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  • Consumer Driven Media and the Future of Digital Marketing

    B. Bonin Bough , PepsiCo 's head of digital and social media, says digital consumption has replaced music as "the beacon of culture." At the 2011 Aspen Ideas Festival , Bough discussed the future of digital marketing with Stephen Cannon , Vice President, Marketing, Mercedes-Benz USA , and Bernardo Huberman , Director of HP's Social Computing Research Lab . And all three agree that the social media space will soon dominate the consumer-company relationship, with consumers in the driver's seat. Here is an excerpt from the discussion: Watch the full discussion at FORA.tv , here .

  • A Call for Collaboration on the Social Media Front

    At PRBreakfastClub , Keith Trivitt is a bit annoyed at what the "turf wars" that have developed over advertising, marketing and public relations in social media. He says that the digital age era might require a new way of thinking about competition and collaboration within fields, and that fighting over "who owns " social media is counterproductive: Rather than trying to claim ownership of some inanimate thing, such as social media, why don’t we collaborate with our allied industry peers to increase all of our services’ value to clients? In constantly shifting business and consumer markets, can we really afford to waste our time engaging in debates that clients could care less about? I don’t mean to degrade these discussions, because there is some merit to them. But we must come to the realization that a concept that once seemed preposterous to many marketers — collaboration with competitors — is fast becoming the norm for modern PR, marketing and advertising initiatives. And that’s not a bad thing, so long as we continue to innovative and don’t allow ourselves to become complacent knowing that a competing marketer can pick up the slack for us. Competition is indeed a great thing, but so is a collaborative sense that helps build many industry’s overall value to consumers and brands. Read Stop the Silly Social Media Ownership Battles here .

  • Connecting with Neglected Markets

    As Director of the Lab for Social Computing at the Rochester Institute of Technology , Elizabeth Lane Lawley is impressed with a lot of the ideas of creative directors these days. But she believes a lot of them aren't connecting with some potentially valuable customers. In this talk at CaT London --now available from AdAge --Lawley argues that by ignoring consumers because of where they live, or their age, or perceptions about the way they live, limits the reach and viability of social media strategies:

  • Gap, Washington Post Try Out New Social Media Ad Vehicles

    The two big social media outlets, Facebook and Twitter, each started a new ad format last week. Facebook launched its "mobile local deal," with Gap as the first company to try it out. Twitter had its first sponsor of a Promoted Trend: the Washington Post. Marketing Vox analyzed the success of these first efforts, while pointing out that advertisers ten to be too proud to admit failure when they try out something for the first time: With that in mind, it does appear that the initial campaigns by Washington Post and Gap went according to plan. According to the Post's executive producer and head of digital news products Katharine Zaleski, the campaign was a success, even though it didn't drive huge amounts of traffic to the paper's site. ( via the Atlantic). That is because it is defining success differently - it didn’t necessarily expect to drive traffic. Rather, Zaleski said, it wanted to be front and center in the conversation. Of all the people who clicked on the Election link from the Twitter.com homepage, 9% of them engaged with the Washington Post, according to Twitter's head of media partnerships Chloe Sladden, who added that the 9% engagement was on the "high-average" for other types of promoted trends. Gap’s use of Facebook Deals was also deemed a success by the company, although as one poster on Gap’s Facebook page noted, how hard is it to give away Gap jeans? Fast Company reported that Gap stores in high-traffic New York City areas, such as Soho, the Financial District, Midtown, ran out of give-away jeans within hours. Even more impressive was the lack of advertising for the promotion, Fast Company said. Read Under the Microscope: How did Gap, WaPo do? here .

  • Razorfish Outlook Report 2010: Clients are Spending More on Digital Marketing, but Not Shifting Strategy

    The digital marketing firm Razorfish recently put out its annual Outlook Report, and it pulls together some interesting data on how companies are shifting to digital outreach strategies. The key finding in the report seems to be that while the use of new media by American consumers grew exponentially between 2004 and 2009, most companies kept to the same approach in their marketing. They did spend more and more money, but the strategies were often unchanged. In fact, 70% of Razorfish clients reported not changing their tactics. This is particularly striking when one realizes, as the report points out, that many of the most popular tools and sites for consumers in 2009 did not exist in 2004 (e.g. the iPhone, YouTube). When Razorfish asked clients what adjustments they made to their digital media strategy last year, the six top responses were: More discounting in messaging; Decreases in overall budget, but with more budget shifting to digital; Scaling back in ad spends for the year or not running certain campaigns; Shifts to search and out-of-home display; Increases in overall ad budgets to grab more share; Shift in goals -- more focus on return on ad spend. Yes, there is some incompatibility with these ideas. Read the Razorfish Outlook Report 2010 here . We were alerted to the report by Marketing Vox , which has a very useful summation of the report here .

  • Visualization: the Shifting Media Landscape and Consumer Behavior

    The Economist held a Media Convergence Forum in October to explore the changing relationship between consumers and commerce in the digital age. Here's how the organizers described the purpose of the forum on their website: The surge of new technologies and social media innovations in today's environment is significantly altering the future media landscape for marketers. Consumer behaviour is changing and the way marketers reach their audience must also change. Marketers are searching for new ways to not only reach their customers, but to understand them, to peer inside their minds. As the level of consumer understanding increases, so can the knowledge of how best to reach them. However the plethora of tools at a marketers disposal is not easy to navigate and real learning comes from a real understanding of the future of media convergence. Interesting and compelling, to be sure. But they also had Karl Fisch, Scott McLeod, and Jeff Brenman put together a video/data visualization of the changing landscape, and it really captures your attention. Titled Did You Know 4.0: The Media Landscape , it presents, in less than 5 minutes, the current shifts in how consumers and businesses are interacting through digital media. And while much of the focus is on news media and advertising, the core issues connect to just about all facets of commerce in the digital age: (Hat tip to Chelsey Hoffman, University of Michigan)