the powers that be in Japan do not allow U.S. management to do so. Certainly, I can understand the legal implications of providing too much information. These days it seems like everyone is suing Toyota. But I still believe that the long-term cost of all this ill will is going to be far more expensive than a little more transparency, even if that may result in a few more short-term dollars spent in settlements.

“Radical transparency” means going above and beyond the expected levels of communication and response, in a way that is audacious and shocking in its clarity. For instance, a couple of years ago, Jet Blue found itself in the hot seat for stranding flyers on one of its planes for an obscene amount of time. It responded in a way that was so out of character for corporations that the reconciliation effort spawned huge positive sentiment, overshadowing the initial consumer anger. First Jet Blue published a full-page letter of apology in major newspapers taking complete responsibility without trying to offer excuses. They it committed to drastic improvements and backed it up with something they called the “Jet Blue Customer Bill of Rights.” Then it began to publish regular results on its improvements and setbacks. Good or bad, we knew it was trying, knew how and what it was doing to improve, and as customers we felt kept in the loop.

I witnessed this issue first-hand a decade ago. The Ford Explorer tire debacle began while I was at Ford and I watched it unfold. Ford struggled with these same issues of transparency, and that situation wasn’t even as cut-and-dry as what Toyota has been dealing with, as Firestone was seen as at least equally culpable. It’s no secret that Explorer sales have struggled each year since the crisis.

Today we live in a world where opinions flow instantly and can gain a volume and intensity that’s downright dangerous, much more so than Ford experienced in 2000. Social networking platforms like Twitter have forever changed the rules for crisis management. In the situation Toyota — and now its revered Lexus brand — faces, where the blame is clear and concern is valid, there’s no reason to think things will wind up any differently. I just hope that someone in Japan realizes that protecting its closed-off culture in a world that’s embraced open, radical transparency will never inspire or engender trust. But then again, should yet another disaster come their way, perhaps the third time will be the charm.

There’s a time and place for tactics, for strategy and for experimentation. I think it’s perfectly reasonable for a company to test certain channels without a broad corporate ………………read full article by Lee Odden

My take on it

“Social media without strategy is like cooking without a recipe. Sometimes it works but sometimes its disaster. With a recipe, at least you know what ingredients to have before you get started. Along the way it’s great to improvise to make it your own but without at least a plan, you end up wandering aimlessly.”

This is just one of Toyota’s latest requests to its loyal (and not so loyal) public. In recent days, Toyota has jumped on the social marketing bandwagon with some gusto. Prior to their much-discussed recall, Toyota had what I would consider a rather lackluster effort in the social marketing arena.

Today however, you can go to www.toyotaconversations.com to follow the latest happenings on Toyota, from Toyota and others. This is a branded channel on TweetMeme that was produced with the help of Federated Media. When you come here you can read their latest posts from their Twitter page, www.twitter.com/Toyota, as well as video, press releases and some feeds from larger publications.

For instance, just last week I found the latest article from the Washington Post and USA Today talking about NHTSA’s belief that the latest runaway Prius incident in New York was due to driver error. There was also an article on their “loyalty” deals (0% financing on select models) as well as several others talking about reasons to buy a Toyota and more.

The tone is, well, decidedly positive. Is that in line with what’s going on elsewhere in the web?

The LA Times covered this story too (March 2, 2010 Toyota, Looking for Positive Spins, turns to Twitter) and suggested that Toyota may be filtering out some “unwanted” criticism. But Toyota’s reps at Federated Media replied by saying that “Negative stories are not filtered out of ToyotaConversations in any way whatsoever except for offensive content and the like”.

Given the commentary to my last two Toyota blogs on AOL Autos (Toyota’s Female Problem: Women Buyers Considering Other Brands, Some Revolutionary Ideas For Toyota To Right Itself), I would guess that those are the kind of comments that they are filtering, likely falling into the “and the like” category.

We have all talked endlessly that Toyota’s biggest mistake (outside of some obvious engineering and quality control issues) was their handling and communication, or lack thereof, of the situation. Rule #1 in any good crisis management campaign is to control your message. Saying nothing may seem like taking the high road but in this day and age, particularly for a large, public company, all it serves to do is to fuel the speculation for what’s REALLY going on.

So, entering into the social marketing fray, particularly Twitter, is the right thing to do, even if they were a bit late. It has worked for other brands and it has worked against brands too.

