Without doubt 'Social Media' has been a huge blessing for Movies and TV Shows, we can't help but share our passion, dilemmas, and sometimes spoiler alerts. 

Social has even been used to advise the wardrobe and set designers of 'bloopers' on many TV shows, such as the plastic bottle of water left on the grand mantelpiece during a series of photo shoots to promote the new series of 'Downton Abbey' a few years ago, all great 'free' publicity for the show around the world.

This next bit is very relevant to the TV series (and now Movie) Downton Abbey story. 

8 years ago now I helped a client recover from a Google site wide penalty (case study here) in record time - 2 months. The recovery was mainly down to ‘content,  blogs, articles' etc, but mainly through the power of social media and the sharing of relevant and engaging content.  

They also very quickly regained the organic number one slot for their keywords using this strategy. 

So, you could say I had been awakened to the true power of 'social media' for something more than just posting pictures of my pet Labrador, romantic holidays, and advertising products and services many years ago. 

It seems that at long last 'Google' isn't the only show in town for people to discover who you are.

Shortly after this dilemma with the Google penalty I was asked by a friend for some help and advice in growing her fledgling business. 

She had managed to convince 'NBC Universal' (owners of the Downton franchise) to award her a 12 month 'Royalty based' UK license deal to produce, market and distribute a mail order catalog she had called ‘Downton Abbey at Home’. 

All inspired by the TV show.  

She was struggling to make it work, and wondered if I could help. All the time the clock was ticking as we neared the end of the final series.  

At this stage we had now employed people, committed to warehousing, and every other back office requirement to run what was going to be a huge global business.

Our ambitious goal was based on the assumption that if we could do this for 'Downton Abbey', then NBCU (and others) would trust us with other franchises.

We were now in the penultimate episode of the final series of the show, with the promise of a movie to come - kerching, lots of money to be made right!! 

As part of this process I began to notice lots of small companies on Facebook and Instagram promoting 'Downton Abbey inspired’ goods & services, Books, Cooking Recipes, Furniture, Clothes, even video's. 

When we checked further it seemed these numbered in the 100’s, in many different countries, across many different big/small companies, and as far as we could tell, all unlicensed  - so why were we being asked to pay such huge sums upfront, along with heavy royalty fees?. 

On the day of signing the renegotiated terms I asked the guys at NBC Universal about all these folks on social using the 'Downton Abbey' brand name to ‘sell’ products and services. "Do they have a license"? we asked, the answer that came back completely floored me because they said some do, some don't.

We then asked them as the ‘Rights owner’ what they were going do about the ones that don't. 

“We don't know who the unlicensed ones are, and we can’t do anything about people doing this on social, we also don’t want to piss-off the fan base” was their reply.

Inevitably I asked why we should pay a 6 figure sum and royalties for something I can do on Social without their permission or payment - as you can imagine the conversation or business didn't get much further than this.

As the saying goes 'From Adversity Comes Opportunity'

My final point on all of this, is that without the adversity of the Google penalty, and the significant financial kick in the nuts from NBCU I would probably be where you are right now.....

Thinking that Social Media is just for posting pictures of your latest award win, finding a job, or announcing you just got a new one with a fancy new title, intrusive advertising, and showing me what you just had for lunch.