HGTV & Lowes Cross the Chasm

As you might have noticed the sub-title of this blog is, "The Collision of Commerce & Media". The premise - even three years ago - was that the boundaries between advertising and editorial were falling due to the de facto incursion of manufacturers and retailers into the world of media, primarily through the existence of their websites.

This evolution - arguably revolution - has been obscured by the larger enthusiasm over "social media" but it hasn't been lost on companies like Scripps, who I believe tried to stem the tide through initiatives like owning their own home shopping network & getting into merchandising. Unfortunately, at least of those initiatives were unsuccessful and so there's been an uncomfortable peace where a kraftfoods.com can be a reasonable competitor to Food Networks' websites and one finds oneself in the situation where your advertisers are also your competitors. In other words, yet another factor conspiring against and eroding traditional media's business model.

Which is why I think it's great news to see a deal like the one described in AdAge today where HGTV and Lowe's have gotten together. The most insightful quote to me was the one where John Dailey, HGTV's VP of Ad Sales bluntly acknowledged the reality: "They [Lowe's] view themselves as a media platform, safe to say, and, yes, we certainly do too." Kudos to Scripps for recognizing that and being willing to play it out.

PS - There's some subtext in the article about how the deal allows everyone to "talk to the consumer" more efficiently that's pretty weak (unless we're supposed to read 'talk AT the consumer'), but let's charitably chalk that up to all parties - including the reporter - being afraid to write an entire article without paying tribute to the forces of social media. But that's a story for another day.