Take the latest high profile Twitter issues that have erupted in the transportation segment. Filmmaker Kevin Smith was accused of being too fat for Southwest Airlines seats and promptly Tweeted his case that resulted in a big black eye for the airline company. But, Southwest handled it quickly by responding in the same medium. This was made more successful due in part to the fact that Southwest already had a strong commitment to the social landscape and has over 1 million Twitter followers. @Toyota as of today has just over 18,000.

The point is, without a strong understanding and presence in the Twitter and social landscape, it is very hard to get on top of these issues and harder yet to seed good will before bad has a chance to root.

To further prove this point, I searched for companies or groups that have analyzed the Twitter activity of Toyota since the recall debacle began and found a good analysis on Buzz Study (http://infegy.com/buzzstudy/what-happened-with-toyota/). A few of their slides are transposed here (Dated March 12, 2010).

First you can see that the quantity of posts has almost quadrupled up to what BuzzStudy says was a highpoint of 120,000 posts in one day.

Then looking at the left side you can see that there has been about a 30% decrease in Toyota sentiment that occurred right after the first incident.

You will note in this next illustration that this is a downward trend, not the end of the story, at least not yet. So expect to see a continued downward slope for a while.

This slide is one I would recommend all Toyota Marketing and PR executives keep on their dashboards. It is a classification of the buzz going on about Toyota, by social site. Obviously, Twitter is the place to start. But Facebook has potential. Unfortunately, while Toyota does have a Facebook page, they very rarely update it and therefore are violating Rule #1 again…they have lost control of the message there.

Finally, I think it is pretty clear that in this technological age, you can run but you cannot hide and while Toyota is starting to approach the problem in the right way (in fact, the buildout of their Toyota.com/recall is a good example of a lot of great info refreshed frequently, but it shouldn’t be the only place), they are lacking that truth and transparency aspect that people are clamoring for from them. Like it or not, this is happening more on social media sites rather than on manufacturer websites.

They have their Twitter pages and Facebook pages but they don’t appear focused on them. The tone is far different from that of the rest of the ecosystem, which only helps to solidify the idea that they are presenting a message out of balance. These social media spaces can serve them well if they show more of an effort towards personalization and transparency. Brands do not win over crowds by simply showing up. Today you have to be a true participant if you want people to “Follow Me.”

Source: AOL Autos

The story just keeps getting worse and worse for Toyota in terms of announcements, Congressional hearings and a litany of bad press. On the marketing side, many of us, including yours truly, have offered thoughts and ideas on how to learn from Toyota’s mistakes should your company find itself in similar problematic circumstances. We have also opined on what Toyota should do next and of course listened to Toyota talk about how their loyalty has actually INCREASED (Ad Age “The Cult of Toyota”, March 1, 2010) since the recall announcement, at least as measured by their customers comments and additions on Facebook and followers on Twitter.

I could go into great detail about how this use of their social strategy is a day late and a dollar short. But, hey, they get props for at least going there eventually (Honda, by way of comparison, has over 4 times as many followers as measured in a similar way). And truth be told, it is in what the customers are saying, not any of us, that matter at the end of the day. The first indicator of pain or progress was last week’s announcements of the February auto sales performance. Toyota lost only 8 points of share, year over year, but last years levels were the worst in its recent history. Still, it’s not bad considering the mayhem. This would not look so bad if it weren’t for the fact that Ford gained a whopping 43% year over year (yes, over a low base too, but still!).

Why is that? Dan Neely, my friend and founder of Networked Insights, a social listening company that tracks over 17 million blogs, social platforms and websites for a total sample size of 300 million people globally (of which 180 million are US-based), performed a little social listening analysis to see if we could make sense of it. Take a look at this: The words size and boldness reflect the frequency and strength of usage amongst the over 17 million sites.

So, as usual, we Americans are far more likely to have polarizing viewpoints with the common usage of both “love” and “sucks”. We can see from the above that with regard to Toyota, people in the US tend to be focused on issues of reliability and quality, same as our global brethren. We also seem to breathe Honda in the same breath likely because there are similarities to be drawn with the Japanese OEM’s but also because it seems that Honda was the last standing automotive brand who’s virtues are also firmly and almost solely based on the idea of quality and reliability…at least before the Honda recall that was announced last week. (Note that these slides are reflective of listening trends from the week after the Toyota recall).

Does age matter? Yes. We know that Toyota serves all ages and the Scion brand and Prius have actually pushed Toyota’s average buyer age lower. Taking a look again at the Toyota data here, it seems as if the similarities lie in the use of “quality” and “reliability” again. But the more mature Americans are far more critical with the frequent occurrence of the use of words like “junk”, “failed”, and “judged”. It seems the younger audience is more likely to forgive and move on than the more mature of us.

