In terms of brand awareness and value of dollars spent, TV still delivers in an unprecedented way according to Matt Moroz, senior director of brand management for Fox Broadcasting.

Speaking Wednesday afternoon at the 2013 Social TV Summit in LA, Moroz told the crowd that TV remains the most effective way to reach people while digital experiences can work to “turn those people into brand evangelists.”

Moroz stressed the importance of “aggregating sentiment” in the digital space and “stitching experiences together” across multiple platforms. Citing Fox’s second-screen efforts around the last season of “American Idol,” he demonstrated an effective example of a network pulling the social element of a show into the broadcast space and thereby finding that thread between the two: Fox rolled out fan questions during episode broadcasts that could be answered across all its platforms, from the show’s website to the its mobile app, Idolizer.

Such in-show call-outs, Moroz said, “stitch together” all the disparate experiences a fan can now have around his or her favorite TV show. But, he warned, “We need to take all these experiences and do something with them. If you can’t convert the hundreds of millions of social interactions to dollars, it doesn’t mean anything.” In Fox’s case, it created a new ad unit around the pop-up questions by bringing AT&T on board as a sponsor.

In general, Moroz suggested working with “vendors and partners that come up with creative ideas that don’t live as a vertical slice of the ecosystem.” There is a leap to be made from brand awareness to fan engagement, and “there are brands out there that want to participate in that process.”

Moroz was joined onstage by Matt Corey, CMO of the social experience platform Mass Relevance, which partnered with Fox to create social buzz for “American Idol” during the 2012 season. Corey compared the current climate of interactive evolution to the e-commerce boom of the early 2000s when many companies lost out because it wasn’t convenient for them to switch over to a new transaction model.

“Don’t think you have to get it perfect,” said Corey, urging attendees to at the very least, “do something” in the social space.

“Create a social experience that captures the conversation about your show and figure out how to perfect the formula for it later. Integrate, test, and move forward from there.”

“Get involved, be creative and don’t be afraid to act, “concluded Moroz.

Brief Take: TV remains far and away the No. 1 way to reach people, but effective social experiences can turn those people into brand evangelists.

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