When your brand is good enough to be a verb, coming to news media

jellocosby2The frequent mention of market dominance is when a brand becomes a verb.

Xerox that. Get a Band-Aid.

Of course, that has clearly followed online.

Google that. Digg that – though not Digg me. Facebook me; the confluence of Twitter and tweet and twittering. You don’t LinkedIn someone, which might relate to how Facebook could crush its professional conterpart if it would only offer a more restricitve and private version of a person’s Facebook profile for colleages.

Can this come to news media?

A subject could probably get TechCrunched – if covered by the popular Silicon Valley blog. (Could we peer into the future and see Delaware Valley region tech businesses getting Technically Philly-ed?)

Before his death, Tim Russert was rising in prominence and fame for his grilling of leaders and legislators. In the future, could have been Russerting his guests?

It seems a silly path in vanity, but I think this is a lesson in the power of personality over person – it’s not who you are or what you can prove, but what you can show and say.

CNN’s ratings are slipping in comparison to booming audience figures for opinion-heavy and personality-driving MSNBC and Fox News.

I don’t think anyone’s doubting that news is going to need an increasingly character-basis to bring in the masses.

Whether the brands will matter enough to develop verb-use, we’ll have to see.

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