Digital Marketing Outlook 2011

2011
digital marketing outlook
foreword
By: Angele Beausoleil DMO Editor-in-Chief VP Strategy and Innovation, Dare
SoDAs 2011 Digital Marketing Outlook report embraces intersections, from where marketing meets technology to how CMOs and agencies are ushering in the era of integrated marketing communications.
This years report is a collection of insights and story and knowledge sharing from agency, marketing, and academic thought leaders from around the globe. We hope it will inspire you, validate your thinking, and fuel action. Across six sections, our editors offer up key insights, visuals, and case studies with wow factor, designed to make you a rockstar at your next management presentation. Our interview-style SoDA Chats explore why brands cant keep their promise, and how to observe humans in their natural, albeit virtual, habitats. And we look at why courage and innovation are required to transform a city. Whats on the CMO mind and in their budgets for 2011? From our extensive Digital Marketing Outlook (DMO) Survey conducted by our research partner AnswerLab, we find digital marketing at the crossroads of todays consumers and brands. In an ironic twist, senior marketing executives now turn to the web to find information about trends, their consumers, and even their own brands. Radically transformed by technology, todays consumer has a voracious appetite for information. Our Digital Consumer section shows the benefits of listening to and engaging online audiences and understanding their comfort with digital intimacy. We also revisit Marshall McLuhans prophetic prose and provide a job description for the digital CMO. Google TV is among the game changers redefining brand experiences. Our Modern Brand section explores what we can learn from agile development processes and what the new agency model really looks like. We discuss why sharing is key to the modern brand and how experiential marketing is driven by art and story. The Emerging Technology & Trends section provides an insiders view of how close we are to a Minority Report world, where wearable digital technology is not just a fashion trend, and where location-based social networks (LoSos) intersect our physical and virtual identities. We make the argument that 2011 is the year for mobile and that Google Instant is the answer to SEO. As the Social Media Revolution unfolds, there are winners and losers. Mashing up peer-based marketing with games is a killer combo, but Twitter and Foursquare are headed for the virtual graveyard (alongside eBay). We also explore how the Internet imitates real life and why rewards are vital, and weve thrown in a few valuable tips on marketing in Facebook. Travel with us to Japan, China, Braziland back to North Americain our Innovation, Culture & Courage section. We make the case for embracing failure and investing in data visualization, while preparing you to become the ideal client of the future. And we look at how one courageous citys decision to ban advertising has paid off in increased prosperity. Enjoy!
contents
Foreword
by Angele Beausoleil, DMO Editor-in Chief and DMO Section Editor; VP Strategy and Innovation, Dare
2 7 10
DMO Team & Guest Contributors DMO Advisory Board
Digital Marketing Outlook Survey
1 2
Digital Marketing Outlook Survey DMO Key Findings

Contains Tables/Charts, Analysis of Survey Results, and Participant Quotes
14 20 42
DMO Detailed Findings

Contains Tables/Charts and Detailed Analysis of Survey Results
Digital in the Physical World of Retail

by Guthrie Dolin, DMO Section Editor; Principal, Director of Strategy, Odopod
71 74 78
Digital Consumer
Pervasive Customer Experience and How Digitally Focused CMOs Are Leading Our Revolution
by Justin Wilden, Solutions Director, IE Media
An Evolution in Car Sales: How Online Configuration Technology May Change the Face of Dealerships as We Know Them
by DJ Edgerton, CEO, Zemoga
Designing Digital Intimacy

by Dr. Daniel Coffeen, Brand and Digital Strategist
80 83 85 87
Digital Consumers Arent Just Regular Consumers with Keyboards

by Brian Chiger, Digital Strategist, AgencyNet
Case Study: General Pants Co. Online Store and Campaigns

by Stephen Foxworthy, Strategy Director, Reactive
SoDA Chat with Robert Kozinets, Professor of Marketing at York Universitys Schulich School of Business in Toronto, Canada
Modern Brand
Brands @ Play: Mastering the Art & Science of Engagement Design

by Sean MacPhedran, DMO Section Editor; Director, Creative Strategy, Fuel Industries
92
Not Your Brand, Theirs!

by Andy Williams, Strategist, Resn
95 97
The Revolution Will Be Televised: Google TV, the Death of Digital as We Know It, and the Rebirth of the Big Idea
by Joshua Baze, Director, Insights & Planning, Colossal Squid Industries and Matt Ballek, Digital Strategist/Optimization Specialist, Colossal Squid Industries
Do You Really Need a Digital Agency?

by Tony Quin, CEO and Founder, IQ
101 103 105 107 109 111
Why Modern Brands Need Artful Content Strategy to Thrive Online

by Ami Walsh, Senior Content Strategist, Enlighten
The Future of Online Retail

Case Study: Smoking Not Our FuturesKanvas

Case Study: El Tiempo Celebrates Its Past by Embracing the Future

by Alejandro Gomez, President, Zemoga
SoDA Chat with Dr. Ginger Grant, Managing Partner of Creativity in Business Canada Inc. and Adjunct ProfessorInnovation at Mount Royal University
Social Media
From Owned Media to Earned Media: Working with the Crowd

by Sara Williams, DMO Section Editor; Head of Content, Made by Many
117 119 121 123 127 129 132 134 136
The Next Big Trend in Social Media Is Social Rewards

by Jennifer Van Grove, Social Media Reporter, Mashable
Why Twitter and Foursquare Are Dying

by Andreas Roell, Chairman and CEO, Geary Group
Pulling the Trigger to Purchase: Insights on Marketing to Avid Gamers

by Ken Martin, Chief Creative Officer, BLITZ
Online and Offline, Its All Real-Life Communication

by Irina Sheveleva, Editor, Grape
Focusing Your Facebook Strategy: 10 Tips Toward Better Status Updates

by Victor Pieiro, Strategist, Big Spaceship
Case Study: Thierry Mugler/Starvibes

by Benjamin Laugel, CEO/Creative Director, Soleil Noir
Case Study: Emma Watson Digital Strategy

by Rob Salmon, Director of Communications, Great Fridays
Case Study: GuitarHero.com: Global Franchise Hub and Community

by Ken Martin, Chief Creative Officer, BLITZ
Case Study: Chrome FastballRace Across the Internet

by Petter Westlund, Creative Director, B-Reel
138 140 142
Case Study: SAP Friend Network Optimizer

by Sandhya Suryam, Client Partner, Dare
Case Study: It Isnt Lonely at the Top: What the Most Liked Brands Are Doing on Facebook
by Victor Pieiro, Strategist, Big Spaceship
Emerging Technology & Trends
Next Generation Mobile Applications

by Charles Duncan Jr., DMO Section Editor; Director of Technology, IQ
147 149 151 153 155 157 159 161
Mobile Is a New Medium, Not Just an Extension of Your Website

by Brian Jeremy, Director of Technology, Exopolis
Local, Social, and Brand Transcendence

by Richard Cruz, Digital Strategist, AgencyNet
Mobile Apps for the B2B Marketer: Its Not Just Fun and Games
by Kirsten Corbell, Account Director, Strategy & Planning Group, Fullhouse Interactive
Wearable Digital SignageThe Modern Day Sandwich Board

by Jim Vaughn, Digital Strategy and Partner Development Manager, Fullhouse Interactive
The Marketing Implications of Google Instant

by Geary Interactive
How Lean and Agile Processes Can Deliver Killer Results

by Stuart Eccles, Founding Partner, Made by Many
Mobile Super App Experiences: From Brand Extension to Engaging Customers

by Tyler Lessard, Vice President, Global Alliances and Developer Relations, Research in Motion (RIM)
Case Study: The Wilderness Downtown

by Nicole Muniz, Producer, B-Reel
164 166 168
Case Study: SoBe Reskin Yourself

by Anna Edwards, Associate Copywriter, Firstborn
Case Study: DonQ Rum

by Guthrie Dolin, DMO Section Editor; Principal, Director of Strategy, Odopod
Innovation, Culture & Courage
Innovate or Perish
by Angele Beausoleil, DMO Editor-in-Chief and DMO Section Editor; VP Strategy and Innovation, Dare
172 174 176 178 182 184 187
China: An Exploration of Digital Diversity

by Mark St. Andrew, Editor, Cream
Seeing Rich Visualization through the Data Forest

Client of the Future: In Six Easy Lessons

by Andre Matarazzo, CCO, Gringo
Adopting the Kaizen Approach to Marketing

Innovation from the Inside Out

by Dave Snyder, Associate Creative Director, Firstborn
Case Study: Shrek 4 Happy Meal

by Glenn Bakie, Director, Client Services, Fuel Industries
Case Study: The Pepsi Refresh Project

by Kate Watts, Group Engagement Director, HUGE
189 191 193 195 198 199
SoDA Chat with Marc Gob, President, Emotional Branding LLC Closing Digital Manifest Destiny; The Time for Building a New Marketing Infrastructure Is Here
by Chad Ciesil, DMO Chairperson, SoDA Board of Directors; CEO, Gravity Federation
Sponsors The Society of Digital Agencies SoDA Memebership 2011
DMO Team
& guest contributors
DMO/Content Development
Chad Ciesil
DMO Chairperson, SoDA Board of Directors; CEO, Gravity Federation As founder of Gravity Federation, Chad (@chadciesil) leads an alliance of creators from a range of disciplines to fundamentally realign clients infrastructures, communication channels, content and brand relationships to navigate the new frontier after the digital revolution. Prior to Gravity Federation, Chad spent seven years at Whittmanhart serving as president and a leader in strategy, marketing and client services to build the agencys national reputation as well as drive significant growth across multiple offices. Through forums like SoDA, Chad has had great fun being a speaker, writer and contributor to the national dialogue around the marketing revolution driven by digital. Currently, he resides in Charlottesville, Virginia, with his wife, son and two dogs who resist the pull of gravity on a daily basis.
Angele Beausoleil
DMO Editor-in-Chief and DMO Section Editor Innovation, Culture & Courage; VP Strategy and Innovation, Dare Angele Beausoleil is a graduate of Canadas first multimedia degree program from Ryerson University and a self-described tradigital marketer. A multi-award-winning designer, marketer, and entrepreneur, Angele wrote a design blog, developed the worlds first Internet hockey pool, worked with Disney Interactive on preschool products, and launched an animated mobile series in Japanall before the dawn of the new millennium. She has the pleasure of working with clients like McDonalds, Gap Inc., Best Buy/Future Shop, SAP Business Objects, Bell, Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC), and Sony Ericsson.
Guthrie Dolin
DMO Digital Consumer Section Editor; Principal, Director of Strategy, Odopod Guthrie Dolin (@gee3) is a seasoned creative executive, an entrepreneur, and a connector of dots. He has founded two award-winning agencies and partnered to launch numerous enterprises. Currently, Guthrie is a Principal, and Director of Brand and Strategy at Odopod, a full-service digital agency that develops innovative experiences for top consumer brands.
Sean MacPhedran
DMO Modern Brand Section Editor; Director, Creative Strategy, Fuel Industries Sean MacPhedran is Director of Creative Strategy at Fuel Industries, and he has created engagement programs for brands including MTV, Entourage, Family Guy, Microsoft, and McDonalds. Prior to Fuel, Sean lived in a motel in the Mojave Desert, launching people into space.
Sara Williams
DMO Social Media Section Editor; Head of Content, Made by Many A lover of words and a teller of stories, Sara Williams worked as a journalist, copywriter, and blogger before joining Made by Many to help develop the agencys content offering. Sara writes a lot about international issues and the social development/social media crossover: how emerging technologies and corresponding cultural shifts can create lasting social change.
Charles Duncan Jr.
DMO Emerging Technology & Trends Section Editor; Director of Technology, IQ As Director of Technology, Charles Duncan, Jr. (@sirchauncy) leads the strategic direction of IQs Development and Analytics services. Charles has over 13 years of experience leading the development of award-winning work across the globe for brands such as Nike, Xbox, and Gap. His passion with the intersection between technology and creativity has resulted in innovative experiences across mobile, desktop, and digital signage. As a thought-leader, Charles has spoken at industry conferences such as Adobe Max and Microsoft Mix.
Guest Contributors
Dr. Daniel Coffeen
Brand and Digital Strategist Daniel Coffeen has a PhD in Rhetoric from UC Berkeley. He served as adjunct faculty at UC Berkeley and the San Francisco Art Institute for over 10 years teaching courses in critical theory. He has written extensively about the relationship between new media and cinema, and he blogs about brand and digital issues. In addition, Daniel was a founder of the multi-award-winning ArtandCulture.com. He works as a brand and digital strategist in San Francisco.
Robert Kozinets
Professor of Marketing at York University Robert Kozinets is a Professor of Marketing at York Universitys Schulich School of Business in Toronto, Canada. In the past, Robert was faculty at Northwestern Universitys Kellogg School of Management and the University of Wisconsin-Madisons School of Business. An anthropologist by training, Robert also has extensive consulting experience.
Dr. Ginger Grant
Managing Partner of Creativity in Business Canada Inc. and Adjunct ProfessorInnovation at Mount Royal University Ginger Grant is the Managing Partner of Creativity in Business Canada Inc. and an Adjunct ProfessorInnovation at Mount Royal University. She is the only Canadian in the teacher/trainer group for the famed Stanford Business School Creativity in Business program. Author of Re-Visioning the Way We Work, her latest book Finding Your Creative Core was published in April 2009.
Jennifer Van Grove
Social Media Reporter, Mashable Jennifer Van Grove is a Social Media Reporter with Mashable. She covers web news, start-ups, industry trends, and she writes about the implications of social sites for users and businesses. Jennifer has been featured in the San Diego Union Tribune and San Diego Magazine, participated as a guest expert on news programs such as BBC America and CNN Live, and is frequently quoted by local and national media outlets for tech-related news stories.
Mark St. Andrew

Editor, Cream Mark St. Andrew is the Editor and Curator of Cream (www.creamglobal.com), an online marketing resource that houses the best examples of marcomms innovation across different media channels around the world.
Marc Gob
President, Emotional Branding LLC Designer, photographer, filmmaker, respected author, and sought-after public speaker, Marc Gob focuses on connecting brands emotionally with people in a positive way. As President of Emotional Branding LLC, an experimental think tank, Marc and his daughter Gwenaelle Gob, Creative Director, offer insight into the trends that move.
Research Partner
Design Agency
answerlab.com
struckaxiom.com
Production
SoDA Staff
Steve Wages, Executive Director Paul Lewis, Director of Operations Kendyll Picard, Communications Coordinator Natalie Certo, Marketing Liaison
societyofdigitalagencies.org
DMO Advisory Board

It is an honor to have such a distinguished group as part of this years report. We thank them for their valuable contributions, support, and insights.
DMO Advisory Board Members

Ann Lewnes Senior Vice President, Global Marketing Adobe Systems Incorporated Jeff Jarrett Global Director, Digital Marketing Kimberly-Clark Jim Mollica Vice President, Digital Marketing and Creative MTVN, Kids and Family Kelly Semrau Senior Vice President, Global Corporate Affairs, Communications and Sustainability S.C. Johnson & Son Victor Mehren Senior Marketing Director Wm Wrigley Jr. Company Patrice Dermody Vice President, Media, Digital and Social Networking Sears Holdings Corporation Jon Vanhala Senior Vice President, Digital & New Business Development Island Def Jam Music Group Scott McLaren Global Digital Marketing, CRM and Web Operations General Motors
10
Bios
Ann Lewnes Jeff Jarrett
DMO Advisory Board

