Make Digital Marketing Work

Its the season for top tens and predictions for next year.  Never to be one for missing out on a trend we include our predictions for 2010 below:

1)      Digital marketing will come of age and stop focusing on tactical disciplines.  Leading on from this the value of strategic marketing will become better understood by digital marketers and welcomed by clients

2)      Publishing will experience an extremely turbulent year and many publications could potentially be put up for sale discontinued or merged together

3)      Google will stop being viewed as the enemy of publishers and acknowledged as a valued partner

4)      Online broadcast of TV content will become a huge issue for TV companies and lead to similar scenes as we have seen this year for news publishers

5)      The concept of a mobile wallet will become a common thing for consumers

6)      The world wide web and mobile web will converge as mobile browsers become as common as laptops

7)      Wifi in the city streets for everyone

8)      Display advertising will enjoy a short renaissance followed by a larger debate about banner ads use and effectiveness

9)      Offline and integrated marketers will face a huge task as they move from a broadcast media model to one that is customer led.  Not everyone will be able to adapt.

10)   A pure digital agency will secure lead agency status by a times 100 company

Oh and one more for luck

Arsenal will win the FA cup!

What are your predictions and what do you think of ours?

Some 24 years ago I sat in a call centre taking credit card donations during a rock concert when an Irish chap suddenly announced “fuck the addresses” on primetime television.  The result was that the phone lines exploded.  This proved to me then that TV was a very significant direct response form of media.  The reality though is that largely advertising on TV doesn’t take advantage of this at all, and instead opts for brand building.  I’m not saying that brand building is bad of course and there are agencies in town who are quite simply superb at it.  What I am saying though is that brand building in general doesn’t seem to be flavour of the month with advertisers when they have a choice of putting their money into one of the most effective direct response mechanisms ever invented, in the form search.

Whether it is paid for or natural, search is the dream direct response media.  To my mind this isn’t an argument about whether tv or online is getting more dollars it is an argument about where smart money is going and it seems to be pretty obvious that it is going to direct response.  Given the economic conditions that isn’t surprising (apparently it always happens that way).  It is interesting that TV is having to rethink itself completely.  The ads that agencies dream up for a brand can just as easily find their way onto IP TV or online video ads but the opportunity to create interactive direct response ads for that medium is one that has yet to be properly taken advantage of.

Banner ad spend has suffered despite the increase in online spend and doesn’t give the same return as search.  This has taught us that because something can be clicked on doesn’t mean it will be clicked on.  Surely there can’t be that many people in the world that would claim that banner ads are anything other than brand building these days?

That’s not so say that brand building doesn’t have its place.  We all know that the media multiplier effect is as true online as it is offline.  So that your direct response media works a lot better when you are also running brand building activity.  Whether this is  TV supporting direct mail or banner ads supporting emails the effect is the same and response rates increase.

With the advent of 4OD i Player and the other various web based catch up channels we have an opportunity to rethink how we approach moving picture advertising and how consumers will want to interact with it.  On demand web based catch up TV sites all feature clickable ads but are they getting clicked on and how do they differ from the broadcast counterparts?

I think the opportunity is calling for direct response and brand building to be spliced together in a new format that will find its home in Online TV.  The biggest drawback to this will be if offline agencies (who have the brand building conceptual creatives needed for this), will persist in their view that the message is everything or if they will this time embrace the idea that building a relationship with the customer is their starting point and goal.