What Working on TV Taught Us About Marketing & PR

Between the two of us, we’ve spent over 12 years in the media business. We’ve sat down for more than 250 interviews, published over 15,000 articles, and accumulated over 25 million views across television and social media.

But those numbers don’t tell the whole story, because we didn’t work in traditional media.

For more than a decade, we built our careers in business television—specifically Forbes Georgia and Business Media Georgia (BMG). In a local landscape where many television networks are essentially donation-led political projects, BMG and Forbes operate as actual, commercial businesses. Their survival and growth rely entirely on corporate partnerships, sponsorships, and strategic product placement. Because of that, we didn’t just report on the Georgian economy; we had to understand how to market and sell while the cameras were rolling.

From the anchor’s desk, you get an unfiltered view of the corporate world. We interviewed everyone from the CEOs of Georgia’s largest banks and retail chains to international founders entering the Caucasus market. We covered everything from local tourism and real estate development to finance and crypto.

Day in and day out, we dealt directly with the PR teams representing these companies. And very quickly, a massive disconnect became obvious: there is a huge gap between the polished presentations marketing agencies deliver and the actual reality of running a business in Georgia.

We saw executives walking into the studio armed with talking points full of corporate jargon provided by their agencies. But when you are interviewing a CEO on live TV, buzzwords don’t survive. You don’t care about their “brand synergy”—you care about the bottom line, their actual market share, and what value they are actually bringing to the local economy. This constant exposure taught us exactly what cuts through the noise and what falls completely flat.

During our time at BMG, we co-founded two shows that became staples of Georgian business TV:

• Business Evening: A daily news and analytics show, and the only program in the region heavily focused on capital markets, geopolitics, and global business alongside top local news.
• TECH INFORM: The only TV show in the Caucasus dedicated entirely to the technology sector.

Building these shows wasn’t just about chasing ratings. It was about building a highly targeted network of clients, partners, and friends across the region.

Here is what producing thousands of hours of commercial television actually teaches you about marketing:

• If you can’t pitch it in 30 seconds, it’s dead: On TV, time is literally money. If a tech founder couldn’t explain their new platform simply, or a fund manager couldn’t break down their investment strategy in plain language, the audience changed the channel. We learned how to distill complex business models into punchy, clear narratives. Good marketing is brutally clear.
• In a small market, forced advertising feels fake: Georgia is a tight-knit market where reputation is everything. Because our networks relied on commercial integration, we learned that product placement has to be organic. The best marketing doesn’t interrupt the viewer; it adds value. It feels like an educational segment or a documentary, not a hard sell.
• Data without context is just noise: Agencies love to report on “reach,” “impressions,” and “clicks.” But if those metrics aren’t directly tied to revenue or a solid business objective, they are useless. In financial journalism, a rising stock price means nothing if you don’t understand the economic forces behind it. The exact same rule applies to marketing.

We saw firsthand what local and international businesses actually need to scale in this region, and we saw how traditional marketing agencies were failing to deliver it. That realization is why we built EXALT AGENCY.  We took 12 years of media experience, a massive network of key stakeholders, and an absolute intolerance for PR fluff, and turned it into an agency that bridges the gap between the boardroom and the broadcast.