Senior Vice President, Global Marketing Adobe Systems Incorporated
As Senior Vice President of Global Marketing, Ann Lewnes is responsible for Adobes corporate brand and integrated marketing efforts worldwide. She drives the companys corporate positioning, branding and identity, public relations, marketing campaigns, field marketing, and education segment marketing to ensure strong connections with customers and constituents. Prior to joining Adobe in November 2006, Ann served as Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Intel Corporation. Ann holds a bachelors degree in international relations and journalism from Lehigh University. She serves on the boards of the Advertising Council and the Adobe Foundation. Adobe revolutionizes how the world engages with ideas and informationanytime, anywhere, and through any medium. For more information, visit www.adobe.com.
Global Director, Digital Marketing Kimberly-Clark
As Global Director of Digital Marketing for Kimberly-Clark, Jeff Jarrett oversees the Digital Center of Excellence, responsible for driving digital strategy, thought leadership, and best practices across the enterprise. In his role, Jeff works closely with Kimberly-Clark brands and business units globally to drive mission critical digital initiatives and create best-in-class commercial programs. Known for his expertise in digital marketing, CRM, and strategic planning, Jeff brings 20 years of experience building brands and customer relationships for some of the most successful companies in the world. His work experience includes leadership roles at several large agency networks in North America and Europe including Sapient Interactive, Grey, Leo Burnett, and Euro, where he led the digital and integrated marketing practice.
11
Jim Mollica Vice President, Digital Marketing and Creative MTVN, Kids and Family
Jim Mollica serves as Vice President of Digital Marketing and Creative for MTV Networks Kids and Family Group where his responsibilities include extending Nickelodeons entertainment experiences to all digital platforms and creating innovative interactions for the company and its advertisers. Prior to his work at MTVN, Jim was the Global Director of New Media for the Walt Disney Company. He has held a variety of marketing and advertising management positions with Nissan North America/Infiniti and Internet start-ups. In addition to his client-side work, Jim has managed agency relationships with AOL, Heinz, and PNC.
Kelly Semrau Senior Vice President, Global Corporate Affairs, Communication and Sustainability S.C. Johnson & Son
Kelly Semrau is Senior Vice President of Global Corporate Affairs, Communication and Sustainability for SC Johnson, bringing to the role more than 20 years of experience. Kelly leads all global corporate affairs for the company including public affairs, media relations, government relations, community leadership and philanthropy, sustainability, and NGO engagement. In addition, Kelly also served as Director of Public Affairs and Press Secretary to the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture during President George H. Bushs administration, as well as Director of Public Affairs and Press Secretary to the U.S. Trade Representative during President Ronald Reagans administration. She was also Press Secretary to Congressman Joe McDade of Pennsylvania. Kelly earned her bachelors degree in journalism from Bradley University.
Victor Mehren Senior Marketing Director Wm Wrigley Jr. Company
As a Senior Marketing Director at Wrigley, Victor Mehren oversees all aspects of marketing on the Orbit, Eclipse, Juicy Fruit, Doublemint, and Big Red Brands. He has also held various consumer marketing and sales leadership positions during his nine years at Wrigley including overseeing the launch of the 5 Brand and Director of National Customer Marketing. Prior to joining Wrigley, Victor had over nine years of CPG experience at Imagicast, Inc., PowerBar, and E&J Gallo in sales and marketing positions. He has an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a BS from Eastern Illinois University.
12
Patrice (Pat) Dermody Vice President, Media Digital and Social Networking Sears Holdings Corporation
Having begun her career at DDB Worldwide, Pat Dermody worked her way up through the traditional media track working on beverages, packaged goods, and quick service restaurants. Pat spent time in New York doing program development and global syndication working for clients such as Xerox, and then she shifted to account management running the Hasbro business. After a short while at the Leo Burnett Company, Pat brought both her expertise and passion to Sears Holdings. Having successfully made the transition from agency to client, as Vice President of Media, Digital and Social Networking, Pat pushes her agencies to do their best work, and she tries hard to make sure that the best people always want to work on her business.
Jon Vanhala Senior Vice President, Digital & New Business Development Island Def Jam Music Group
Jon Vanhala is Senior Vice President of Digital and New Business Development at Island Def Jam Music Group (IDJ) directing all digital strategy, e-commerce, digital marketing, and new business initiatives. IDJ is one of the worlds largest record companies with a rich and diverse roster of artists that spans from Kanye West, Justin Bieber, and Rihanna to Bon Jovi, The Killers, Mariah Carey, and many others. IDJ is a wholly owned business unit of Universal Music Group (UMG). A former working musician, songwriter, and bandleader, Jon attended Columbia College in Chicago for Arts Entertainment Media Management and Millikin University in Decatur for Music Performance. He served on the Advisory Board of the IAJE (International Association For Jazz Education) from 1997 to 2006, is active in arts education, and is on the Advisory Board of Blue Haze, a San Francisco-based app development shop.
Scott McLaren Global Digital Marketing, CRM and Web Operations General Motors
Scott McLaren is a graduate from The University of Michigan. He began his career with General Motors in 1988 and has spent the majority of his career with Saturn where he developed a passion for the customer and marketing. He believes strongly in a brand delivering on its brand promise to a consumer and is a big believer in utilizing digital marketing to do so. He has a passion for measurable media and the convergence taking place within current marketing and advertising. He has served in several roles within Saturn and GM including vehicle launch roles, traditional advertising roles, media roles and digital marketing. His current role is Director of Global Digital Marketing, CRM and Web Operations, General Motors.
13
Digital Marketing Outlook Survey

14
DMO survey
Introduction Respondents Key Findings Detailed Findings
2011 Digital Plans Measurement + Performance Tools + Technologies Getting Smart
15
introduction
ABOUT SODA AND ANSWERLAB COLLABORATION ON THE 2011 DMO
The Society of Digital Agencies (SoDA) selected AnswerLab to be its trusted research partner to deliver insights from the hundreds of brand marketers, agencies, and technologists surveyed for the 2011 Digital Marketing Outlook (DMO). SoDA required a third-party firm known for research integrity, deep experience with executive-level surveys, and rigorous reporting practices. The SoDA and AnswerLab teams collaborated closely to craft a questionnaire that would shed light on digital marketers priorities for 2011. SoDA provided access to executives from major global brands, representatives from traditional and digital agencies, and digital vendors and service providers who participated in the survey. AnswerLab executed the survey online and delivered all of the research findings that support the 2011 DMO.
ABOUT ANSWERLAB
AnswerLab delivers customer insights that help the worlds leading brands build outstanding digital products and services. The company focuses exclusively on user experience research to understand what people see, do, think, and feel when using websites, mobile applications, and other digital products. AnswerLabs clients depend on its recommendations about product concepts, features, design, and messaging to create more engaging customer experiences that drive results. Global market leaders select AnswerLab as their user experience research partner, including Amazon.com, PayPal, Walmart, Honda, ING DIRECT, FedEx, Genentech, eBay, Salesforce.com, ESPN, Amgen, Intuit, and Harley Davidson. For more information about AnswerLab, please visit www.answerlab.com.
ABOUT THE 2011 DIGITAL MARKETING OUTLOOK SURVEY

AnswerLab conducted an online survey among 667 participants representing 199 brand marketers, 235 agency representatives, and 233 technologists and other roles in the digital space. Survey participants were recruited from an online business panel and through SoDA outreach to its member agencies, partners, blogs, promotions, and other media. The survey was conducted from late August through mid-October 2010.
16
Respondents
Respondent Overview Organization Type

9%
3%
Which of the following best describes the organization you work for?
Respondents were split roughly evenly between the three target groups: agencies, brand marketers, and technologists/other roles.
Organization Type (n=667)
35% Advertising agency 15% B2C brand marketing 15% B2B brand marketing 12% Vendor/service provider 10% Other 9% Freelance or consultant 3% Digital publisher
10%
35%
12%
15
15 %
15 % 15 %
Respondent Overview Brand Marketers3%

10% 0 1
%
3% 3%
12%2% 1
Which of the following best describes your organizations 2marketing efforts? 6% Which of the following best describes your title?
17%
7%
- Two-thirds of brand marketer respondents had titles in the range of CMO to director. 1 - Brand marketer respondents come from companies with9an average marketing budget of more than $800k. 7%
6%
9%
5%
% % 26 26
7% 7%
17% 17%
6%
9% 9%
6%
5% 5%
19 19 % %
10%
7%7%
Title (n=199)
26% C-level executive 19% Manager of marketing services and operations 19% VP of marketing 11% Other 10% VP of channel 6% Director of marketing 5% Director of channel 3% Individual contributor 1% Manager of market research
Marketing Budget (n=199) 28

18% Less than $100,000 9% $101,000 - $250,000 14% $250,001 - $750,000 9% $750,001 - $1.5M 9% $1,500,001 - $3M
17
2 28%8%
43 43% %
28
18 % 18 %
3% 3%
16 16 % %
9% 9%
14 14 % %
9% 9%
7% $3,000,001 - $5M 43% 7% $5,000,001 - $7.5M 16% $7,500,001 - $1B 2% More than $1B
18
9% 9%
35%5% 3
11%
16
% 15 % 15
1
9%
10%
11% 11%
10%
Respondents
% % 26 26
6% 6%
9% 9%
Which of the following ranges includes your 17% 17% organizations annual budget for marketing activities 19 19 % % (in US dollars)?
5% 5%
7% 28% 7%
7%7%
18 % 18 %
Brand Marketers Type Of Marketing

3% 3%
While the largest portion of brand marketer respondents market a mix of products and services, more than one-quarter market only products or only services.
Type of Marketing (n=199)
43% We market a mix of products and services 28% We primarily market products 28% We primarily market services 1% Other
28%8% 2
43% % 43
Agencies Type of Agency and Annual Revenue

28 % 28 %
28
6%
Which of the following best describes21%type of advertising agency that you work for? the 63 Which of the following ranges includes your organizations % annual revenues (in US dollars)?
23%
6% 6%
21% 21%
63 63 % %
23% % 23
Type of Agency (n=235)

63% Digital or interactive agency 21% Traditional agency 16% Other
11% Annual Revenue (n=235)

17% Less than $1M 26% $1M - $4,999,999 17% $5M - $9,999,999 5% 23% $10M 1 $99.9M 6% $100M - $499.9M 3% $500M - $1B 1% More than $1B 63% 7% Im not sure
18
11%1% 1
17% 17%
17 % 17 %
26%6% 2
17%
7% 7% 3% 3%
% 16 % 16
17
11% 11%
16 16 % %
9% 9%
14 14 % %
9% 9%
43%
10% 10%
3%
7%
16
5%
6%
5% 5% 6% 6%
Respondents
Global Business Reach By Continent

From which continent do the majority of your business revenues come?
While nearly two-thirds (63%) of respondents businesses focus on North America, 6% have revenues coming from multiple continents.
Revenue Location
63% North America 6% Global* 15% Europe 5% South America 11% Asia-Pacific 1% Africa *Less than half of our revenues come from any one continent.
5%
11%
6%
15%
63%
Global Business Reach By Segment

From which continent do the majority of your business revenues come?
Revenue Location North America Europe Asia-Pacific South America Africa Global* Brand Marketers
(n=199)
Agencies
(n=235)
54
%
Technologists/Other
(n=233)
66% 12% 9% 2% 1% 11%
15% 60%
15%
62% 18% 12% 2% 1% 5%
4% 13%
9% 1% 3%
26%
*Less than half of our revenues come from any one continent.
30
%
46%
19
3%
21
DMO Key Findings
key finding
Changing Consumer Behavior Drives Marketers to Increase Digital Investment
20
11% DMO Key Findings
6%
3% 15 Marketers Plan to Increase Digital Work Plans for Digital Projects: 2011
Compared to 2010 are you projecting an increase or decrease in the amount of digital projects your organization will undertake in 2011?
- In total, 80% of marketers plan to increase the volume of digital projects in 2011. - Only 5% are planning a decrease in their digital work in the next year.
15%
4%
Plans for Digital Projects: 2011

54% Slight increase 26% Significant increase 15% Same amount 4% Slight decrease 1% Significant decrease
Nearly every metric we use to measure online behaviorthings like time spent online, money spent online, etc.is projected 30 to grow at a tremendous rate. And as more people take their traditionally PC-bound experiences mobile via smartphones and % tablets, these numbers will grow even faster. Digital is where the eyeballs and the money are headed. Adobe made a righthand turn decision several years ago to double-down on digital. Nearly 75% of our marketing is now digital. Ann Lewnes, Senior Vice President, Global Marketing Adobe Systems Incorporated 46%
3% If built and used correctly a sound digital strategy allows a marketer to fish where the fish areit is truly the only medium that allows one to map marketing to consumer behavior in a measurable way. It can constantly be tested and refined all the time. If used and monitored for efficiencies in targeting, digital production, etc. a digital strategy/work should increase year over year in double-digit percentages with no incremental investment. Scott McLaren, Global Digital Marketing, CRM and Web Operations, General Motors
21
21
54
26%
DMO Key Findings
Consumer Behavior Drives Changing Investment

What is the primary reason that your marketing investments are changing? (select all that apply)
Reasons for Changing Investment Changing consumer behavior Competitive forces Organizational efficiencies Top-down directive None of the above* Other Im not sure Brand Marketers 57% 29% 24% 17% 6% 2% 1% Agencies 77% 77% 29% 20% 9% 6% 5% 3% Technologists/Other 64% 64% 28% 25% 12% 10% 4% 5%
*Our marketing investments are not changing.
Considering the overwhelming data that supports consumers engaging with brands more than ever through digital touchpoints, it is very surprising to see 69% of marketers suggesting a similar or small increase to their digital marketing efforts. Does this reflect the need to further validate spending through better digital ROI models, media buying agency influence or simply disinterest or fear of changing their own marketing planning habits? I certainly hope its a desire to explore new ROI modelsthe ones that truly match communication program and/or marketing campaign objectives to outcomes. If its media agency influence or fear of change, we as digital and integrated agencies must continue to invest heavily in educating our clients on more effective strategies to reach and engage their consumers. Angele Beausoleil, DMO Editor-in-Chief, VP Strategy and Innovation, Dare
22
DMO Key Findings
key finding
Digital Investment Planned in Six Areas
23
DMO Key Findings
Digital Investment Plans Trend toward Creating Experiences

In which of the following, if any, does your organization plan to invest in 2011? (select all that apply)
- Marketers plan to invest resources in, on average, 5.5 digital technologies/tools in 2011. - Top areas include social networks/applications, brand experiences, and digital infrastructureblogger outreach and games are lower priorities.
Planned Investments in Digital Social networks/applications Digital brand experiences Digital Infrastructure Mobile Search optimization Email marketing Digital advertising Viral/social media campaigns Blogger outreach Games Other None of the above Brand Marketers 69% 67% 70% 51% 60% 70% 61% 43% 35% 18% 2% 2% Agencies 77% 71% 61% 70% 59% 47% 56% 52% 44% 35% 4% 3% Technologists/Other 76% 58% 64% 56% 57% 60% 52% 46% 40% 26% 6% 3%
As the pace of digital change continues to increase, digital infrastructure in all forms (IT, organizational structure, culture, process, talent, etc) will become even more critical. It will either provide a path to or barrier from opportunity in the days to come. For those not looking at infrastructure holistically today, those barriers will grow and the opportunity to leverage the other items on this list will be limited with every day that passes. The time for real change in your marketing organizations foundation is here. Chad Ciesil, DMO Chairperson, SoDA Board of Directors; CEO, Gravity Federation We have made some major investments over the past years in digital infrastructure. Our company is all about digital brand experiences so we invested in this area early. We are also seeing great returns from increased investments in email marketing and digital advertising. Most recently, we are concentrating on building out our customer database, SEO and upgrading our social media infrastructure. We will continue to invest in optimizing our website/e-commerce infrastructure as well as our social networking infrastructure. Ann Lewnes, Senior Vice President, Global Marketing Adobe Systems Incorporated
24
DMO Key Findings
Connecting all the data together in a relevant way tells the story of the path of the consumer. I would also argue that because digital is so measurable and accountable analyzing the data can many times get over complicated. It is really important to identify the desired business objectives, the key indicators of success along the path of the consumer and measure those. Far too often a team focuses on several different cuts of the data looking for insight when it should only be 5 or 6 relevant things. Scott McLaren, Global Digital Marketing, CRM and Web Operations, General Motors
25
DMO Key Findings
key finding
Marketers Own Corporate Sites Still Considered Most Important Digital Media ChannelSocial Is a Close Second
26
DMO Key Findings
Marketers Focus on Own Site Still a First Priority, but Social Is a Close Second
Which of the following digital media channels, if any, will you or your organization use in 2011? (select all that apply)
- Overall, 95% of respondents plan to use some form of social media in 2011.
Planned Investments in Digital Facebook Twitter Corporate website/microsite Consumer website/microsite Blogs Mobile application Mobile web Other social networking site Digital screen/environment Foursquare Other location-based service MySpace Orkut Other None of the above
Brand Marketers 76% 69% 80% 63% 57% 46% 42% 29% 21% 17% 9% 5% 3% 4% 1%
Agencies 96% 89% 81% 81% 75% 72% 73% 40% 44% 49% 35% 9% 7% 2% 0%
Technologists/Other 87% 79% 74% 66% 65% 52% 55% 36% 32% 28% 18% 6% 2% 4% 0%
Our website is still our most important digital media channel, with over 300 million unique visitors per month. Study after study shows it is the number one place our customers consult before purchase. Thats why our digital strategy (email, display, etc.) to date has hinged upon bringing our customers to our site. In a couple of years, more people will be using mobile devices to access the Web than PCs. We recently optimized Adobe.com for mobile devices and are starting to experiment more with mobile media. Social has become incredibly important to us. You need to go where people are as well as bring them to you and so weve made some major investments in social media. Measuring all this has become quite challenging but we have done some fantastic work in the past year to better understand the effectiveness of each element of our mix, using both econometric modeling as well as customer tracking studies. Ann Lewnes, Senior Vice President, Global Marketing Adobe Systems Incorporated
27
DMO Key Findings
Its really easy for marketers to get lost in the marketing world fishbowl we all live in. In our world mobile is the talk of the town. But in the real world brands are still worrying about stuff that we consider old news, like their corporate website and getting a page up on Facebook. Most brand executives are still trying to get buy-in for the shift to digital, let alone trying to get dollars for mobile apps, coupons, tag readers and the like. The truth is that a brands dot.com still remains a very important piece of the digital puzzle and many of those sites are just not ready for prime-time. However, just getting the funding to move a corporate or consumer dot.com into the 21st century can require a corporate act of congress so we have to be sensitive to their struggles. The bottom line is that brands need to get the basics in place before they dive into all the new opportunities. Job one is developing a strategy that prioritizes which tactics in the digital toolbox to invest in, when. It always amazes me that despite the complexity of connecting with the digital consumer throughout the sales cycle, brands often have not done the strategy work that sets out the roadmap. Tony Quin, SoDA Board Member, CEO, IQ Integration is criticalacross channels as well as between online and offline. Just as critical is the way it is done. Assets should be leveraged, the message needs to be the same, yet the consumer experience and objective needs to be tailored to the particular medium. This is achieved best when online and offline are considered and detailed out in a singular creative brief for a messaging campaign. I am also not surprised mobile applications/web rank 6th. I dont believe a true paradigm shift has occurred that frames mobile as an experience on any un-tethered device and continues to be thought of as simply cell phones and smart phones. The same strong discipline needs to be applied to this area as is currently applied to corporate sites. Scott McLaren, Global Digital Marketing, CRM and Web Operations, General Motors
28
DMO Key Findings
key finding
67% of Marketers Are Increasing Investment to Focus on Unpaid/Earned Media
29
DMO Key Findings
Marketers Plan to Increase Investment 4% in Unpaid/Earned Media Change in Investments: Unpaid/Earned Media
How do you expect your investments to change this year in regard to unpaid/earned media?
26%
15%
30
%
46%
3%
Change in Investments: Unpaid/Earned Media

