Brunner Digital Blog

In October, I predicted that Obama’s use of the Internet and social networking would prove vital to his election; that the engagement of younger generations and the dialogue taking place online would catapult the youth vote front and center (even over the women’s vote) and offer a new way of managing a brand.  Less than 2 weeks after the election, the media’s all over it.

In the Sunday NY Times (11/9/08), David Carr wrote about Obama’s Internet strategy dating back to 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/business/media/10carr.html?em.  How, at the time, the proposition of leveraging social media seemed ridiculous and unlikely. Carr goes on to write about the campaign’s success and the implications of Obama’s social network resources as he turns to governing, “The juxtaposition of a networked, open-source campaign and a historically imperial office will have profound implications and raise significant questions. Special-interest groups and lobbyists will now contend with an environment of transparency and a president who owes them nothing. The news media will now contend with an administration that can take its case directly to its base without even booking time on the networks.

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In Issue 16.11 of Wired Magazine, Paul Boutin, a correspondent for the Silicon Valley gossip site Valleywag, wrote an essay advising his readers to give up on blogging.  He writes:

Writing a weblog today isn’t the bright idea it was four years ago. The blogosphere, once a freshwater oasis of folksy self-expression and clever thought, has been flooded by a tsunami of paid bilge. Cut-rate journalists and underground marketing campaigns now drown out the authentic voices of amateur wordsmiths. It’s almost impossible to get noticed, except by hecklers. And why bother? The time it takes to craft sharp, witty blog prose is better spent expressing yourself on Flickr, Facebook, or Twitter.

Paul concludes:

As a writer, though, I’m onto the system’s real appeal: brevity. Bloggers today are expected to write clever, insightful, witty prose to compete with Huffington and The New York Times. Twitter’s character limit puts everyone back on equal footing. It lets amateurs quit agonizing over their writing and cut to the chase. @WiredReader: Kill yr blog. 2004 over. Google won’t find you. Too much cruft from HuffPo, NYT. Commenters are tards. C u on Facebook?

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How vastly different is the election of 1808 vs. that of 2008 when it comes to communication strategy? You decide. With so much being made about how “new” tactics for getting out the vote and distributing messages for one party or another is being used today and how these “innovative strategies” for speaking to potential voters has evolved, I decided to take a very unscientific and admittedly very shallow look at how different things are.

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I’ve been surprised recently to hear so many people in our industry claim the era of integrated marketing is coming to an end. They say it’s an overused term, and its meaning has become diluted. If that’s the case, then why did my Google search of “integrated marketing” just turn up 6.6 million hits? A Blog Pulse snapshot indicates the topic is hotter than ever. Clearly, integrated marketing is more than an industry buzz word. It’s actually a concept that isn’t going away any time soon, but the focus has definitely shifted. As digital media becomes ever more prevalent in our society, marketers—clients and agencies alike—are struggling more
than ever to get their arms around how to effectively integrate digital into their marketing programs. MORE

If politicians are good at one thing - it’s finding the best way to reach the masses, something marketers have been saying for five years is almost impossible with fragmented media.  There are some good lessons and opportunities for foresight if we take a closer look at the role of the Internet in 21^st century politics.

As we all know, in 2004, Howard Dean was the Internet candidate.  Despite a failed campaign, Dean proved a candidate could successfully leverage the viral nature of the Internet to corral grassroots support and fundraising.  In 08, Barack Obama has taken that movement to the next level, becoming the first candidate in history to wave public funding in favor of his online machine that has garnered hundreds of millions in $5, $10 and $20 increments.   Essentially, both candidates used the Internet to develop an online brand that became the lifeblood of their campaigns.

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I read a lot of blogs. All of them are free. The content is good content; and if any of them were to go away I would definitely be disappointed.

So I ask this…would you pay for your favorite blog to keep it around? MORE

Come see us September 29 and 30 at Interact 2008 in Washington D.C. Information about the show is here.