But the most important slide in my estimation is this one. Gender. And no, it is not because I am a woman, but it is because of my years in the automotive sector at both Ford and DaimlerChrysler which taught me that while men make up just over half of all auto purchases, women INFLUENCE over 80% of them. So, let’s pay attention here. Both genders speak of “quality” and “issues” but the men are speaking more frequently of “Honda”, “fix”, and “love” while the women talk of “Ford” most often and critical conversations include words like “report”, “failure” and “damage”.

Call it a coincidence, but I think that this data was an early indicator of the February sales trends. Ford was the clear winner because it has great products, has not taken TARP funds and is not managed by our government. They also benefit from the fact that more WOMEN have decided that they are the brand to consider, even over Honda.

So, maybe the best piece of advice for Toyota left unsaid so far: pay attention to the women and use your marketing forces to regain their trust. Understand that women are not one size fits all. They are daughters, grandmothers, mothers, single women, married women, divorced women, blue-collar women, white-collar women, rich, poor and everything in between. Emotion, trust, facts, assurance and authenticity matter a lot to them. Find out where they are having these conversations that have been captured in these slides and work to turn it around. Because if you don’t, Ford will. Oh, what a feeling

Link to article

Upfront Preview: Behind the Bust

Auction-based systems to buy TV time were supposed to kill the upfront. What went wrong? And is there still something to learn?

Feb 22, 2010 – Steve McClellan

It seemed like a good idea at the time back in 2005 – scrapping the upfront marketplace and instead making national TV time available on an electronic auction platform for advertisers to bid on. At least it did to Julie Roehm, who was then director of marketing communications for the Jeep, Dodge and Chrysler division of DaimlerChrysler, and a handful of other big national marketers.

Roehm commanded a lot of attention when she presented her radical proposal for rearranging the TV buying process at the Association of National Advertisers TV Forum five years ago — as would any executive with roughly $2 billion in budgetary clout. But it became clear quickly that the major broadcast networks weren’t interested for fear of devaluing their inventory. Randy Falco, a top NBC executive at the time, called the suggested switch “ridiculous.” Other nets made it clear they felt the same.

Ultimately, most of the major cable networks also refused to go along, citing similar concerns. The tests that followed in 2007 with eBay, which was chosen over Google after an RFP process to build an auction-based national TV trading platform, followed a game plan with drastically reduced goals. Replacing the upfront was by then no longer in the cards, and marketers tried to position the auction option as an alternative to the scatter market.

But even with those scaled-back ambitions, eBay and a core group of marketers joining Chrysler that included Home Depot, HP, Intel, Toyota and Brown-Forman couldn’t generate much excitement from the rest of the industry for the auction proposition.

In June 2008, after little more than a year of trials, eBay called it quits with a terse statement that shed little light on what went wrong: “We have been refocusing our resources on our core marketplace business and have determined that this initiative did not warrant continued time and attention.”

Around the time that eBay rolled out its system — spring 2007 — Google TV launched its own TV auction platform using Dish TV inventory and, importantly, access to Dish set-top box viewing data. Google TV has since added a limited menu of inventory from some NBC Universal cable properties and a handful of other cable nets such as Game Show Network, Hallmark and CBS College Sports. That system is still up and running, but it’s widely perceived as a market for smaller advertisers with shorter-term planning strategies and direct response ads.

Google declined to disclose what percentage of its ad sales are for DRTV, but that’s precisely the market that some agency executives believe the auction model could successfully serve in the national TV space.

“DRTV might be the best application,” says Steve Farella, CEO of New York-based TargetCast tcm. “The way it is sold and bought now is in fact a manual exchange.” Farella estimates that perhaps 5 percent of national cable inventory is slotted for DRTV. Since “it’s hard to call everyone,” he adds, an automated auction exchange would benefit both buyers and sellers.

DRTV market aside, why is “auction” such a dirty word in the mainstream network TV space? Lots of reasons, buyers say. “There’s a place for auctions but not for offline,” says Rino Scanzoni, chief investment officer, WPP’s GroupM. “Auctions work when you have extremely large supplier and inventory bases. You also need limited parameters; you can’t weigh 30 different factors.”

In the online world where there are 20,000-plus commercial Web sites, Scanzoni explains, “That creates an abundance of supply that can’t be absorbed by the advertising demand for those sites, so the opportunities for exchanges become more significant.”