46% Somewhat increasing 30% Staying the same 21% Significantly increasing 3% Somewhat decreasing 1% Significantly decreasing
Unpaid media provides real opportunities to impact how consumers experience a brand. The upside stems from the role of the brand messenger, and its potential to drive awareness. Consumers are more likely to tune into messages from friends, 36% family, colleagues, or social networks. Moreover, they may be more likely to trust these messengers than the brand itself. The downside is the potential loss of control over the brands message and its volume. Overexposure, particularly of off62% brand messages, is a risk to consider. Amy Buckner, Managing Partner and Founder, AnswerLab Over the past few years we have experimented and learned a lot. While not everything has been a success, along the way we have produced some hard working branded content for Orbit and Juicy Fruit that has driven consumer engagement levels with these brands. We have learned that generating earned media comes from the right combination of strategic clarity, consistency of brand story and highly disruptive creative. But if you can only have one, its always about the creative. In other mediums, average copy can at least deliver average returns...in the digital world, the creative has to work harder to rise above the clutter and gain traction. Victor Mehren, Sr. Marketing Director, Wm Wrigley Jr. Company
30
21
54
DMO Key Findings
Planned Investment Changes: By Segment

How do you expect your investments to change in 2011?
- Plans to increase investment in paid digital media is consistent across respondents, though technologists/other roles lag slightly behind agencies and brand marketers. - While the majority of respondents plan to maintain levels of spending on paid traditional media, a steadfast 14% of brand marketers and agencies plan increased investment. - Agencies lead the charge toward growing investment for unpaid/earned media: 76% plan an increase.
Planned Investment: Paid Digital Media Significantly decreasing Somewhat decreasing Staying the same Somewhat increasing Significantly increasing Planned Investment: Paid Traditional Media Significantly decreasing Somewhat decreasing Staying the same Somewhat increasing Significantly increasing Planned Investment: Unpaid/Earned Media Significantly decreasing Somewhat decreasing Staying the same Somewhat increasing Significantly increasing
Brand Marketers 4% 4% 34% 50% 8% Brand Marketers 11% 32% 44% 12% 2% Brand Marketers 2% 3% 34% 46% 15%
Agencies 2% 3% 30% 52% 14% Agencies 8% 29% 50% 12% 2% Agencies 0% 1% 23% 52% 24%
Technologists/Other 3% 6% 42% 41% 9% Technologists/Other 15% 19% 58% 6% 1% Technologists/Other 1% 4% 32% 41% 22%
31
DMO Key Findings
key finding
Hiring for Social Media Marketing Professionals Tops the List
32
DMO Key Findings
Social Media Strategy Is the HOT Skill Set Marketers Are Hiring This Year
Which of the following digital marketing skill sets, if any, will you look to acquire in 2011? (select all that apply)
Brand Marketers 31% 18% 27% 16% 19% 24% 22% 19% 13% 11% 10% 3% 2% Agencies 50% 52% 42% 55% 49% 50% 39% 36% 37% 24% 13% 4% 2% Technologists/Other 34% 32% 32% 29% 32% 23% 22% 25% 25% 14% 11% 3% 1%
Headcount Growth: Hire Social media marketing Website design & dev. Research & strategic planning Digital advertising creative dev. Social community site mgmt. Digital brand mgmt./measurement Social media monitoring Blog writing & editing Mobile application dev. Video production Website hosting & maintenance Other None of the above
Brands and agencies are working increasingly hard at knitting new campaigns, products and services into an already crowded digital ecosystem. Were seeing a lot of agencies create roles around social media and propagation. By far, the greatest successes come when the social media role is integrated into the creative, planning and production processes. Those charged with social media activity need to really know the thing they are promoting and the audience they are conversing with. Social media isnt a fix that can be developed in isolation and bolted on. Its a process that involves finding and priming an audience and using its needs and wants to shape a better campaign, product or service. Sara Williams, DMO Section Editor, Head of Content, Made by Many It is critical for companies to understand the growth and development of social media and its impact on business and consumers. As a family company committed to our consumer families we must be forward thinking and understand how consumers function. Armed with that knowledge, marketing and communication efforts can be channeled directly to the consumer giving them the messages and information they need. Kelly M. Semrau, Senior Vice President of Global Corporate Affairs, Communication & Sustainability at SC Johnson.
33
DMO Key Findings
30
Does your organization have a role or resource dedicated to social media? (n=634)* *Question triggered only for respondents who indicated that their organizations plan to use social media tools/technologies in 2011.
36% 62%
Dedicated Social Media Resource
62% Yes 36% No 2% Im not sure
We view social media as vital and a highly effective channel to foster conversation with our customers, communities and other key audiences. We use social media to both get the word out about company and product news and as an important listening post for customer feedback and behavior. We actively cultivate and participate in the passionate social communities which have developed around our products and brands. A dedicated social media team, along with individual Adobe employees (from C-level executives to employees in the field) contribute to our social communities with fresh content and news on a regular basis. According to Mashable, Adobe is one of the top 4 employers for social media professionals, something were pretty proud of. Adobe leverages both established social networks such as Twitter and Facebookand actively experiments with up-and-coming social networks like Gowallato reach a social universe of more than 1.5 million members. With the integration of Omniture technology, were also able to look beyond just social audience sizefollowers, friends, updates and tweetsto measure the impact our social media activities have on concrete business goals including product trials, customer sentiment and revenue. Using social media in marketing is not just a box you check to say we did that. Its a vital and valuable tool in digital marketing. 15% Ann Lewnes, Senior Vice President, Global Marketing, Adobe Systems Incorporated Social has caused a true convergence of PR, marketing and customer messaging. The marketing aspect needs to be well thought out and objective based. The PR aspect of it has to be in house and owned. It is the true voice of the brand and 4% consumer brand promise. Scott McLaren, Global Digital Marketing, CRM and Web Operations, General Motors
21
Social Media 46% Strategy Is the HOT Skill Set Marketers Are Hiring This Year 3% Dedicated Social Media Resource
%
34
54 %
26%
DMO Key Findings
key finding
Marketers Embrace Importance of Engagement Metrics over Traditional Site Metrics
35
DMO Key Findings
Marketers Determine Performance Using Several Metrics Key Metrics for Determining Performance
Please rate the importance of the following advertising performance metrics for you (or your clients): *Metrics reflect respondent ratings of 6 or 7 on a 1-7 scale where 7 = Extremely important.
- Brand and product awareness, leads, and web analyticsengagement metricshave surpassed traditional metrics like page views and CPM for measuring performance. - On average, marketers rated 3.6 metrics as important for evaluating ad performance.
Key Metrics for Determining Performance from All Survey Respondents Branding or product awareness Lead generation activity Web analytics Time on site Immediate ROI calculated from tracked sales Click-through rate Page views CPM 61% 60% 58% 44% 51% 38% 34% 20%
Marketers are becoming sophisticated analysts and are demanding more from the quantifiable metrics that the web has offered for the past 16 years. Incorporating the rich value of qualitative data is critical to establishing and further understanding the new Return on Engagement (ROE) model. An effective success measurement of any and all web-based activities should combine the quantifiable data of # of unique visitors, duration, pages, etc with behaviourial data such as most pages viewed, downloads, comments, etc. Angele Beausoleil, DMO Editor-in-Chief, VP Strategy and Innovation, Dare We are big into measurement. We are fortunate to be able to have access to all the latest online marketing optimization technology because of our acquisition of Omniture last year. And, boy, do we take advantage of that. One of the biggest metrics we track and emphasize is product trials driven through Adobe.com and our other sites. We know that theres a significant positive correlation between product trial and product purchase on our sites. So we put quite a bit of effort into reducing barriers to trial and driving trial-to-purchase. We are also very focused on site-to-store conversion, i.e., how many people who come to our site actually purchase something. Im a bit of a nut when it comes to measurement and dashboarding. I just think its amazing what we can do today! Ann Lewnes, Senior Vice President, Global Marketing, Adobe Systems Incorporated The most important site performance metrics to me are time on the site, path of consumer on the site, links in and out of the site and conversions/sales. They truly tell the engagement or online relationship you have or have not created with the customer. It is a measure of whether an online strategy/content/tools is delivering relevant messages and appropriate consumer interactions. Scott McLaren, Global Digital Marketing, CRM and Web Operations, General Motors
36
DMO Key Findings
key finding
Influence of Blogs Growing for Understanding Target Behavior
37
DMO Key Findings
For Customer Intelligence, In-House Research Still Reigns

How do you learn about your customers online profiles and behavior? (select all that apply)
While marketers continue to look to in-house research for information about customers online profiles and behavior, blogs are growing in influence, especially at agencies.
Sources for Customer Behavior In-house research division Blogs Industry analyst report Digital research company Digital mktg. agency partner Traditional research company Online panel Traditional ad agency partner Research community Other None of the above
Brand Marketers 52% 32% 31% 30% 38% 30% 20% 20% 16% 3% 8%
Agencies 53% 54% 49% 44% 37% 29% 26% 19% 19% 5% 4%
Technologists/Other 44% 45% 33% 36% 31% 16% 12% 14% 11% 8% 12%
Blogs have grown up from being a basic self-publishing tool into a critical business communications vehicle. Blogs truly offer an open line of communication with your existing and potential customers as well as employees, and offer you 24/7 access to consumer research. Unlike other marketing communication methods (like e-newsletters, banner ads or your corporate website), blogs allow your customers to have a voice: the comment feature allows them to learn more about your business, ask questions, share reviews and interact with each other. They are the hard working underdog for building brand ambassadors from within and outside your organization. So, what is your blog strategy for 2011? Angele Beausoleil, DMO Editor-in-Chief, VP Strategy and Innovation, Dare
38
DMO Key Findings
key finding
Digital Agencies Too Low on List as Trends Source for Marketers
39
DMO Key Findings
Traditional Print Media and Blogs Inform Marketers

How do you learn about emerging digital marketing technology and trends? (select all that apply)
Marketers rely on a number of sources for emerging technologies and trends for digital: industry publications and marketing blogs are the most popular.
Sources for Emerging Technologies and Trends Industry publications Marketing blogs Marketing peers Conferences Industry analysts reports Digital agency partners Top-selling books Other None of the above Brand Marketers 69% 61% 56% 58% 50% 42% 24% 4% 3% Agencies 83% 83% 65% 60% 62% 63% 24% 5% 0% Technologists/Other 77% 76% 64% 56% 56% 43% 24% 5% 1%
Marketers looking to their digital agency partners last as compared other channels is an indication of the shear amount of emerging technologies being created as well as the diversity of sources creating them. Marketers no longer need to wait on their agency to get an education on whats new and possible. Its not enough for agencies to simply be knowledgeable of the trends, they need to strive to be owners of innovation while developing solutions for their clients business problems. As a partner, agencies should think of themselves as trusted thought-leaders whom marketers trust for strategic information. Agencies need multi-tiered communication strategies for sharing work and ideas. These strategies need to range from daily messaging through social channels as well as messaging through quarterly newsletters and annual marketing projections for the next year. Unless agencies can play a role in the sharing of new ideas they cant be considered for the execution of ideas. Charles Duncan, DMO Section Editor, Director of Technology, IQ For digital agency partners to move up this list they need to gain a stronger voice/direct relationship with the marketer/client. I believe these numbers may be skewed a bit as many of the creative ideas relative to emerging trends and technology are still born out of a creative idea and in many cases presented by a traditional creative agency of record. Often times without the digital agency getting a voice in the process. It is my belief that true digital agencies start with the business objective, then the best technology or medium to achieve that objective and then finally the creative presentation. This is a shift to the traditional creative process. The more prominence or further up-stream a digital agency can be included will increase the ability to inform and enhance a creative idea. I also think digital agencies should push their ability to facilitate and generate dialogue within their clients organizations through a formalized blog or ideation process that pushes thinking relative to digital marketing and its ability to map to consumer behavior. Scott McLaren, Global Digital Marketing, CRM and Web Operations, General Motors
40
Additional Insight
Jeff Jarrett, Global Director Digital Marketing, Kimberly-Clark The survey provides a great lens into strategic priorities across the digital landscape. Several themes jump out: 1. Increasing investments in social and earned media are forcing new planning models and organizational structures to manage these investments properly. Clients are experimenting with various models but havent yet cracked the code. 2. Digital measurement, especially in social media and mobile, will drive future investment shifts. While engagement metrics are getting better, it is still an area ripe for development. 3. Clients are increasingly hungry for digital thought leadershipthis is both an opportunity and a warning to digital agencies to start leading strategically, or clients will find it elsewhere. Patrice Dermody, Vice President, Media, Digital and Social Networking, Sears Holdings Corporation The forces at work in the digital marketplace are the result of shifting consumer dynamics, a still fragile economy, and the movement of both traditional and digital agencies to a different center. The same is true for marketerssome of whom have moved from being wary of digital, to knowing they need to do something in the space, to understanding that digital technology is changing almost everything that they have ever known about how to reach and motivate their target prospects. It is no surprise that the majority of marketers are planning to increase their investment in digital, especially as they get more and more comfortable with online video. What marketers havent admitted to yet, is that they still harbor hopes of digital and social being able to lower the cost of their overall marketing investments. This is the reason why 67% plan to increase their investment in the social and unpaid channels. Veteran marketers, held hostage for years by the broadcast content creators, hold on to the hope that digital media (not necessarily digital technology) can be a more efficient way to target their best customers, finally reducing their dependence on mass media.
41
Detailed Findings
detailed 201 findings 1
42
Detailed Findings
Digital as a Portion of Marketing Budget: By Segment

21%
6%
3% What percentage of your overall 2010 marketing budget is invested in digital channels?
23%
17 %
3%
7%
- Fully 47% of agencies spend at least half of their budget on digital. - For brand marketers, the proportion is significantly lessonly 26% of respondents in this group spend half or more of their marketing budget on digital.
Digital as a Portion of Marketing Budget 0 9% 10 19% 20 29% 30 39% 40 49% 50 59% 60% or more
Brand Marketers 20% 20% 16% 10% 8% 5% 21%
Agencies
5%
Technologists/Other 12% 12% 11%

63%
12% 16% 11 11% 10% 4% 7% 40%

15%
%
8% 6% 7% 44%
Marketers Plan To Increase Digital Work Plans for Digital Projects: 2011
Compared to 2010, are you projecting an increase or decrease in the amount of digital projects your organization will undertake in 2011?
- In total, 80% of marketers plan to increase the volume of digital projects in 2011. - Only 5% are planning a decrease in their digital work in the next year.
15%
4%
Plans for Digital Projects: 2011

54% Slight increase 26% Significant increase 15% Same amount 4% Slight decrease 1% Significant decrease
30
%
46%
43
3%
54 %
17%
% 16
26%
6%
26%
Detailed Findings
Planned Change in Digital: By Segment

Compared to 2010, are you projecting an increase or decrease in the amount of digital projects your organization will undertake in 2011?
Fully 86% of agencies, 83% of technologists/other roles, and 71% of brand marketers are looking to grow their number of digital projects for 2011.
Technologists/ Other 0% 3% 15% 49% 34%
Digital as a Portion of Marketing Budget We are projecting a significant decrease We are projecting a slight decrease We are projecting roughly the same amount We are projecting a slight increase We are projecting a significant increase
Brand Marketers 3% 7% 20% 55% 16%
Agencies 0% 3% 10% 58% 28%
44
Detailed Findings
54
Digital Headcount Growth Will Continue through 2011 15% 15%

In 2010, how has your organizations headcount changed in the areas that support digital marketing 4% 4% and/or communications initiatives? Thinking about 2011, how do you expect your organizations headcount to change in the areas that support digital marketing and/or communications initiatives?
26% 26%
8%
8%
54
30
30
57%
57%
34%
34%
68 % 68 %
Headcount: 2010
57% Increase 34% Stayed the same 8% Decrease
Plans for Headcount: 2011

68% Increase 30% Stayed the same 1% Decrease
26
26
72
72
45
Detailed Findings
Changes in Digital Headcount: By Segment

