Recently The Tennessean featured a story about Rink Entertainment, a local company which has carved out a niche in branded entertainment. Getting his start with a young Taylor Swift (I mean, even younger than she is now), Jim Rink now produces vignettes that combine entertainment with brands and celebrities to deliver relevant messages in compelling ways. Of course, as marketers and consumers we’re no stranger to the creeping role of advertising in programming of all kinds.

 Now comes social media, built not on entertainment, but on the connections between people. The kind of connection marketers really want to make. So instead of inserting advertising in the middle of entertainment-based programming, companies are hoping to get their messages intermingled with personal communication.

 In this environment, the challenge for companies is how to build a sincere relationship with customers so their communication is appropriate and accepted. But for media professionals, and more importantly journalists, the challenge is to be ethical and honest with their audience. Marketers want the benefit of the relationship that media has with their audience, but it can’t come at the expense of that relationship.

 Since the core product of the Tennessean Media Group remains The Tennessean, we deal with this directly. We’ve long had a church/state relationship between what we write about as news and what appears as advertising. Every week, more than 900,000 adults in Middle Tennessee rely on us for news and information they can trust. And that’s a relationship we value.

 That said, we have a lot of content that helps readers select the products and services they choose to buy. That role can naturally be combined with the help we provide local advertisers. But it’s our job to be sure we make those connections in a way that respects the relationship we have with our readers.

 Luckily, there are more opportunities to bring readers and advertisers together in a way that makes sense for both all the time. The evolution of technology has transformed not only marketing communication but the consumer. They are smart enough to know whether or not companies are being sincere, and they have the tools to filter what they want to let in. Meanwhile, companies are getting smarter about building their businesses on the true value they deliver and communicating it in a relevant way. If not, there is no celebrity, programming or third-party relationship that can help.