In the national TV space, where the supply of inventory is much more limited, an auction system would have the effect of raising prices — clearly not in the interest of clients. Scanzoni also notes that network TV clients each have separate pricing bases, which have been established over time and are tied to factors such as the number of years a client has been doing business with a network, the size of inventory packages and to what extent they are spread over different properties within a media owner’s portfolio.

Roehm, now a strategic marketing consultant, has no regrets about her upfront pot stirring. Quite the contrary: “It’s one of the things I’m most proud of doing,” she boasts. She acknowledges coming out “guns ablazing” at the process when she proposed a new TV ad time buying model based on a Nasdaq auction-type process—an approach that she admits now was ambitious.

Upfront Preview: Behind the Bust

Auction-based systems to buy TV time were supposed to kill the upfront. What went wrong? And is there still something to learn?

Feb 22, 2010

But the bigger point, notes Roehm, was to get a dialogue going to address problems that many marketers had (and continue to have) with the upfront process, including the lack of flexibility, arbitrary price increases and the fact that advertisers are often forced to buy time in lower-rated and unwanted programs in order to obtain access to premium content. “How it all shook out was less important,” she says. “For me it was more important to get like-minded people to change things up a bit, or at least give it a try.”

Roehm came to realize that some big long-time advertisers who had relatively low network prices would not accept the auction process. Procter & Gamble, she notes, wasn’t interested: “They felt they were going to get a better deal by not having to play with everybody else.”

And though she now believes that auctions are not essential, automated exchanges of some sort could help wring waste and inefficiency out of the buying process. “The process hasn’t evolved to the point I personally would have hoped for,” Roehm adds. “But the medium is changing. Look at the money being spent in digital now. That’s struck a balance that didn’t exist five years ago.”

Others agree, including a number of agency executives who see a role for automation moving forward. “We are on the eve of a significant reinvention” of the TV buying process, explains Tracey Scheppach, svp and video innovation director at Publicis Groupe’s Starcom. It’s a reinvention, she adds, that is based on data, addressability and automation.

And that’s why Scheppach says “there are pieces of the Google TV system that we love.” It’s just not the auction part, which is a non-starter for big long-time TV advertisers whose pricing leverage accumulated over time “goes right out the window.”

That said, Google’s data “is fabulous” adds Scheppach, “and they have outstanding analytics. But the flexibility to move off the auction model to a more advantageous business model just isn’t there.”

Google has no plans to move away from the auction model anytime soon, says Steve Stukenborg, senior project manager, Google TV Ads. “It’s really the one way you can buy Google TV Ads, and it’s been really successful. We really believe in it.”

It’s hard to tell how successful it’s been because Google TV does not release sales data for the service. Stukenborg says he understands that many existing advertisers have historical pricing relationships with networks. But part of Google’s mission is to bring new advertisers to the medium who don’t have those relationships. It says about 30 percent of its clients are first-time TV advertisers. “We borrowed the auction model from online and online technology,” he notes.

Some agency executives counter that that’s the problem. “The essence of TV is completely different from the online model where you can continue to add space and optimize page views,” and where demand doesn’t outstrip supply, says Craig Woerz, managing partner at planning and buying agency Media Storm.

Brand advertisers in traditional TV frequently require certain pod positions or particular programs or times coupled with a precise mix of networks. That’s an environment where auction models don’t compute, adds Woerz. “As an industry, we sometimes tend to gravitate to the new shiny thing until it’s not shiny anymore, and then we head to another one. That’s what the whole ad auction thing was all about,” he says.

Antony Young, CEO at Publicis Groupe’s Optimedia, agrees with Scheppach that the industry is ripe for reinvention, which he argues hurts the prospects for the widespread adoption of an auction model. “Auctions work when things are stable, but clients are questioning whether we’re doing it right,” he contends, noting issues such as shortfalls in the current ratings system, increasing viewer fragmentation and buying ad packages across multiple video platforms. “The auction mechanism isn’t really going to address all those issues.”

But like Farella, Young believes there is a limited role, potentially, for an auction model in the TV space. He likens it to the different choices available to buy stocks, with some traders preferring full-service brokerage firms while others are satisfied with E*Trade. “If you’re a marketer and you know what you want to do and want to get there at the lowest possible cost,” says Young, an auction exchange could work.

Roehm wasn’t the first executive to propose an auction system for buying TV ads. Before it imploded a decade ago, energy firm Enron proposed its own auction setup, which never got off the ground. With little support from major broadcast and cable networks, the model would seem to have limited application for mainstream national TV.

Of course, with Google involved, one can’t easily dismiss the effort. After all, the company knows a thing or two about revolutionizing certain media sectors.

Read Adweek article