In 2010, how has your organizations headcount changed in the areas that support digital marketing and/or communications initiatives? Thinking about 2011, how do you expect your organizations headcount to change in the areas that support digital marketing and/or communications initiatives?
Agencies, in particular, saw headcount supporting digital efforts grow in 2010 and expect the growth to continue.
Changes in Headcount: 2010 Decreased Stayed the same Increased
Brand Marketers 11% 47% 42%
Agencies 6% 19% 75%
Changes in Headcount: 2011 Plans Decreased Stayed the same Increased
Agencies 0% 13% 86%
46
Detailed Findings
Social Media Strategy Is the HOT Skill Set Marketers Are Hiring This Year
Which of the following digital marketing skill sets, if any, will you look to acquire in 2011? (select all that apply)
Headcount Growth: Hire Social media marketing Website design & dev. Research & strategic planning Digital advertising creative dev. Social community site mgmt. Digital brand mgmt./measurement Social media monitoring Blog writing & editing Mobile application dev. Video production Website hosting & maintenance Other None of the above
Brand Marketers 31% 18% 27% 16% 19% 24% 22% 19% 13% 11% 10% 3% 2%
Agencies 50% 52% 42% 55% 49% 50% 39% 36% 37% 24% 13% 4% 2%
Technologists/Other 34% 32% 32% 29% 32% 23% 22% 25% 25% 14% 11% 3% 1%
47
Detailed Findings
Marketers Plan to Outsource Mobile Resources

Which of the following digital marketing skill sets, if any, will you look to acquire in 2011?
Rather than hire full-time headcount, marketers will look outside of their organizations for mobilefocused, video production, and site hosting roles.
Headcount Growth: Outsource Mobile application dev. Video production Website hosting & maintenance Social media monitoring Blog writing & editing Website design & development Digital adv. creative dev. Social community site mgmt. Digital brand mgmt./measurement Social media marketing Research & strategic planning Other None of the above
Brand Marketers 20% 21% 18% 15% 16% 21% 19% 8% 9% 10% 7% 0% 1%
Agencies 38% 37% 38% 23% 22% 15% 7% 14% 9% 7% 6% 2% 1%
Technologists/Other 26% 26% 24% 18% 15% 13% 13% 13% 14% 10% 9% 2% 1%
48
Detailed Findings
8%
Funds Will Shift from Traditional % 30 to Digital Media in 2011 34% Shifting Funds toward8% Digital Projects 6
Compared to 2010, are you (or your clients) planning to shift marketing funds from traditional to digital media?
The majority of brand marketers are planning to pour increasing funds into digital media in 2011, continuing a trend from 2010.
26
72
Shifting Funds toward Digital Projects

72% Yes, we are planning to shift funds from traditional to digital media 26% No, we are not planning any shift in the funds allocated to digital media 3% No, we are planning to shift funds from digital to traditional media
35%
48%
4% 4%
49
10%
Detailed Findings
Digital Investment Plans Trend Toward Creating Experiences

In which of the following, if any, does your organization plan to invest in 2011? (select all that apply)
- Marketers plan to invest resources in, on average, 5.5 digital technologies/tools in 2011. - Top areas include social networks/applications, brand experiences, and digital infrastructureblogger outreach and games are lower priorities.
Planned Investments in Digital Social networks/applications Digital brand experiences Digital Infrastructure Mobile Search optimization Email marketing Digital advertising Viral/social media campaigns Blogger outreach Games Other None of the above Brand Marketers 69% 67% 70% 51% 60% 70% 61% 43% 35% 18% 2% 2% Agencies 77% 71% 61% 70% 59% 47% 56% 52% 44% 35% 4% 3% Technologists/Other 76% 58% 64% 56% 57% 60% 52% 46% 40% 26% 6% 3%
50
Detailed Findings
72 %
Marketers Plan to Increase Paid Digital Media Investment

Change in Investments: Paid Digital Media
- Fully 93% of marketers plan to increase or maintain 2010s level of investment in paid digital media in 2011. - Less than 10% of respondents plan a decrease in paid digital media investment.
35%
48%
4% 4%
35%
Paid Digital Media Investments

48% Somewhat increasing 35% Staying the same % 10% Significantly4increasing
10%
4% Somewhat decreasing 4% Significantly decreasing
48%
10%
4%
11%
10 %
26%
Marketers Plan to Maintain Paid Traditional Media Investment

3%
51
11%
51
- Roughly half of respondents will maintain 2010s level of investment on paid traditional media in 2011. - More than one-third of marketers plan to decrease spending on paid traditional media in 2011.
Paid Traditional Media Investments

51% Staying the same 26% Somewhat decreasing 11% Significantly decreasing
21%
30%
10% Somewhat increasing 2% Significantly increasing
3%
21%
30%
10 %
26%
46
46
51
36%
Detailed Findings
Marketers Plan to Increase Investment 15% in Unpaid/Earned Media

Change in Investments: Unpaid/Earned Media 4%
26%
How do you expect your investments to change in 2011 in regard to unpaid/earned media?
Overall, more than two-thirds of respondents plan an increase in investment for unpaid/earned media.
30
%
46%
3%
21 %
Change In Investments: Unpaid/Earned Media

46% Somewhat increasing 30% Staying the same 21% Significantly increasing 3% Somewhat decreasing 1% Significantly decreasing
36% 62%
52
54
Detailed Findings
Planned Investment Changes: By Segment

- Plans to increase investment in paid digital media is consistent across respondents, though technologists/other roles lag slightly behind agencies and brand marketers. - While the majority of respondents plan to maintain levels of spending on paid traditional media, a steadfast 14% of brand marketers and agencies plan increased investment. - Agencies lead the charge toward growing investment for unpaid/earned media: 76% plan an increase.
Planned Investment: Paid Digital Media Significantly decreasing Somewhat decreasing Staying the same Somewhat increasing Significantly increasing Planned Investment: Paid Traditional Media Significantly decreasing Somewhat decreasing Staying the same Somewhat increasing Significantly increasing Planned Investment: Unpaid/Earned Media Significantly decreasing Somewhat decreasing Staying the same Somewhat increasing Significantly increasing
Brand Marketers 4% 4% 34% 50% 8% Brand Marketers 11% 32% 44% 12% 2% Brand Marketers 2% 3% 34% 46% 15%
Agencies 2% 3% 30% 52% 14% Agencies 8% 29% 50% 12% 2% Agencies 0% 1% 23% 52% 24%
Technologists/Other 3% 6% 42% 41% 9% Technologists/Other 15% 19% 58% 6% 1% Technologists/Other 1% 4% 32% 41% 22%
53
Detailed Findings
Consumer Behavior Drives Changing Investment

What is the primary reason that your marketing investments are changing? (select all that apply)
Reasons for Changing Investment Changing consumer behavior Competitive forces Organizational efficiencies Top-down directive Im not sure Other None of the above*
Brand Marketers 57% 29% 24% 17% 1% 2% 6%
Agencies 77% 77% 29% 20% 9% 3% 5% 6%
Technologists/Other 64% 64% 28% 25% 12% 5% 4% 10%
*Our marketing investments are not changing.
54
Detailed Findings
measurement + performance
55
Detailed Findings
Marketers Determine Performance Using Several Metrics Key Metrics for Determining Performance
Please rate the importance of the following advertising performance metrics for you (or your clients) *Metrics reflect respondent ratings of 6 or 7 on a 1-7 scale where 7 = Extremely important.
- Brand and product awareness, leads, and web analyticsengagement metricshave surpassed traditional metrics like page views and CPM for measuring performance. - On average, marketers rated 3.6 metrics as important for evaluating ad performance.
Key Metrics for Determining Performance from All Survey Respondents Branding or product awareness Lead generation activity Web analytics Immediate ROI calculated from tracked sales Time on site Click-through rate Page views CPM 61% 60% 58% 51% 44% 38% 34% 20%
56
Detailed Findings
Key Performance Metrics: By Segment (1)

Please rate the importance of the following advertising performance metrics for you (or your clients): *Metrics reflect respondent ratings of 6 or 7 on a 1-7 scale where 7 = Extremely important.
Agencies love metrics: They are more likely to view key digital measures like lead-gen activity and web analytics as important to gauging performance of their campaigns.
Reasons for Changing Investment Branding or product awareness Lead generation activity Web analytics Immediate ROI calculated*
Brand Marketers 58% 55% 54% 45%
Agencies 61% 65% 64% 60%
Technologists/Other 62% 58% 54% 47%
*Immediate ROI calculated from tracked sales.
Key Performance Metrics: By Segment (2)

Please rate the importance of the following advertising performance metrics for you (or your clients): *Metrics reflect respondent ratings of 6 or 7 on a 1-7
Technologists and other roles are more likely to focus on traditional measures like click-throughs and page views than brand marketers and agencies.
Reasons for Changing Investment Time on site Click-through rate Page views CPM Brand Marketers 38% 32% 32% 18% Agencies 48% 39% 30% 22% Technologists/Other 47% 42% 38% 20%
57
Detailed Findings
tools + technologies
58
Detailed Findings
Marketers Plan for Social Web Channels in 2011

Which of the following digital media channels, if any, will you or your organization use in 2011? (select all that apply)
- Overall, 95% of respondents plan to use some form of social media in 2011.
Planned Investments in Digital Facebook Twitter Corporate website/microsite Consumer website/microsite Blogs Mobile application Mobile web Other social networking site Digital screen/environment Foursquare Other location-based service MySpace Orkut Other None of the above Brand Marketers 76% 69% 80% 63% 57% 46% 42% 29% 21% 17% 9% 5% 3% 4% 1% Agencies 96% 89% 81% 81% 75% 72% 73% 40% 44% 49% 35% 9% 7% 2% 0% Technologists/Other 87% 79% 74% 66% 65% 52% 55% 36% 32% 28% 18% 6% 2% 4% 0%
59
Detailed Findings
Marketers Use Social Media for Outbound Communication

In which of the following ways, if any, does your organization use social media tools? (select all that apply)
While outbound communication with customers is todays norm for social media, product/messaging innovation, inbound feedback, and research are catching up.
Use of Social Media Tools Outbound communication w/ our customers To drive product or messaging innovation Inbound feedback from our customers To help us better understand our customers None of the above Other
Brand Marketers 77% 54% 53% 48% 3% 2%
Agencies 81% 69% 67% 70% 3% 2%
Technologists/ Other 78% 62% 60% 52% 6% 3%
60
Detailed Findings
30 Marketing Organizations Bring Social Media % In-House 46% Dedicated Social Media Resource 3%
Does your organization have a role or resource dedicated to social media? (n=634)* *Question triggered only for respondents who indicated that their organizations plan to use social media tools/technologies in 2011.
21
36% 62%
Dedicated Social Media Resource

62% Yes 36% No 2% Im not sure
15%
4%
61
54
26%
Detailed Findings
Outsourcing Social Media Efforts Has Yet to Take Hold Outsource Social Media Efforts 3
Does your organization outsource social media efforts? (n=228)* *Question triggered only for respondents who indicated that their organizations plan to use social media tools/technologies in 2011 but did not have a dedicated social media role or resource.
- Among respondents who do not have an in-house social media resource, the majority do not outsource social media efforts either. - These marketers may forgo social media altogether or have a decentralized approach to social media within their organization. - Only 29% of those without a dedicated social media role outsource these efforts. This implies a distributed or ad hoc social media effort/strategy from these respondents.
62%
6%
14
71%
14%
Outsource Social Media Efforts

71% No, we do not outsource social media efforts 14% Yes, we outsource to an independent contractor 14% Yes, we outsource to an agency 1% Yes, we outsource to another entity
23
62
Detailed Findings
36%
Outsourcing Social Media Efforts: By Segment

Does your organization outsource social media efforts?
62%
*Question triggered only for respondents who indicated that their organizations plan to use social media tools/technologies in 2011 but did not have a dedicated social media role or resource.
- Amongst brand marketers who plan to use social media in 2011 but dont have in-house dedicated resources, more than one-quarter outsource efforts to an agency. - Agencies that outsource social media efforts look to independent contractors for support.
% 14 Technologists/
Outsource Social Media Efforts No, we do not outsource social media efforts Yes, we outsource to an agency Yes, we outsource to an ind. contractor Yes, we outsource to another entity
Brand Marketers
(n=65)*
Agencies
71%
(n=68)*
14% (n=95)*
Other 76% 6% 17% 1%
65% 26% 9% 0%
69%
10% 19% 1%
Investment in Social Media Will Grow in 2011 Change in Social Media Investment
Compared to 2010, how do you expect your organizations investment in social media marketing initiatives to change in 2011?
Three-in-four marketers are planning to invest more in social media in 2011.
23
75
Change in Social Media Investment

75% We will invest more in 2011 23% We will invest about the same amount in 2011 2% We will invest less in 2011
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Detailed Findings
Planned Investment in Social Media: By Segment

Compared to 2010, how do you expect your organizations investment in social media marketing initiatives to change in 2011?
- Agencies will drive an increase in social media in 2011, with 85% planning to spend more than in 2010. - Brand marketers trail the agency experts, with 65% planning to grow their social media investment in 2011.
Planned Social Media Investment in 2011 We will invest less in social media mktg. We will invest the same We will invest more in social medial mktg.
Agencies 1% 14% 85%
Technologists/ Other 2% 25% 73%
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Detailed Findings
Mobile Apps and Supporting Tools Will Be Important in 2011 and 2012
Which of the following, if any, do you perceive to be the important technologies for digital marketing for 2011 and 2012? (select all that apply)
- Marketers look to mobile applications and technologies that tie into mobile appslocation-based technology and HTML5for digital marketing in 2011 and 2012.
Important Digital Technologies iPhone applications Android applications Location-based technology HTML5 Web platforms (CMS) E-coupon (mobile and web) Social gaming applications BlackBerry applications Flash 10+ Micro-Transaction Silverlight Other None of the above Brand Marketers 77% 52% 42% 50% 50% 42% 25% 44% 25% 17% 9% 2% 4% Agencies 89% 70% 72% 69% 47% 48% 56% 36% 34% 21% 9% 2% 0% Technologists/Other 85% 67% 59% 55% 46% 42% 39% 38% 31% 23% 10% 5% 1%
65
Detailed Findings
getting smart
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Detailed Findings
Traditional Print Media and Blogs Inform Marketers

How do you learn about emerging digital marketing technology and trends? (select all that apply)
Marketers rely on a number of sources for emerging technologies and trends for digital: industry publications and marketing blogs are the most popular.
Sources for Emerging Technologies and Trends Industry publications Marketing blogs Marketing peers Conferences Industry analysts reports Digital agency partners Top-selling books Other None of the above
Brand Marketers 69% 61% 56% 58% 50% 42% 24% 4% 3%
Agencies 83% 83% 65% 60% 62% 63% 24% 5% 0%
Technologists/Other 77% 76% 64% 56% 56% 43% 24% 5% 1%
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Detailed Findings
For Customer Intelligence, In-House Research Still Reigns

How do you learn about your customers online profiles and behavior? (select all that apply)
While marketers continue to look to in-house research for information about customers online profiles and behavior, blogs are growing in influence, especially at agencies.
Sources for Customer Behavior In-house research division Blogs Industry analyst report Digital research company Digital mktg. agency partner Traditional research company Online panel Traditional ad agency partner Research community Other None of the above
Brand Marketers 52% 32% 31% 30% 38% 30% 20% 20% 16% 3% 8%
Agencies 53% 54% 49% 44% 37% 29% 26% 19% 19% 5% 4%
Technologists/Other 44% 45% 33% 36% 31% 16% 12% 14% 11% 8% 12%
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Digital Consumer
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Digital Consumer
The digital landscape is transforming consumers behaviors at a blistering speed and expectations have never been higher. Not only are consumers more informed and vocal, theyre also demanding value, instant results, and a level of customization with even the most basic commodities. The proliferation of mobile web, splintering communication channels, and mass adoption of social media has introduced a new level of complexity to marketing and brand building. Marketers now must navigate an elaborate landscape. While challenging, it also offers robust opportunities for a deeper understanding of, and connection to, the people who consume there. Consumers actions are being captured and amplified on this networkcreating a pervasive social fabric thats growing richer with knowledge, and influence, every day. In the following section, we explore the rapidly evolving world of digital consumers, and their relationship with brands. We call out trends, innovations, and emerging best practices across the consumer lifecycle. We explore the behaviors, attitudes, and aspirations of those that transact and consume across the digital landscape. We examine their patterns and preferences to better understand what makes them tick. And, we venture where these evolving consumer predilections could lead the marketing industry.
By Guthrie Dolin, DMO Section Editor; Principal, Director of Strategy, Odopod

Digital in the Physical World of Retail by Guthrie Dolin, DMO Section Editor; Principal, Director of Strategy, Odopod Pervasive Customer Experience and How Digitally Focused CMOs Are Leading Our Revolution by Justin Wilden, Solutions Director, IE Media An Evolution in Car Sales: How Online Configuration Technology May Change the Face of Dealerships as We Know Them by DJ Edgerton, CEO, Zemoga Designing Digital Intimacy by Dr. Daniel Coffeen, Brand and Digital Strategist Digital Consumers Arent Just Regular Consumers with Keyboards by Brian Chiger, Digital Strategist, AgencyNet Case Study: General Pants Co. Online Store and Campaigns by Stephen Foxworthy, Strategy Director, Reactive SoDA Chat with Robert Kozinets, Professor of Marketing at York Universitys Schulich School of Business in Toronto, Canada.
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Digital Consumer
By: Guthrie Dolin DMO Section Editor Principal, Director of Strategy Odopod
Guthrie Dolin (@gee3) is a seasoned creative executive, an entrepreneur, and connector of dots. He has founded two award-winning agencies and partnered to launch numerous enterprises. Currently, Guthrie is a principal, and Director of Brand and Strategy at Odopod, a full-service digital agency that develops innovative experiences for top consumer brands.
opinion
Digital in the Physical World of Retail