As a sponsor, we have a booth. As a fun, innovative, interactive shop, we have some fun, innovative, interactive stuff planned for that booth. Be sure to check it out.

Mark Hass, CEO of Publicis’ Manning Selvage & Lee, recently stated the following in the July 28, 2008 Advertising Age article $80 Billion? Online Display Market Is Being Overhyped:

Advertising ought to be designed to support the social-media program, because the tip of the marketing spear ought to be the consumer-generated media piece. Let’s see where consumers take the product and brand, and shape advertising and the rest of the marketing opportunities around that.”

The hypothetical example he provides in the article is “how Febreze might target college students by handing out samples on move-in day. Soon it becomes a subject of conversation within a social network of that community (and if it doesn’t, a brand can suggest it become one, asking students what they’re going to do to make their rooms smell better when their parents come to town).”

While we haven’t been as bold as Mr. Hass, we too at Brunner Digital espouse to our clients that they should be engaging social-media and utilizing it to help mold their advertising campaigns. As our own Creative Director, Ernie Mosteller, wrote in his last post about effective websites, we know it is about content. Content that is compelling to consumers. Content consumers will keep and that they will share. Discover what consumers are doing with your brand on Facebook, MySpace and relevant blogs. Update your site with the brand engagement trends you see in these social-media. You already know it will be attention-grabbing because consumers are creating and sharing it on their own.

The same standard can be applied to 360° advertising campaigns. Given digital dynamic printing and digital production, your direct marketing and broadcast should be able to morph as quickly as your website.

For this to happen, advertisers need to seriously reflect about themselves and their brands. Consumers now expect more-engaging forms of content in every brand marketing communication. If social-media isn’t the tip of your marketing spear, it should at least be a plane of the blade.

I finally got around to finishing this post which is why it references an article from April!  One of the writers that I follow, and who’s opinion I very much respect is Steve Rubel who writes for Advertising Age. In his April 21, 2008 column he calls out for digital industry standard metrics and indicates that until we get there, that marketers will not be truly ready to embrace the right level of digital marketing spending levels.

There is no doubt that standard metrics will make it easier for all of us. But at the same time, with all of the press regarding metrics today, you would think that the industry doesn’t know how to effectively measure digital campaigns. I would contend that we know more than we give ourselves credit for…we (collective we) have been doing this for quite a while!

So while we’re waiting for the IAB, the Four A’s and everyone else to sort through the standards that will eventually give us a common language, I’m suggesting that we keep a few of the tried and true best practices in mind:

1) Start with your business goals and objectives in mind. I would start with 3 or 4 and scale up from there.

2) Don’t start out by “measuring everything”. That never works, and you’ll get lost in the data minutia.

3) Build strong relationships with your technology team - they are critical in helping to put the tools in place in order to get the reports that you’ll need.

4) Get comfortable with some of the new metrics that are available to you — engagement time, brand interaction rates and video views. But don’t treat them like they are the be-all-end-all metrics anymore than CTR’s are. They are pieces of the puzzle.

The direct marketing world recognizes that every campaign is different. Every company is different. Although there are more options within the digital realm, if we stick with what we already know, I think we’ll be surprised how effective, and relatively painless, our measurement efforts can be.

Geert Desager is a Trade Marketing Manager in South East Asia for Microsoft. Geert spearheaded the making of a commercial for Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions. The short film, called The Couple, makes a strong statement about the relationship between today’s advertiser and today’s consumer. It was a risky project considering that the ad challenges advertisers and agencies - the target clients for this Microsoft solution - to question themselves and the way they communicate with consumers.

In June, the commercial won a Bronze Lion at Cannes and we at Brunner Digital find it . . . well . . . simply hysterical and right on point. The first commercial was so successful Geert did a sequel. They both promote the advancement of one-to-one, integrated and smart digital marketing in a thoroughly entertaining fashion. Take a look below:

If you would like to learn more about the making of the commercial, check out Geert’s blog, Bring the love back. And oh by the way, Brunner Digital is here to help you bring back the love. Lot’s of love.