In another article on CIL's "Paint Chip Names For Men," The Winnipeg Free Press had this to say:

If you've ever hemmed and hawed for hours over a paint colour you know that finding the right colour is no small feat. When you factor in another person, the job becomes that more difficult. Being able to have one colour with is and hers' names is a great idea. It might even save a few relationships!
Imagine the conversation at the paint store on a Saturday afternoon; "How about this colour called Fairytale Green?" asks the wife.
"No way I'm painting my games room Fairytale Green", answers the husband. "How about this colour called Mo Money?"
It's the same colour, so it's win-win.
If you've ever battled with your kids or teens about paint colours for their rooms, perhaps giving your chosen colour a different name would clinch the deal. Instead of Fairytale Green, perhaps something like "Slime' for the kids or Green hair for the teens, for example. Whatever gets the job done.
If nothing else, the new colour line for men will help us see things from another perspective, which is always a good thing. Who knows, we might even learn a thing or two about each other in the process.

Rather than displacing television, the internet, including social media is doing an excellent job of building the medium.

From an article titled, “7 Things You Need to Know About Social TV Right Now,’ the writer provides proof:

Back in the summer of 2009, we tracked everything from Sonia Sotomayor (then a nominee for the Supreme Court) to "Glee" to Major League Baseball to "True Blood."
Over time, it dawned on us that more than anything else, TV was driving social. Sotomayor would trend on Twitter only when her confirmation hearings were being televised; a specific team would trend because it was doing great (or sucking) in the game being broadcast at that very moment on ESPN; during prime-time hours in the U.S. and the U.K., Twitter's trending topics list would be all but taken over by TV-related chatter.

Why is this? In a word, behaviour.

Social TV is about watching TV with other people -- think of "50s-era family and friends gathered around an old Magnavox console to catch "I Love Lucy." Only now the living room has gone national.

In fact, it’s reversing problems such as time-shifting.

"We did a survey of our 10,000-person TV-fan panel last year," said TVGuide.com's Tanner, "and what we found is that 20% of them said they are watching more live TV specifically to avoid "social spoilers.'"

It’s not just TV that’s benefiting from social media, but brand campaigns running on TV as well, such as Old Spice. The brand was resurrected on television and only somewhat later extended to social media. However, had there not been a huge spend on TV, the social media effort wouldn’t have even been considered.

Pepsi learned this lesson the hard way last year when they shifted much of their budget away from TV to social media. Pepsi is now in third place behind Diet Coke.

So, contrary to the current crop of vested interest �experts’ claiming that traditional media such as TV will give way to social media and that, once again, advertising as we know it is dead, the opposite is happening.

Why is this? Why does TV continue to be so dominate? I think there are a couple of reasons. For one, it’s not about the conversation, it’s about what causes the conversation. And TV is really, really good at that.

For another reason, and not to belabour the point, it’s about behaviour.

People understand the internet differently than other forms of media. For one thing other than your hookup, the content is largely free. For another it’s an information medium first, whether that’s checking up on friends or family, or finding out the latest info or price on something you’re interested in.

People fan brands online mainly to get deals. They don’t recommend brands because they like the brand so much as they like their friends and want them to benefit from what’s on offer.

As a CEO of an online media company recently wrote about in Ad Age:

It's time to face the reality that the Internet sucks as a branding medium. I know that statement will rile up a few people, but I am starting to believe that the Internet may not be the right medium for brand development, at least in its current form. Trust me, it doesn't help my business if TV dollars don't come online, but it appears that online advertising is destined to become the greatest direct response medium in history and the greatest branding disappointment ever. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.

The thing is, as an advertising medium, the internet and social media have their own value proposition and purpose. It’s an arrow in the quiver, not the whole quiver. It’s up to smart marketers to integrate these tools in the most effective way possible, based on an idea that can be executed across platforms.

Apart from pretty much everybody roundly disproving that the rise of digital means the death of TV, Deloitte’s “State of Media Democracy” survey says that 71% of America rates watching TV as their favourite media activity. And 86% say that TV advertising has the most impact on their buying decisions.

Some highlights:

• Despite the continued growth of access to television content through other channels, with more than half of U.S. consumers preferring to watch their favorite shows on their home TV system.
• Nearly three-quarters of consumers prefer to watch their favorite TV shows live — even given a variety of other options, including recording systems or online video service.
• TV programming continues to be the most discussed content, ahead of social networking sites, music, websites and movies.
• Flat-panel TV ownership has increased dramatically, with 59% of households now owning at least one.

TV and traditional advertising sells. Digital is a nice compliment in extending the sell. That is, as long as you’ve got a good idea.

Based on free user created content, selling user profile information and some weird notion that it's going to be an advertising midas, Facebook is valued at $50 to $75b. Following the lemming run, there's now a horde of internet start ups solely being valued on their potential to generate advertising revenue. Yet, the internet continues to suck as an advertising medium. Banner ads average one click in a thousand. Facebook's click through is an anemic .05% and possibly less. And what do internet start ups do in order to build brand and create awareness? They don't advertise on the web, they advertise on the Super Bowl. Talk about faith in the industry.

Hate to burst the bubble, but:

If there is a bubble, then advertising is fueling it, but not as it did 11 years ago. Rather than glitzy ad campaigns pumping stock prices, it's the hope of advertising as a source of revenue that is swelling companies' paper worth. Beneath that hope is the perhaps unconscious belief that the largesse of marketers is infinite, an all-too-convenient forgetting that big advertisers are bureaucratic and increasingly austere when it comes to how they spend. They, and their agencies, are not Medicis for the digital era who want to spend their days funding sociology experiments.

Read more.

Another survey reported on by Mashable, "Contrarian Survey Shows Advertisers Ditching Digital for TV," shows that marketing companies continue to buy up traditional broadcast at the expense of digital.

Strata, a Chicago-based customized media management agency, polled 100 agency clients this month and found that TV is still the dominant medium — 44% of respondents said they are most focused on television above other media. That’s a 24% jump over the previous quarter. Digital was second with 21.1% while radio netted 15.6%, a 75% jump from the third quarter. The figure for digital was actually down from 26% in 3Q, as agencies expressed disappointment with digital advertising’s efficacy.

However, the online world continues to grow, as illustrated in a NYT article:

The number of people online naturally keeps growing. As of June 2010 there were 1.97 billion Internet users worldwide, with 825.1 million of them in Asia, 475.1 million in Europe and 266.2 million in North America.

Social media continues to grow at a fast pace. An estimated 25 billion Twitter messages were sent through the service last year, and the company added over 100 million users. Facebook also saw record numbers, reaching 600 million users. It’s amazing to think that Facebook started 2010 with 350 million users.

So, what gives?

Social media is still being proven out and soft metrics aren't helping the case. In fact, the best socmed case last year was Old Spice. And that really wasn't a testament to the power of social, rather TV. Social media was tagged on well after TV had made the campaign famous. And a coupon did the rest.

With a click through rate of .5% or less, banner ads suck.

And although search represents half the online marketing spend and is necessary, lets face it, search is boring.

But I think the most important point is being overlooked.

The mindset and behavior of people online is much different from other media. With traditional broadcast, we're used to the advertising paying for the content, so it's acceptable and in some cases, like the Super Bowl, we look forward to the ads.

Online is free. Advertising was never an integral component. And display advertising is super annoying, if noticed at all. Also, we tend to skim much more online, rather than engaging. The boredom threshold is much lower. So, it's very hard work to make brand advertising interesting enough to be effective. Especially when applying the typical constraints, sensitivities and political correctness that most marketers demand.