So, this guy walks into a store with the Internet in his pocket With shoppers, stores, and merchandise all perpetually connected to a dynamic cloud of information and services, its clear that retailing in the physical world is undergoing a seismic shift. In fact, the digital landscape has overlaid just about every aspect and touchpoint of the consumer shopping experience, from previsit research and in-store consideration through the purchase process and beyond. Moreover, the shifting landscape is also promoting entirely new behaviors in the world of physical retailing.
The Last Mile
For well over a decade, e-commerce has been a cornerstone in the growth and development of the Internet. In that time, e-tailing has matured, the experience has been refined, and consumer usage has grown rapidly. In fact, online sales in the US are projected to be over $170 billion in 2010. Nonetheless, while online retailing has experienced phenomenal growth, the lions share of consumer transactions still take place out in the physical world. In 2009, that share was 72%. E-commerce is now ubiquitous and new digital technologies have shifted consumer behaviors and attitudes, encouraging the brick-and-mortar retailers to find digital means to enhance and augment the customers in-store experience. Weve seen a great deal of experimentation in this arena in the last two years, much of it in the form of conceptual prototypes. But now, with the proliferation of web-enabled, geo-aware mobile devices and state-of-the-art display technology, many new concepts are starting to take shape that are directly applicable to physical retail experiences.
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So, this guy walks into a store with the Internet in his pocket
With shoppers, stores, and merchandise all perpetually connected to a dynamic cloud of information and services, its clear that retailing in the physical world is undergoing a seismic shift. In fact, the digital landscape has overlaid just about every aspect and touchpoint of the consumer shopping experience, from previsit research and in-store consideration through the purchase process and beyond. Moreover, the shifting landscape is also promoting entirely new behaviors in the world of physical retailing.
Foursquare and Gowalla. And now, with Google and Facebook Places in the mix, the idea of checking-in is even more commonplace. However, the Promised Land for the category is far beyond users gaining check-in supremacyits about delivering contextually relevant services. There are three key ways location-based systems are shifting the retail experience. First, they connect consumers to products and locations available in their immediate vicinity. Second, products themselves can deliver detailed information, as well as opinions and reviews from trusted sources. Third, these applications give retailers the ability to deliver highly tailored incentives when consumers are most likely to redeem them: at the point of decision. Similar to SEM, location-based marketing delivers consumers highly relevant and timely incentives, which significantly increase response and drive conversion. Additionally, because it is a dynamic platform, it can be measured and optimized in near real-time.
Shopping with the Network

Shopping with friends and soliciting opinions about potential purchases is nothing new. However, with over 150 million people accessing Facebook on mobile devices, theyre not just shopping with a select few, theyre shopping with their entire network. And, new social-shopping experiences, such as GoTryItOn.com, are giving people the opportunity to socialize purchases beyond their immediate networks. Some retailers are leveraging these new behaviors by installing connected screens in dressing rooms and at cosmetic counters so that sharing with their social networks is baked into the in-store experience. Implementations such as Macys Magic Mirror, BP Photobooth for Nordstroms juniors, and the Diesel Cam, have the ability to both influence and amplify the individual consumer decisions made at point-of-sale. While sharing images of oneself trying out products to a massive network for feedback may be fun for some, surely it would be mortifying for others. That said, it appears social retailing is here to stay.
Creating helpful applications for discovery and decision-making, as well as delivering delightful interactions and unique environments, will certainly help foster loyalty from the increasingly fickle shopper.
Dynamic Environments
The advancement of digital signage and touch screen monitors has enabled retailers to serve up targeted interactive content. But more importantly, they can dynamically adjust displays and messaging based on who is in the store.
Location, Location, Location

2010 saw a tremendous uptick in the usage and proliferation of location-based social platforms, like
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Facial recognition technology has made it possible to identify a shoppers demographic makeup, allowing retailers to tune the shopping environment accordingly. One step more, and its possible to track and measure what shoppers are looking at and even gauge their reaction. While targeted content is an expectation online, bringing these practices into real-world environments has to be done with sensitivity, as there is a fine line between being smart and being a smartass.
Slippery Slope to Loyalty

Many digital technologies at retail are extremely well suited for customer relationships and driving loyalty. In fact, something as simple as delivering a paperless receipt after a device-based transaction, or offering rewards based on previous purchases, can be a natural first step in establishing an ongoing conversation. Additionally, creating helpful applications for discovery and decision-making, as well as delivering delightful interactions and unique environments, will certainly help foster loyalty from the increasingly fickle shopper.
Device-Based Currency
There are a host of new products and services that are fundamentally recasting how people are making purchases in the physical world. In fact, all web-enabled devices are now ports for conducting all aspects of any monetary transaction. This means that for vendors and customers alike, making and accepting payments will be easier than ever before. For example, products like Venmo (venmo.com), allow an individual to text money to anyone from their phone. Additionally, services like Subports (subports.com) have made it possible for independent vendors to sell goods and services by text message. Products like Square (squareup.com) turn smartphones into credit card swipers. And others, like Visas payWave, turn phones into credit cards. Services like these will surely drive ideas like the cash wrap counter into extinction.
New Frontier, New Questions

These digital trends at retail do beg questions. For example, how do you bring the digital functionality back into the physical world in a way that is meaningful for an empowered consumer? And, how do retailers capitalize on consumers multimodal behavior and offer a more differentiated experience? Perhaps most importantly, with all thats possible in the wired retail landscapes, whats really going to move the needle?
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Digital Consumer
By: Justin Wilden Solutions Director, IE Media
Justin Wilden (@justinwilden) has dedicated 15 years to the digital industry as an online product entrepreneur and user experience design (UXD) specialist. His passion is creating innovative and compelling user-centered solutions.
opinion
A massive shift is happening, and in 2011 we will witness how the digitally focused CMO (dCMO) will replace the specialist digital executive fraternity. The dCMOs are leading the charge to draft and own a companys strategic initiatives in the digital landscapethey are a new category of digital strategists. These digerati have lived with always on connectivity every day and developed their careers within the digital arena. They know that digital touchpoints are not websites and applications, favoring to echo their customers viewpoint that digital tools are simply products and services delivered via a digital experience.
The dCMO set realizes that the focus of a companys digital strategy is to inject core business processes and a set of optimal customer behavioral attributes into a proprietary digital platform (N.B. proprietary does not mean to build the platform from scratch). Building the right digital platform means delivering consistent customer experiences in any channel or on any device to ensure that customers are engaged with brands anywhere and at anytime. This is the pervasive customer experience.
Start Thinking Like a dCMO

The ubiquitous nature of digital means people consume information on their platform of choice. For brands this means start creating a 2015 Digital Roadmap with a vision on how a digital platform will engage with customers in a multiplatform world.
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A dCMOs thinking is powered by a deep understanding that customers live in a connected world, and they expect a consistent product experience to be delivered across mobile, desktop, and other digital touchpoints. The act of defining the customer behaviors that are critical to the success of delivering a product experience means determining the optimal intersection of customer behavior with the companys customer experience offer.
to aid in defining the pervasive behaviors that will have an impact on the mobile offer. The goal is to identify customer behaviors that need to be satisfied to deliver a compelling product experience. The next step is to link the best behavioral attributes with specific product features to maximize the customer experience offer. This sets up the foundation for redefining the mobile product as a pervasive solution.
Uniting Client and Vendor Strategy

Consider a cinema chain selling movie tickets: a dCMO would take a few steps back and recognize that the most basic step in getting people into the cinema is the ticket purchase process. That means the strategy is not to brief a vendor about building a mobile website that will facilitate ticket sales for customers on the run, in its place is the need for a digital platform that can manage and deliver the core pervasive customer experience attributes related to a ticket purchase. Fundamentally, to be considered pervasive, the behavioral attributes need to be transferrable between the various channels and devices that customers are using. The optimal attributes are captured in the behavioral rules (engine) of the digital platform. On the flip side, the vendors project is twofold: first, to design a technical layer (API) to deliver the pervasive ticket purchase experience so that it can be consumed in any platform. Second, to build a compelling mobile ticket buying experience that can be seamlessly delivered to any device, not just a mobi site, native iPhone app, or other solution left to drift in its own experience-vacuum.
Rethink the Next Digital Project

Before embarking on the next CRM, CMS, or app project, brands should rethink their digital strategy. Instead of thinking about the next website or online campaign, a business needs to analyze its digital landscape to uncover digital assets that can be transformed into customer-facing, connected products or services. And as an alternative to simply writing a brief to transform a website into a mobile website, strip the mobile offer down to the core customer behaviors to see how it works from a customers perspective. Commence by creating customer experience models
Bonus Points for Figuring Out the Next Step

With insight into the cinema groups evolution over the next five years as it strategically navigates towards successfully achieving its 2015 Digital Roadmap, the dCMO will have outlined strategies to exploit the fact that movies are already a digital asset and can be transformed into a digital product. Using the pervasive customer experience approach, the dCMO isolates specific customer behaviors to architect an innovative movie-viewing experience,
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uncovers new audience segments, and builds a plan to launch a new digital service to satisfy at least one of the segments.
shelf, pick up a CD from your library, and take it with you on a road trip. Apple realized that the killer pervasive customer experience attribute was the convenience in picking it up and taking it somewhere. When people could sync the iPod with their computer and easily transfer music between the two, Apple had nailed the pervasive customer experience by closely mirroring closely the customers existing behavior. The icing on the cake was ensuring that the same product experience that started on the Mac was made available on the Windows PC. Apple uncovered a pervasive experience attribute that provided a blueprint for designing a brand and user experience that was transferable and could be delivered on any platform and device. The core reason for the success of Apples music strategy is the ecosystem that borrows all the best parts of what people were already doing in the real world. Every project must give credit to what customers actually do, and then embed the aligned behavior-experience attributes in the digital platform
Archetype the Future Competitive Differentiator

The pervasive customer experience approach is essential where competitors have exactly the same process. Investing in the development of unique brand and user experiences is impossible when the digital foundations are formed from a standard set of business rules built on top of the same industry-compliant, technical flavor of the month. The results are entire industries with feature-bloated, copycat websites that achieve zilch for customer engagement. The dCMO needs to run an agenda to determine which customer behaviors are pervasive and then embed these attributes in the digital platform. Unique brand experiences will be easier to produce because the digital products are intrinsically based on customer behaviors and inherently speak directly to the audience. Furthermore, competitors will not be in a position to creatively swipe the integrated interface and experience offers because their underlying digital platform will not be built on the same pervasive attributes.
Real World 2: Platforms and Devices

Apples modus operandi is not a result of its supersized cash reserves. A far smaller start-up in San Francisco is also pushing the pervasive model in the word-processing space. Evernote is an online note service, where a user can store and retrieve notes via both Mac and Windows desktop software, and mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. This is the essence of a great pervasive customer experienceknowing that people want their notes nowEvernote designed its product to solve this problem. Evernote didnt build better software; it developed a digital platform for customers to save notes to a cloud-based server, supported by a user interface that is consistent on every device.
Real World 1: Mirror Existing Behavior

The digital music distribution business model was not solved by a particular file format, definitely not by digital rights management technology, or the shininess of a portable mp3 player. It was pervasive customer experience, and in particular, understanding and defining the behavioral attributes that are coded in music consumption that redefined this industry in the digital era. While CDs, cassettes, and vinyl are cumbersome, and inferior in many ways, they offer one very pervasive experience: you can walk over to your
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As a brand launched in the digital era, Evernote gets the pervasive opportunity by interacting in a multiplatform world and connecting with its customers at the exact point in time when they need to access their notes, and access them now!
Building the right digital platform means delivering consistent customer experiences in any channel or on any device to ensure that customers are engaged with brands anywhere and at anytime.
Persuasive Points to Think Pervasive
Discovering the fundamental behavioral patterns of an audience segment is at the heart of defining optimal pervasive customer experiences. To help guide the formation of digital strategies relevant to the pervasive customer experience, use the following points as kick starters: 1. Create a 2015 Digital Roadmap with a vision to create a digital platform that aligns customer behavior and customer experience. 2. Review the companys current digital landscape to uncover digital assets that can be transformed into digitized products and services.
3. Customer experience is the only factor that is inimitable. Therefore, build digital products and services around pervasive customer experience attributes. 4. Determine which customer behaviors and processes are pervasive and embed the attributes in the digital platform. 5. Create a technical layer (API) that will help to deliver consistency and familiarity across every digital touchpoint. 6. Reduce the ongoing focus of trying to achieve personalization and customization of user experiences. 7. Shift the focus to creating unique brand experiences and compelling product experiences that allow customers to connect with brands.
New Audiences and New Opportunities

Customers demand that brands interact with them on a myriad of platforms and devices, and they look for digital tools that aspire to be a proactive part of their everyday life. Whether a massive consumer brand or a start-up offering one product, digitally focused dCMOs need to drive the development of digital platforms. Launching pervasive products and services that are accessible anywhere, at anytime, and on any channel, will uncover new audiences and create new opportunities.
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Digital Consumer
By: DJ Edgerton CEO Zemoga
An industry recognized pioneer with over 18 years of experience in interactive marketing, DJ Edgerton is co-founder of Zemoga, leading the digital agencys growth and strategy initiatives.
opinion
An Evolution in Car Sales:
How Online Configuration Technology May Change the Face of Dealerships as We Know Them
Car shoppers today enjoy a wide range of online configuration technologies that allow them to build the car of their dreams, including custom options, color, and accessories, all without ever leaving their home. By the time they arrive at the dealership, buyers know exactly what they want and how much they should expect to pay, creating empowered consumers and streamlining the sales process for both the buyer and the dealer. But what if we could take the process one step further and deliver that new car right to the buyers driveway?
An Evolution in Car Sales: How Online Configuration Technology May Change the Face of Dealerships as We Know Them
Todays savvy car shopper knows that the first place to start looking for their new ride is online. In addition to having all the information they need to make a smart purchase decision, from industry review sites to peer ratings, consumers also have the chance to create their dream car. Many auto brands offer online configuration tools that allow the shopper to choose the model and optionsdown to the specific color and trim packageand walk into the dealership knowing exactly what they want. Meet the new, empowered consumer: the consumer who, for instance, used one of the online configurators that Zemoga created for Toyota to design that perfect product and were prepared to negotiate the best price based on their printed summary sheet and MSRP. This powerful connection that happens online can be a strong motivator for such a major purchase, with the consumer falling in love with the vehicle before even taking it out for a test drive. Its no secret that dealerships are the most expensive component of the car business. Last year, as the economy spiraled into a recession, virtually all of the major auto manufacturers shuttered dealerships to put a stop to the capital hemorrhage of
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maintaining each location. And frankly, the visit to the dealership is often one of the most unsavory aspects of the car buying processconsumers tend to dread the negotiating process. Additionally, minimizing the dealerships role, or even removing it from the equation, would result in a drastic cut in operating expenses and could actually reduce car prices, making a new car more affordable for more people, generating a surge in sales.
What about the showrooms that lure in local buyers? With this new model, Main Street becomes the showroom. Shopping in general has become increasingly socialpeople posting haul videos online, for example, or sharing items they like with friends on Facebook. In terms of cars, consumers will be observing what their friends are driving, and the notion of brand affinity will be more important than ever. Since there is less preliminary interaction between the consumer and the actual product in this new model, car makers with strong brand identities and messaging that resonates with their target audience will thrive. While there is the risk that some cars would be returned, in all likelihood, the moment that customer slips into the seat and breathes in that alluring new car smell, theyd be hooked knowing they had a hand in creating that vehicle.
What digital has done is taken out the middleman, or redefined the dealerships role in the purchase process, and introduced a potential revolutionary new way to buy a car that can benefit both the consumers and the maker. Imagine going online and using the configurator to design that dream carthen having it delivered right to your door after entering your credit card information and allowing a small deposit to be charged to your account. You get to inspect the car for five days, drive it around, and then decide whether or not to keep it. After your trial period, the financing option chosen during the online buying process kicks in. On the other hand, if the car isnt exactly what you expected, you can arrange for a pickup and a prorated refund of your security deposit. The brick-and-mortar dealerships then become flagship locations from which car delivery is coordinated and a small number of models are available for consumers who prefer the more traditional route.
Meet the new, empowered consumer: the consumer who, for instance, used one of the online configurators that Zemoga created for Toyota to design that perfect product and were prepared to negotiate the best price based on their printed summary sheet and MSRP.
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Digital Consumer
By: Dr. Daniel Coffeen Brand and Digital Strategist
Daniel Coffeen has a PhD in Rhetoric from UC Berkeley. He served as adjunct faculty at UC Berkeley and the San Francisco Art Institute for over 10 years teaching courses in critical theory. He has written extensively about the relationship between new media and cinema and blogs and about brand and digital issues.
opinion

The new digital platform is intimately entwined with our lives. Its with us in the morning when we rise and by our side as we drive and stroll and lounge. It tells us where our friends are and converses with us when waiting for a bus. Even when silent, it is always navigating the ether as we dine, socialize, work, sleep. It is an active participant in our daily lives.
Computing has become more than a screen we look at. It is tactile experience ripe with vibration and a plethora of telling signals. And it demands to be touched. Our fingers play across it with a knowing feel, much as we scratch an itch. In The Medium is the Message, Marshall McLuhan argues that technology is an extension of the human bodythe book an extension of the eye; the wheel an extension of the foot; electric circuitry an extension of the central nervous system. The mobile computer is at once a neural and physical appendage scanning the environment for signs much as our eyes and ears scan for sights and sounds. It is always on, always looking, pulling in data, making sense of it, and sending signals to the brain via sound and vibration. It is quite literally an extension of ourselves. The promise of the Internet has hence shifted from being an exhaustive archive of media to being alive, immediate, proactive. While we may still go to websites to survey media, computing has become an encounter, a conversation, an event. As computing entwines itself into our most private spaces, it forges, foments, and facilitates intimacy. Consider FaceTime and the casual ease with which a traveling parent shares his or her journey with their childrenLook, this is my hotel. Isnt it cool? And look: you lost a tooth. And the parent can actually look into the anxious eyes of his or her child, providing comfort from across the country.
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Or Chatroulette (http://chatroulette.com) and the way strangers put themselves into immediate conversation with each other. It creates what McLuhan calls the global village, the world folded onto itself as a mother in Milan sits face-to-face with a banker in Bangkok, an investor in Ireland stares into the living room of a developer in Dubai. The hesitation some of us feel towards Chatroulette stems precisely from the power and palpability of this disappearance of boundaries, this sudden intimacy. Or consider a dinner party, guests enjoying wine, cheese, crackers while the host, still cooking, chats and prepares, the iPad proffering the recipe and dj-ing the music, a glimmering participant in the gathering. Now thats social media. Or all the uses in telemedicine as a dermatologist in San Francisco examines the rash on a woman in Eureka. Now thats intimate. This digital intimacy shifts the very terms of how we engage people. We are no longer creating experiences off in the distance, on some website sitting on a server somewhere. We are now creating experiences that live in peoples pockets, in their beds, in their hands and always top of mind. The question is: How can we create relevant, engaging, experiences? How can we create intimacy between our brand and our consumers? Here are some things to consider:
face-to-face with each other, the brand silent in the background (think: fan sites).
The promise of the Internet has hence shifted from being an exhaustive archive of media to being alive, immediate, proactive. While we may still go to websites to survey media, computing has become an encounter, a conversation, an event.
Go to Them...
Dont make consumers come to you. Go to them. Push contentrelevant content, that is. Which means knowing what they want, and as importantly, when and how they want it. Which leads us to the next point.
...But Dont Overdo It

Use good manners. No one likes telemarketers interrupting their dinner.
Engage the Body

Move past eyes to engage faces, fingers, and voices. Digital kiosks in public spaces can use face recognition software to engage people smartly, delivering utility and/or delight. See the SapientNitro/Unilever ice cream machine in which people are invited to smile, and if their smile is big enough, they win an ice cream: http://www.sapient.com/en-us/SapientNitro/Work. html#/?project=157.
For Whom Is This Intimacy?

Is the interaction between your brand and an individual? EZface Virtual Mirror application, for instance, lets a person see what shed look like with certain beauty products applied, certainly an intimate relationship between a brand and a consumer. Your brand and a group? Think of flash mobs that mobilize a group in a way that remains quite intimate. Or between individuals via your brand? Applications as simple as video chat rooms let people connect
Make It Live
The new digital environment is immediate, live, turning on the promise of the dings, rings, and vibrations of smartphones. Design for the now. The entire interaction with the ice cream vending machine is
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live, sensing when someone is close, inviting the person closer, and using face recognition software to determine gender, age, emotion. The point is this: engage people, start a conversation, create events here and now.
perhaps whats most tasty on that menu. Or how the food ones eating fits with his diet or health needs. Or perhaps tell them a joke, a quote, a story. The question is: How can you fit into the living moment?
Serve the Nowwith Utility, Whimsy, and Delight

The digital has moved from the archive to the now. So what can you do for your customers right now? Suggest a place to eat in the neighborhood. Or
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Digital Consumer
By: Brian Chiger Digital Strategist AgencyNet
Building upon his psychology degree from University of Rochester, Brian Chiger began his career in advertising at Saatchi & Saatchi. As AgencyNets Digital Strategist and Editorin-Chief of ANidea. com, Brian applies his passion for consumer insights, ethnographic research, and sociology to the digital ecosystem.
opinion

With all due respect to the producers of ABCs My Generation, I could have told you the show wasnt going to work. I graduated with that classthe class of 2000and it was pretty obvious, even then, that we were not going to be Americas greatest generation. And why should we? We were first. And first is bound to make a few mistakes along the way. But really guys, you didnt need to rub it in with an assault of punchy, yet demoralizing, billboards. That was gratuitous.
The Class of 2000 was not just the first class of the new millennium, but also the first generation of digital consumers. Many of us began using computers at age five; right around the time we began to read. Books and screens coexisted happily in those days, but even then it was clear that digital wasnt just another screen in our already media saturated homes. It was (and is) a cultural phenomenon that changed our expectations about everything: music, art, culture, connection, friendship...About the way we buy things. About what things are (and arent) worth. For example, this year is my 10-year high school reunion. Should I go? The standard reasons are out the window. I already know what my classmates look like. I know what jobs they have, where they live, who got married, and who has kids. I know who got fat and whos going bald (hint: this guy). I can catch up and organize drinks with anyone at anytime. Essentially, Facebook has made the high school reunion obsoletetough break if youre in the business of helping people lose a decade of Hot Pocket dinners and Budweiser babies in time for a rendezvous with old frenemies.
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Digital is about understanding and facilitating a new, more connected way of living. Its about catering to the expectations of a progressive and demanding multiscreen consumer.
The fact is technology drives culture. Its the digital marketers job to stay abreast of that culture and produce the tools that facilitate it. And you know what? I think I will go to my reunion that obnoxiously retro, hipster thing is in this year.
So Where Are Consumers Heading Next?

If 2010 was the year of the integrated web, when platforms like Facebook Connect and Twitter allowed web applications to break outside their domains by passing data and identities between them, then 2011 will be the year of the integrated world: the year when technologies like mobile, QR, geo-location, RFID, tablets, and Internet-enabled appliances allow everything to talk to everything. The beginning is already here. GoogleTV and Samsung are bringing Internet apps to television. Location-based start-ups like Shopkick and Pushkart are changing the retail experience. Meanwhile, Macys just launched a dressing room experience that lets shoppers find clothing on an iPad, and then virtually try it on using an augmented-reality mirror before soliciting real-time feedback from their friends using SMS, e-mail, and their social networks. The culture of over-share meets real-time shopping.
Digital is about understanding and facilitating a new, more connected way of living. Its about catering to the expectations of a progressive and demanding multiscreen consumer.
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Digital Consumer
case study
CHALLENGE
General Pants Co. Online Store and Campaigns
General Pants Co. required an online platform that could evolve over multiple seasonal campaigns, from year to year, without the need for costly redesign or redevelopment.
General Pants Co. required an online platform that could evolve over multiple seasonal campaigns, from year to year, without the need for costly redesign or redevelopment. General Pants Co. wanted a design system that would appeal to their broad market, was flexible enough to allow for regular content and product updates, tactical promotions, and an evolving look and feel. In addition, General Pants Co. wanted to create an online communityThe Bubbleaimed at uncovering creative talent and giving them the opportunity to promote themselves and kick-start their career.
Author: Stephen Foxworthy Strategy Director, Reactive Reactive Team: Carl Panczak General Manager, Sydney Tim Kotsiakos Creative Director Kellie Strongman Senior Project Manager Laura Bell Art Director Ben Whyte Developer
RESEARCH/ACTIVITY/INSIGHT
Key to the solution was collaboration with General Pants Co. store staff and head office personnel to ensure a deep understanding of the creative drive of General Pants Co. customers. Many staff are artists, musicians, or designers in their own right, and this creative endeavour was to be reflected in all aspects of the online marketing, campaign material, and e-commerce experience.
Stephen Foxworthy is Strategy Director at Reactive. Stephen has over 15 years of experience in digital, with a focus on high performance online retail, customer experience management, and multichannel marketing.
SOLUTION
Recognizing that the most influential General Pants customer is someone who loves being creative and expressing themselves, Reactive developed
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The Bubble: an online community aimed at uncovering creative talent and giving them the opportunity to enter their work, across multiple categories such as design, film, and writing, and be discovered. Launched as a competition, it ran over three, six-week seasons, with winners being selected by state. Six creative industry mentors were selected to represent each creative category. These mentors were leveraged in press and online PR to promote the campaign and provide guidance to each of the categories by selecting their top picks.
IMPACT
The campaign was a huge success, managing to drive almost a 1,000% increase in referral traffic, as kids promoted their entries using our integrated social media tools across MySpace and Facebook. Overall, our campaign delivered a 326% increase in unique visitors to the General Pants Co. website, a 442% increase in page views, and a 963% increase in referral traffic. Demonstrating our social media strategy worked, 30% of referral traffic was from Facebook and 26% from MySpace.
Key to the solution was collaboration with General Pants Co. store staff and head office personnel to ensure a deep understanding of the creative drive of General Pants Co. customers.
We also delivered a 24% increase in the customer database. Importantly, the base traffic to www. generalpants.com.au doubled from precampaign levels, therefore providing approximately a 200% increase in revenue for the new online store.
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Digital Consumer
Interview
Guthrie Dolin DMO Section Editor Principal, Director of Strategy Odopod Robert Kozinets Professor of Marketing York University
with Robert Kozinets

NetnographyConsumers Research in the Online Environment An Interview with Robert Kozinets
Guthrie: Briefly, what is netnography and how does it differ from traditional ethnographic research? Robert: Netnography is cultural research adapted to the unique contingencies of the online environment. It is a cultural look at social media. Online, there is surely culture and community, but lots of things about culture change. Conversations are archived, for instance. Bodies are not present. Location becomes rather malleable. Identity is in flux. That means we need new techniques specifically adapted to this altered state of reality, a new state of culture. Netnography was devised for this purpose. Guthrie: What are the primary collection tools and techniques employed in netnographic research? Robert: Netnographic data comes in three flavors. There is archival data that is already present on the social web, such as the many forums that are going on right now talking about Angelinas hair and lips. There is archival data that the researcher can elicit from people online, such as having an interview, or posting on a Brangelina forum. Finally, there is reflective data, field notes, that the researcher creates as she reflects on her own online experiences in a relevant way. Each is important. And each can take place across multiple domains, such as wikis, forums, newsgroups, in virtual worlds, blogs, microblogs, social networking sites, mobile, and so on. Guthrie: What unique consumer insights can be gleaned by tapping into the social media channels? Robert: Consumers discuss things differently when their discussions are unelicited. Netnography allows us to see what consumers find important enough to discuss with one another without prompting. The same is true of other high-quality social media monitoring methods. The different in netnography is that the cultural and social nature of those interactions is respected, and treated as an inherently important part of the data. Unobstrusively derived, naturally occurring data are what we are after.
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Robert Kozinets is Professor of Marketing at York Universitys Schulich School of Business in Toronto, Canada. In the past, he was faculty at Northwestern Universitys Kellogg School of Management and the University of WisconsinMadisons School of Business.
Guthrie: Identify a few fundamental shifts in consumer behaviors and/or expectations in the last two years. Robert: Consumers are increasingly aware that the world of business is becoming a place that wants to integrate with their many social worlds. This is a gradual change, but it seems to have leaped forward in the Facebook age. So much of some peoples social lives is conducted not only online, but online and within a business arrangement, that people are alarmed. They are alarmed and also resigned to it.
Consumers are increasingly aware that the world of business is becoming a place that wants to integrate with their many social worlds. This is a gradual change, but it seems to have leaped forward in the Facebook age.
Guthrie: What new consumer and/or sociocultural trends have emerged in the last year? Robert: Laughing at the death of privacy. People sometimes realize that they have no privacy, but they deny it. If they realize it, then they laugh it away. We are becoming used to living under a corporate microscope. No one likes it, but most people will acknowledge that it is true and that they cannot do much about it. Guthrie: How do you see those trends evolving over the following 12-18 months? Robert: I think we will see companies like Facebook continue to make mistakes in how they use consumers private data. And I think that through those mistakes the boundary between what is a community and what is corporate property will continue to shift and move. I think a major legal case will emerge in the USA to test some of those boundary assumptions. I think the role of some of these online tools in cyberbullying, online suicides, and such will require people to rethink some of these changes. But I also think that the trend will continue and intensify. Guthrie: What impact might those trends have on the way that brands market their products and services? Robert: The opportunities to engage with people in a meaningful way through their online social networks has never been greater. But the frustrating, ham-fistedness of businesses in dealing with this new reality is seriously undermining the potential of the medium. Seriously, sometimes I think that the people who are running many of the social media marketing campaigns are the least in touch not only with social media itself, but with their own social sides. If privacy invasions continue with no sensitivity to the consumer, a number of brands will be individually burned. If they become more rampant and their infringements more egregious, the whole industry may be taken to task, as with the recent FTC guidelines that hit word-of-mouth marketers and marketing. Its still the Wild West in social media marketing. I think were going to see more sheriffs coming to town.
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The articles in this section reflect the broad array of challenges facing brands in 2011, from the importance of aligning internal culture with brand communications, to emerging models for communications budgets. The variety of topics is indicative of the large number of issues that brands need to address to stay competitive. Since our contributors are SoDA members, I asked several brand marketers for their perspective on whats important for 2011. And the answer is about using the technologies at our disposal to reach consumers where they are. Maria Mandel VP, Marketing & Advanced Ad Solutions, AT&T In the coming year, well see multiscreen marketing become a reality. With advances in digital ad serving technology and audience targeting, it will be possible to target consumers across multiple screens. Advertisers will be looking to reach their specific audience wherever they spend their time, rather than concentrating on specific devices or channels. To execute a successful multi screen campaign, marketers will need to understand how their audience segment uses each medium and develop a strategy that ensures the brand message is being delivered in a relevant and engaging way that provides value to the consumer. For example, offering a coupon to a consumers mobile phone after they perform a search or visit the brands website, or using 2D codes on traditional billboards to offer exclusive content on the go. Multiscreen marketing is all about effectively reaching your audience at the right time with the right message wherever they are regardless of screen or device. David Luner SVP Interactive & Consumer Products, FremantleMedia Enterprises Digital extensions for traditional entertainment and corporate brands were only recently considered groundbreaking and innovative thinking. In 2010, a digital awareness and consumer interactive element is a critical piece of most brand building plans, as IP owners and brand builders are seeking to both go where the consumers are and give a voice to that same consumer. The concept of going where the consumers are is the most significant shift in the marketplace, as brands are abandoning the concept of simply building a website with the hopes that consumers will find them. The new mantra is to bring your brand to where the consumers already are and find new and innovative ways to allow that consumer to interact with your brand and help to virally create awareness. And its important to remember that while technology is critical, and the symbols and stories of our brands are core to how our messages are expressed, at the end of the day, brands are about the people who create themnot just the brand builders, but the people who the brand has been built for and without whom it could not exist.
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Modern Brand
George Whitesides CEO, Virgin Galactic Virgin Galactics brand is ultimately built around individualsRichard Branson, who saw the opportunity to revolutionize space access, Burt Rutan, who built the first private spaceship, and the hundreds of customers who have made the decision to put their own money down to demonstrate their commitment to space travel. Virgin Galactic brings together the travel/service excellence of Virgin with the adventure spirit of Branson to open the possibility and wonder of spaceflight for us all. We hope that in the following articles, you find tools and insights that will impact your bottom line and make 2011 a profitableand excitingyear to be a marketer.
By Sean MacPhedran, DMO Section Editor; Director, Creative Strategy, Fuel Industries
by Sean MacPhedran, DMO Section Editor; Director, Creative Strategy, Fuel Industries

by Joshua Baze, Director, Insights & Planning, Colossal Squid Industries and Matt Ballek, Digital Strategist/Optimization Specialist, Colossal Squid Industries.
by Tony Quin, CEO and Founder, IQ

by Ami Walsh, Senior Content Strategist, Enlighten


Case Study: Smoking Not Our FuturesKanvas
by Andy Williams, Senior Strategist, Resn

Case Study: El Tiempo Celebrates Its Past by Embracing the Future

SoDA Chat with Dr. Ginger Grant, Managing Partner of Creativity in Business Canada Inc.
and Adjunct Professor Innovation at Mount Royal University
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By: Sean MacPhedran DMO Section Editor Director, Creative Strategy Fuel Industries
Sean MacPhedran is Director of Creative Strategy at Fuel Industries, and he has created engagement programs for brands including MTV, Entourage, Family Guy, Microsoft and McDonalds.
opinion

The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention. Thich Nhat Hanh
Brands @ Play: Mastering the Art and Science of Engagement Design
Engagement design will be the critical field of thought in 2011. While the notions of branded entertainment and immersive brand experiences have been around for some time, in practice there is still too much form over function, rich design and high technology over actual, purposefully designed engagement. Advertising is still driven by breadth (impressions) not depth, so weve yet to see the disruption in creative that will occur when calls begin for total engagement optimization. In other words, if you cant capture someone for 15 minutes, youre going to slip behind the curve. Because the traditional advertising model has been about interruptionads carried in contentmany still hold the perspective that consumers have no interest in engaging deeply with a brand. That is not true. What they dont want to engage with is poorly designed content that doesnt offer them real value. The 80 million active players of FarmVille are demonstrable proof that anythingeven a dusty asparagus fieldcan be translated into a compelling, interesting, rewarding, and FUN experience. There are strong lessons to be carried from social gaming into how brands are digitally articulated. What will a consumer spend time with? For some, its creativity; for others, its competition. Many of us love debate, or the process of winning intellectually. Many of us love the challenge of a difficult work problem, cleverly solveda puzzle. Fun isnt a trivial activity; consider the neurosurgeon who really enjoys her job. A better term for us to use as engagement designers comes from Psychologist Mihaly Cskszentmihlyi to describe optimal experience. Its called flow.
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So, How Does a Brand Design Flow States for Their Customers?
1. Dig deep into their overall motivations, not just ones related to how they look to your brand. Its about understanding what they enjoy and WHY. Study what consumes their attention, not what media they consume. Youre competing for their share of attention against everything from 30 Rock to BrickBreaker on their BlackBerry, not other products. Think like a game designer or an entertainment mogul first, then think about your brand afterward even just for a minute.
In an interview from WIRED, he describes the flow state as being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing Jazz. Your whole being is involved, and youre using your skills to the utmost. Our job as engagement designers is to create experiences that deliver these states. Flow and play are in many ways interchangeable, in fact the easy to learn; hard to master mantra of game design is identical to the above Flow diagram above. But play isnt just the competition of gaming. Flow could be found in a really good kiss (come on, you did get better with time, and you do lose yourself in it). Its also the collaborative satisfaction of a puzzle. Play is escaping into a story, or imagining Cobra Commander trying to attack your GI Joe guys. Play is the accomplishment of creativity. Its even found in the amusement of one-upping a friend with a joke on Facebook. Play is an intrinsically enjoyable mental state that can be induced by the brand.
The 80 million active players of FarmVille are demonstrable proof that anythingeven a dusty asparagus fieldcan be translated into a compelling, interesting, rewarding, and FUN experience.
2. Explode your brand attributes and campaigns into their smallest components and threads, then play with each of them from every angle. The engagement element doesnt need to represent every brand attribute or product feature. Failure in content design often comes from attempting to over-brand the experience; less is more. Think more about the emotions and stories that your brand embodies than literal translations. 3. Remember that the experience needs an objective in the mind of the user. Branded utilities always keep this at the forefront, but often its lost in creating play states. The objective can, and should, be somewhat of a
Engagement Design Is about Creating a Flow State in Your Consumer

We keep girls in our virtual world for 26 minutes at a time because we know what they like to do (dress up! fashion shows! decorating! my own puppy!), and we continually optimize the experience.
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challengetop entertainment programs such as Lost and 24 are a challenge, they have layers of complexity and mysterythis is how they dole out rewards. It doesnt need to pay off in one experience, delayed gratification is a key success component of social gamings ability to capture attention. 4. Ask yourself is this really fun? Apps and experiences are often created for the sake of checking it off the campaign checklist. (We need an X! Done? OK!) Is your consumer really going to spend 5 to 15 minutes with it?
The last thing to consider is that execution is as important as concept in engagement design. Social gaming companies, for example, employ analysts to developers at a ratio of about 1:4 to maximize every aspect of seemingly simple experiences. Just as e-commerce is driven by hard thinking, so should engagement design. The results can easily triple or quadruple the amount of time your consumers spend with you in the digital space, and theyll remember you for it. How many 30-second conversations do you remember?
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By: Andy Williams Strategist Resn
Andy means warrior, manly. Andy Williams lives by the meaning of his name. Often you will find Andy bronzing himself and bathing in Nubian goat milk to invigorate his supple skin.
opinion

Digital has given the modern brand the opportunity to create utilities for consumers to own brands. Is doing this unpredictable, dangerous...maybe? Might your brand need a little of that?
An exciting time is upon the modern marketer. Digital platforms brands now have the ability to engage with the audiences in more intimate ways than ever before. With this intimate communication comes an expectation from the consumer that the brand is actually listening. If the brand is listening, then the brand becomes more the consumers own brand than the CMOs...Scary? No! If utilized correctly, this exciting level of consumer engagement is an opportunity to push ahead of the competition. The power of consumer brand advocates today is that they arent proclaiming the benefits of brands to their neighbor over the fence but are using digital technologies to clearly scream at the top of their lungs to the wider consumerverse. Facebook, Twitter...I wont bore you. For few brands there is little gained from trying to market to everyone and this is something that sits at the academic root of marketing. Instead of traditional target marketing, we should look deeper inside our target audiences and find the lovers and haters of our brands. Once these people are identified, the modern marketer can empower lovers with digital tools to assist their proclamations, and strategically reassess the marketing efforts required to maintain haters as customers. Maybe you just dont need them. Its difficult for any product to claim a true uniqueness in the selling proposition. It is now a common strategy for CMOs to differentiate their products using the values their brand reinforces in consumers. To create brand advocates, we need to develop personified brands that people can align their opinions, passions, and feelings with. Obviously people dont relate to a brands product attributes, they relate to its
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personality. Having a brand that has likes and dislikes, that supports and protests, is more critical than ever. The modern brand must have a real voice. Creating a brand that polarizes its consumers is not for every CMO; its a strategy for the brave. The rewards of building a brand that is polarizing, bold, and different can provide incredible benefits. Brands with less-vanilla personalities will find loyal consumers attracted to the unique character of what they stand for. A lot of time and energy can be saved by having loyal followers who promote your brand in good faith, and will defend it to the death. And what about the haters you might create? Haters, more than any other consumer segment, absorb a huge amount of marketing resources to keep satisfied. Being more opinionated and controversial as a brand allows brands to shake-off these types of deadwood consumers. Having a bolder brand personality will draw the haters out from hiding as they respond to a brands activities. This allows the modern marketer to begin to analyze who the haters are, and why they dont like your brand. People need to be able to form their own valid opinion about whether or not they like a brand.
Reactively trying to change consumers opinions with marketing initiatives is wasted energy as the speed of peoples social communication through digital has mostly outrun the ability of the marketer to counteract them. Giving consumers the opportunity to own your brandand love it as their ownbut will help improve your digital marketing efficiency. As to the haters, let them hate.
The power of consumer brand advocates today is that they arent proclaiming the benefits of brands to their neighbor over the fence but are using digital technologies to clearly scream at the top of their lungs to the wider consumerverse.
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By: Joshua Baze Director, Insights & Planning Colossal Squid Industries
Before starting the planning discipline at Squid, Joshua Baze had a successful research and strategy consulting career, working in and with agencies like Ogilvy and BBDO.
By: Matt Ballek Digital Strategist/ Optimization Specialist Colossal Squid Industries
Matt Ballek has been responsible for developing, communicating, and implementing advanced SEO strategies for numerous brands including Lowes, FedEx, Rolex, and LeapFrog.
opinion
Everything youve done in digital the last seven years wont matter within a matter of months.
We hate to be the ones to tell you this. We really do. But, like so many times before, everything you thought you knew about the digital space and how to tell your brands story within it is only a few months away from changing. Again. The culprit has a familiar name: Google. Only this time, it has this strange TV suffix tagged to the end of it. And its that strange TV at the end of it thats the game changer. Not just for your digital content. For ALL of your content. Dont believe us? Too big to be true? Just one more supersized serving of hyperbole from an agency hoping to get your attention? Keep reading.
Google TV: What It Is and How It Changes Everything

Built on Googles Android operating system, Google TV is a platformnot just a single device. At launch, Google TV will be available as a set-top box from Logitech, or built into Sony TVs and Blu-ray players. In time (and likely not much of it), the Google TV platform will surely find its way into a myriad of other entertainment devices. Google TV itself acts as a hub. You bring your own Internet connection and TV service provider (cable, satellite, etc.), and Google TV gives you apps and a search bar. The Google search bar (complete with angelic glow) now has a home on your television screen. Search results can include videos from YouTube, Amazon, Netflix, etc., as well as live TV and content on your DVR. Because youll need more
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than just numbers to navigate this new interface, Google TV remotes will incorporate some form of QWERTY keyboard along with the ability to turn your smartphone into a remote control via apps. Speaking of apps, Google TV has them. Apps range from simple music and photo-viewing capabilities to branded video-viewing experiences mixed with social media. This area alone has the potential to turn into a hotbed of innovation for developers and content creators.
Google TV: How to Win

How do you win when your customers will have complete control over EVERYTHING they view? Have better content than anyone else.
What Does This Mean for CMOs and Their Brands?

Put simply, Google TV means that anything youve ever seen on any screen in your life is now in direct competition with your marketing content. As Google TV is quickly mainstreamed, the line between broadcast and digital will become completely artificial until it ceases to exist entirely. All multimedia content can and will be consumed through a single screen. Which means the skateboarding video your 11-year-old son just posted to his Facebook page is now, very literally, in direct competition with Jay Leno on NBC, TrueBlood on HBO, Columbia Pictures Spiderman 4 and Rockstar Games Grand Theft Auto 5. And remember: were talking about competition not just for share of attention span, but share of advertising dollars. The Oklahoma Land Rush of Branded Content lies just ahead of us. And very few brands have wagons at the starting lines. The arrival of Google TV heralds the creation of a media marketplace where, for the first time in a long time (and possibly ever), content is content, agnostic of channel, and regardless of screen. The idea of channel becomes increasingly irrelevant as we move toward a future where a screen is a screen is a screen, and web content becomes increasingly indistinguishable from television content. Content will become content. And it will be fighting like hell for viewers.
The arrival of Google TV heralds the creation of a media marketplace where, for this first time in a long time (and possibly ever), content is content, agnostic of channel, and regardless of screen.
The Best Content
Branded content is nothing new. From the sponsored radio show serials of the 30s to present day guerilla marketing stunts, brands have always been at home creating content they believe their consumers will like and formally aligning themselves with that content. For at least 80 years, brands have been able to create or co-opt content in a very static way. What Google TV technology does is allow for dynamic branded content, fundamentally altering the depth to which a consumer can engage and interact with branded content. Lets look at an example to understand the difference. Lifetime TVs reality competition show Project Runway pits aspiring fashion designers from across America against one another in a series of competitive design exercises that are evaluated by a panel of expert celebrity judges. The show has a number of official sponsorshipsfor hair, makeup, shoes, accessories, etc. Along with significant placement within the program, all of these brands have developed online activations such as special Facebook tabs, how-to videos of winning looks on their websites,
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and contests and other promotions in the digital space. All of these digital activations rely on the viewer being so compelled by a product integration that they either leave the program theyre watching to enter another media channel; or remember how much they liked the brand within that program at some point when theyre online, and hopefully remember what specific activation they wanted to seek out in the digital space. Despite the success of many brands partnerships with such integrations, its a huge gamble, because it relies on consumers either leaving the channel they were initially motivated within, or remembering the brand some time later when theyre online. Google TV totally eradicates this. Using Google TV, any of the brands currently sponsoring Project Runway could, for example, do the following: Create such a program themselves, without having to pay partnership costs to Lifetime, allowing them to create the show however they want instead of relying on whatever the network developed. Create exclusivity for themselves as the only brand within the show, or conversely, open up their program to other brands, creating a new revenue stream. Broadcast the show 24/7/365 on-demand on their .com (or .TV) property, thereby being available literally around-the-clock instead of one hour a week. Provide click-into features, allowing viewers to click deeper into the programming for how-tos, product demos, product info, click to purchase, or any other layer the brand would like to create. Optimize their program for portability to smartphones and tablets. Or any other number of interactions you can think of. The possibilities are boundless. In the age of Google TV, brands will be limited only by their own savvy about the platform, and the courage and creativity of their marketing partners and agencies.
Conclusions
Google TV provides powerful opportunities for brands to create proprietary, deeply interactive content on their own terms. But, this possibility is not without peril. A few guiding principles should help brands and their agency partners develop the right types of branded content for their customers. Remember, This Is Not about You; Its about Them Google TV will give you the power to create immersive brand experiences. Think about what your customers (current and potential) are like and what they like. Design content and experiences that meet their desires, adding deeper brand layers only in ways that are useful to your customers. Concept for One Screen: Design for Big Screens; Optimize for Small Screens A great deal of your digital content will still be consumed primarily on a computer screen. As Google TV penetration rates quickly grow over the next several years, those experiences will be moving to even bigger screens. Remember people consume media on big screens, and snack on media on small screens. Very few of your customers will watch a half hour video on their phone or iPod. Design branded content experience for bigger screens, and optimize that content as much as possible for small screen consumption. Think of ancillary little brother content that can be consumed in short bursts (a five-minute train ride; a sit-down in the bathroom) to accentuate the overall experience. Quality Content Trumps All Think of all of the content you consume: from your computer, your TV, the radio in your car, the Xbox in your living room, the iPod in your pocket, and the Blackberry on your belt. All of that content is now going to be coming through
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a single channelThe Screenwhich will exist on all of those devices. How are you going to pick and choose what you want to experience especially when your e-mail starts competing with your favorite show and that video game youre addicted to? Simply put, the better your content is, the more likely it will be to make the cut. This means big ideas that are well produced. There will be no room in the single-channel, multidevice future for ham-fisted attempts at branded content. Only content with very real entertainment value or tangible benefits will survive. And the earlier your brand is there,
commanding attention and grabbing up share, the less difficult it will be to attract fans and followers as everyoneand we mean everyoneshows up to the single-screen channel of the future. Google has changed the worldagain. Google TV gives your brand the exciting chance to be among the first to explore the amazing new, truly interactive possibilities of the future. But it also presents the opportunity to miss an opportunity. Only by starting to think now about the many ways Google TV will change how brand content is encountered and consumed can brands ensure their place in the minds of the consumer of the not-very-distant future.
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By: Tony Quin CEO and Founder IQ
Tony Quin is a founding member of SoDA and a member of the board. He established IQ in 1995. Today IQ is a full service advertising agency with digital at its core.
opinion

Before we answer that question, lets define what we mean by digital agency. Its not at all clear today what a digital agency is anymore. Can you even be an agency at all without being digital to one degree or another? What percentage of an agencys work needs to be digital to earn the name? Is the name even relevant?
Its like color TV. When all TVs are color, do you really need to say it? This new reality is the backdrop for the conversation. Traditional agencies have been building or buying digital arms for years now. When they present a campaign, it always has a digital element. So they regard themselves, in many cases right so, as digital agencies. So what about all the agencies that think of themselves as digital first? The conversation in that camp has been about their ability to lead an account and their ability to execute all the other pieces of a campaign that may stretch beyond digital channels. There has been a great deal of noise on this subject from both sides. One side says that traditional agencies are talking the talk, but not much more. They accuse traditional agencies of having businesses built on an outmoded traditional media model, which they continue to squeeze in pursuit of the profits of days gone by. The other side calls digital agencies immature, unsophisticated in the ways of account leadership and the bigger picture. Both are right and wrong, of course. Both sides have their shortcomings and continue to paper over the cracks in their offerings with agency bravado. So that takes us back to the original question, do you really need a digital agency? The answer is yes, but the day of the digital AOR is passing and the day of the digitally centric AOR is dawning. Clients need their lead agency to be digital to the core because digital channels are already at the center of the consumers world. Some would argue that this POV cannot be put on by an organization like a suit of clothes, but must be bred over many years. At the same time, any agency that wants to lead must be fully able to direct all the disciplines required for brand stewardship,
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not just digital. This doesnt mean that an agency has to execute everything themselves, but it must be able to successfully manage it.
Do you really need a digital agency? The answer is yes, but the day of the digital AOR is passing and the day of the digitally centric AOR is dawning.
At IQ, we started as a traditional agency, went digital, and now have come full circle. A good example is our brand launch campaign for Pennington Bird
Seed. Here was an opportunity to wake up a sleepy category. Our job was to deliver sales, not digital sales, but sales period. First we came up with a new brand positionGreat Entertainment for Your Yardbased on insights from brand strategy work. This was then translated into the Wild Bird Band: four Pixar-style, animated bird characters, who are natural entertainers. Our media plan centered on digital and social with drive to, and brand awareness from TV, radio, and outdoor. Also, a key consideration was the store experience, which was redesigned for Walmart, their largest customer. This kind of 360 campaign demonstrates that some digital agencies have already morphed into full service ad agencies. So far they are few, but if they have managed to integrate their digital savvy with a strong agency services model, they are probably the best glimpse of what the new agency will look like.
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By: Ami Walsh Sr. Content Strategist Enlighten
Ami Walsh is senior content strategist at Enlighten.
opinion

Paying closer attention to the art of storytelling can help digital marketing professionals transform their content into compelling attractions that influence social behavior. Look for opportunities to shape your content using the same narrative techniques great storytellers rely on, such as shifting points of view, building narrative urgency, and creating dramatic tension. Succeed and individuals will broadcast your content across their networks, elevating your brand to new heights.
The art of storytelling has never been more important to digital marketing professionals. Internet-savvy consumersthe new brand influencers and evangelistshave increasingly high expectations for encountering meaningful content online, thanks to the evolution of social networking and the semantic web. Releasing content that doesnt meet these expectations can bring a brand down, and fast. Even if consumers dont complain about a brands content failings on social sites, blogs, and forums, they can silently register disapproval by ignoring anything more the brand has to say. And being irrelevant is a brands worst curse. To avoid costly mistakes, digital marketing professionals need to think more critically today than ever before about the value of content before publishing it online. A disciplined approach to content development has been used for years by content strategists (http://knol.google.com/k/content-strategy#Content_Strategists) to plan for, and manage, marketing assets published on large-scale websites. With content distribution now spanning many digital channels, even more rigorand artfulnessis needed to provide consumers with the meaningful online experiences theyre looking for, and demanding.
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What constitutes a meaningful online experience? Its a complicated question, of course, and requires insights about your target audience demographics and online behaviors. It also requires marketing professionals to redefine what constitutes quality content on the social web. In part, this shift is about understanding that online content is far more than award-winning copy and graphic design; good content needs to be felt, not just seen. More importantly, though, its about understanding how marketing content has the potential to influence social media interactions. Leading social media expert Jyri Engestrm (http:// www.zengestrom.com/), who founded the Twitterlike service Jaiku (which was acquired by Google), believes that social objects are central to influencing social interactions. He points out that the more successful social sites dont simply connect people to people but are built around connecting people through shared interests in meaningful objects, such as photos on flickr or videos on YouTube. Brand consultant and cartoonist Hugh MacLeod (http://gapingvoid.com/) has also written about the importance of social objects. Human beings are social animals, he says. We like to socialize. But if we think about it, there needs to be a reason for it to happen in the first place. That reason, that node in the social network, is what we call the Social Object. For digital marketers, then, creating content that achieves the status of a social object can help a modern brand to thrive. In other words, give people a story that they can care deeply about. This is where the art of storytelling comes in, because strategy by itself wont produce the kind of meaningful content that enchants and transports audiences. Ask any artist. Impose too much structure at the outset of a project and theres a good chance the work wont reach its potential. Worse, itll be boring and flat, chunked into something ugly and unshapely.
To create a beautiful and meaningful whole especially when that whole is made up of many complicated parts, as is the case across multichannel marketing campaignsthere must be room for organic mutations and discovery.
With content distribution now spanning many digital channels, even more rigorand artfulnessis needed to provide consumers with the meaningful online experiences theyre looking for, and demanding.
Look for opportunities to shape your content using the same narrative techniques great storytellers rely on. Marketers tend to think about tone and voice, but what about the importance of point of view? How might shifting perspectives improve a story depending on where and when its released? As you create editorial calendars, take time to consider how each piece of content will build narrative urgency, contributing to the campaigns overall dramatic arc. Borrow these techniques to make your content more than content, to elevate your words, images, and user interfaces into the realm of social objects that drive meaningful social connections. Succeed and youll be rewarded when individuals broadcast your content across their networks, elevating your brand to new heights.
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Modern Brand
By: Stephen Foxworthy Strategy Director Reactive
Stephen Foxworthy is Strategy Director at Reactive. Stephen has over 15 years experience in digital, with a focus on high performance online retail, customer experience management and multichannel marketing.
opinion

Now that tracking and attributing online campaign activity directly to customer action has become simpler and easier thanks to sophisticated software, why do marketers still insist on fixed campaign budgets and media spend?
Retail is changing at an incredible pace, fueled largely by the growth of digital technologies and the Internet. The art of selling now stretches from in-store to online to mobile. The future is upon retailers already, and those that adapt and embrace new technologies stand to profit, while traditional retailers who rely on time proven approaches risk losing out to faster-moving, more innovative competitors. So what does the future hold for retailers online?
Extreme Customer Service

Some pure-play digital retailers are redefining consumer expectations of service. Brands such as www.Amazon.com and www.Zappos.com have built enviable reputations around being customer focused and service driven, that many bricks-and-mortar retailers find hard to compete with. Free delivery, free returns, no-questions-asked refunds, 24-hour access, and responsiveness are all key to their success. Customers now expect to be able to buy online, or reserve a product online to be able to pick up later. They expect to be able to return or refund a purchase bought online in your physical store, and they expect these transactions to be instant and seamless.
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Real-World Digital
The digital life of physical objects is a trend retailers are just starting to grasp. Consumers are more connected than ever, and with smartphones and mobile devices they are actively researching product selections both prior to heading out shopping, and while in the store environment. The introduction of barcode scanning applications for iPhone such as www.RedLaser.com, www.StripeyLines. com, and www.Stickbits.com has led to a growing price-comparison culture. Retailers now need to focus much more heavily on competitive pricing, especially for commodity items, as a simple web search can find multiple retailers who stock the same item, potentially at a lower cost, and who can deliver it quickly.
Private Sale
Another key trend in fashion retail is the rise of private sale outlets and members-only buying clubs. Many retailers are reluctant to promote heavily discounted clearance items within their own online stores as they can cannibalize full-price merchandise sales. Answering the need to clear large volumes of endof-line or clearance items are the private sale sites, offering brand name goods at seriously discounted prices to a limited membership, thereby providing a benefit to members without damaging a premium brands reputation by being seen to be on public sale. Sites such as www.Gilt.com and www.vente-privee. com are leading the way in creating exclusive clubs that clear large volumes of end-of-line and clearance stock from famous brands, and they manage to create a sense of urgency and need, rather than cheapening the products on offer.
Group Buying
One of the biggest trends in social shopping is the phenomenon of group buying, led by sites such as www.Groupon.com and www.LivingSocial.com. These services provide significantly discounted, limited-time offers from retailers trying to attract new customers. Such sites tap into primal retail psychology, using triggers such as urgency, scarcity, and discounting to encourage consumers to buy. By combining these triggers with a social angle requiring large numbers of consumers to commit before the offers get activated, they encourage social sharing and personal recommendation and ensure positive word-of-mouth from members.
The future is upon retailers already, and those that adapt and embrace new technologies stand to profit, while traditional retailers who rely on time proven approaches risk losing out to faster-moving, more innovative competitors.
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Modern Brand
case study
CHALLENGE
Health Sponsorship Council is a New Zealand government entity that operates the Smoking Not Our Future initiative aimed at youth aged 12 to 24. As part of the direct-to-youth strategy within the Smokefree Youth Team, Resn was challenged with finding a way to make teenagers consider the negative social effects of smoking without forcing traditional advertising messages at a demographic who are typically resistant to this style of message delivery. Resn needed to come up with an interesting and exciting way to engage youth online that was credible, youthful, and appealing to a demographic who dont respond to traditional health warning messages.
Smoking Not Our FuturesKanvas
Health Sponsorship Council is a New Zealand government entity that operates the Smoking Not Our Future initiative aimed at youth aged 12 to 24.
in New Zealand are more worried about the effect smoking may have on their personal image than the negative health effects that smoking tobacco causes. Rather than composing traditional advertising campaign messages or call-toactions, we realized that we needed to create something unique. Resn needed to create a utility for teenage New Zealanders to freely express themselves about being smoke free and generate open discussion among the target audience.
Author: Andy Williams Strategist, Resn Resn Team: Steve Le Marquand Creative Director Vincent Lowe Art Director Dylan Galletly Producer
SOLuTION
The solution was to empower a discerning youth audience to create their own creative message around tobacco and give them the freedom to form their own opinions about being smoke free. Resn approached the challenge with a strategy that youth would engage if we allowed for honesty and ownership of voice instead of traditional advertising messages.
Andy means warrior, manly. Andy Williams lives by the meaning of his name. Often you will find Andy bronzing himself and bathing in Nubian goat milk to invigorate his supple skin.
RESEARCH/ACTIVITY/ INSIGHT
Research suggested teenagers
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Resn created Kanvas, a custom-developed, online art tool for teens themselves to turn antismoking posters into a stylish personal collage art pieces that they can share with their peers via a gallery and various social networks. These user-generated artworks were talking points for open conversation around being smoke free. http://www.wecancanvas.com/
RESuLTS
- 18,700 unique visitors from New Zealand (0.44% of total population). - An average of just under 5 minutes engagement per user. - Total time of 1,915 hours spent by New Zealanders in 6 months. - 95% of the traffic originating in New Zealand.
COMMENT POSTED
Smoking Not Our Future Facebook page: Love Kanvas, Ive just given up smoking about six weeks ago, Im loving my new lease on life, feel 100 percent better considering I smoked for 10 years! I gave up cold turkey and doing good things like Kanvas keeps your mind active.
ExPECTATIONS
- Very limited paid media budget. - New Zealands total population being 4.5M. - Therefore, expectations were not high for heavy traffic.
Resn needed to create a utility for teenage New Zealanders to freely express themselves about being smoke free and generate open discussion among the target audience.
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case study
El Tiempo Celebrates Its Past by Embracing the Future
On the eve of its 100th anniversary, El Tiempo, the largest newspaper and media conglomerate in Colombia, was looking to commemorate its centennial milestone in an interactive way that would engage a younger generation with this legacy brand and traditional medium.
CHALLENGE
On the eve of its 100th anniversary, El Tiempo, the largest newspaper and media conglomerate in Colombia, was looking to commemorate its centennial milestone in an interactive way that would engage a younger generation with this legacy brand and traditional medium. The challenge was to create an innovative, online vehicle that would bridge the gap, not only between generations, but also between the traditional and digital media.
With its incredible history and legacy as an institution in Colombian culture,
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El Tiempo faced a tremendous opportunity to use its centennial event to attract a new, younger, and more digital-based generation while maintaining a familiar and trusted connection with older consumers who value its important role in chronicling the history of the nationand the world. The key driver in the campaign was to achieve generation transfer and help this highly regarded and well established traditional media outlet make the leap into the digital age. The company had just completed a massive project to digitize its entire archive, all the way back to the very first issue published in 1910. This repository was to serve as a basis for the campaign.
Author: Alejandro Gomez President, Zemoga
An award-winning designer and developer of interactive solutions, Alejandro Gomez is the co-founder of Zemoga and a recognized industry leader in the fields of user-centric design and technology solutions.
SOLuTION
Leveraging this massive digital archive, Zemoga created a virtual album portal that engaged newspaper readers and TV viewers in an online destination filled with interactive games, challenges, activities, and a sweepstakes based upon the archived data, all complemented by a robust social media presence anchored by a custom Facebook page. Through partnerships with advertisers, customers earned points and prizes for their efforts. For example, trivia questions spurred participants to search the archives to discover the answer, while secret codes placed in broadcast and print advertising revealed historical images when entered in the virtual album, creating an interactive treasure hunt. The effort represented the single largest investment any Colombian company has ever made in a digital initiative.
IMPACT
The campaign was an overwhelming success, delivering the generation transfer that El Tiempo had hoped for. The blend of history and modern media brought families together to participate with kids helping parents/grandparents discover the new media and parents/grandparents helping younger generations discover their history. In just the first two weeks, the campaign generated 20,000 unique users and more than 4,000 fans on the Facebook page. In the grander scheme, the massive 200-page project plan for one of the most ambitious digital campaigns in Latin American history also serves as a strategic model for Colombian/Latin American companies who have been slow to adopt the digital movement, as well as a roadmap for traditional media looking to bridge the gap with new media, rather than compete with it.
The blend of history and modern media brought families together to participate with kids helping parents/grandparents discover the new media and parents/ grandparents helping younger generations discover their history.
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Interview
Sean MacPhedran DMO Section Editor Director, Creative Strategy Fuel Industries Dr. Ginger Grant Managing Partner of Creativity in Business Canada Inc.
with Dr. Ginger Grant

Sean: There are more challenges to solve in brand communication than ever, from how to address social media to how a brand should articulate itself in branded entertainment. Let alone what to do about fragmenting media. Whats the biggest topic that brand marketers need to address in 2011? Ginger: Corporate culture should be the key topic addressed by brand marketers. If internal culture is considered foundational to brand development, then marketing will begin to lose its reputation for creating nothing but spin. Without a solid foundation in corporate culture, a brand is nothing but a fantasy created by the agency and senior management. Social media allows the employees to expose that fantasy. Sean: How would you evaluate a brands alignment with its corporate culture? Ginger: Corporate culture is a function of people, behavior, and designor if you like equations: CC = f(p+b+d). When doing a corporate culture audit, I focus on three initial indicatorsrecognition (how people are recognized in the organization and for what); relationships (how people treat one another in the organization); and meaning (what values are operational on a day-to-day basis, not just the value system claimed by senior management). Such an audit should be conducted at the beginning of any branding process. Talking about strategy is really a simple process. There are a lot of books and information available that outline the process of a strategic plan and how to deliver the plan. What is difficult is executionactually implementing the strategy and then measuring your results. To impact a corporate culture takes patience, time, and skill in designing implementation. Strategy without execution is mere hallucination. Sean: What are some of the stumbling blocks preventing this alignment? Ginger: Brand agencies get ahead of the process by focusing on the intended outcome without paying attention to whether the organization can actually deliver on the mission and vision statements created by the agency. Design thinking brands themselves spend too much time looking at the how and the what of a shift in strategic intent. They need to go back to the core ideology and look at the why.
Dr. Ginger Grant is the Managing Partner of Creativity in Business Canada Inc. and an Adjunct Professor in the School of Interactive Arts + Technology at Simon Fraser University. She is the only Canadian in the teacher/trainer group of the famed Stanford Business School Creativity in Business program.
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If there is no emotional commitment to the why, the organization will not be able to deliver on the how and the what. The difficulty with why is that the answers lie in the limbic system or deeper within the brain. These areas have no language capability, which helps explain the difficulty in putting these emotions into words. Ive put the words from a brands mission statement on index cards in front of the C-suite, and I have seen the confusion emerge when none of them have the same definition for the claimed value word and what it means executionally.
Talking about strategy is really a simple process. There are a lot of books and information available that outline the process of a strategic plan and how to deliver the plan. What is difficult is execution actually implementing the strategy and then measuring your results.
Sean: When you have a disconnect between the internal culture, the brand, and the customer, what are the consequences? Ginger: When a company makes a brand promise to customer and cant fulfill it, this a violation of the relationship with the customer. Fear is one of the biggest internal disconnects in our culture. Terrorists do corporate culture better than most North American brands. A terrorist will blow himself up because he knows (or believes) that his family will be taken care of, but a customer service representative will not go out of bounds for a customer for fear of being fired or at least disciplined. What is wrong here? With customer review systems like Yelp or TripAdvisor, and public forums like Facebook and Twitter, every disconnect between internal culture and the brand promise is magnified when a customer sees the violation. Sean: How can a company align culture and brand? Ginger: Corporate culture first, brand second. Align the brand with the culture. Anything else is spin, which is where marketing can get a bad name. A brand is the essence of the organization (product or service). Some have called it the soul of an organization. So if the employees of the organization dont believe in the version of the brand delivered by the agency, what is going on? Culture first. ALWAYS! If you deliver
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on what you claim, employees deliver full engagement with the product or service. Otherwise you have nothing but hype and your employees and customers know it. It really is that simple and it is incredibly hard to do. Tell the truth and deliver on it. If your brand story is customer service, is your corporate culture service based? Example: Nordstroms employee manual. Rule One: use Your Best Judgement. Rule Two: See Rule One. Do the employees have the authority to provide good service? Responsibility without authority to implement is a great way to again disengage employees. Sean: Who is doing this well? Ginger: Look for any organization that is successful in maintaining its market shareits reputation in a world where you can no longer hide corporate indiscretions. What is the story being told?what is being delivered? In Singapore, they teach design thinking in public schools. If design thinking is taught in our schools at all, it is at the graduate level in universitiestoo little and too late. Design thinking gets to the why. And what carries the emotional why is narrativestorytelling. PanAsia is kicking our asses. Theyre working story-based. An example: Tata (I think its the fourth-largest company in the world) is using Hindu mythology to teach leadership. Why? Because their traditional cultural values are then incorporated into their various divisions and organizations. Tata spends 4% of its gross profit margin on employee development. I think their bottom line speaks to the results. How much do you spend on real developmentgrowing your employees (not just training)? North America believes (and teaches) that there are only two approaches to strategyreduce cost or increase profitability. PanAsia has mastered this duality and does boththink of Toyota or Tata. We need to change our thinkingand if we dont, then we will continue to suffer the economic consequences. As has been pointed out many times, survival is optional.
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Social Media
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Marketers need to think about relevancy. Nearly every brand offers a conversation space nowlistening just isnt enough anymore. Neither is being funny. To stand out from the crowd, the next wave of social media initiatives will have to offer a service or experience customers cant get elsewhere. In this section, Geary Groups Andreas Roell makes the point that it does not matter if advertisers see value in a medium if customers do not. Its about customers and what they want. Over the past 12 months, social media has expanded to include location-based services, apps, and mobile. Pleasing customers has become more challenging, but also more exciting. As Mashables Jennifer Van Grove says, The best brands are even finding ways to tap [location-based] platforms to turn social media into a currency customers can cash in on. The possibilitiesfor brands, marketers, and customersare immense. The challenge for marketers is moving from the old approachwhere something was created inside the marketing bubble and then released into the world, with data trickling in several months laterto a new model of continued engagement. This often means a massive rethink of the dynamics between agency, brand, and customer. Brave brands and marketers must learn not just to listen to customers, but to respond with the content and experience they ask for. It may not be easy, but the possible rewardsfor all parties make it worth trying for with everything weve got.
By Sara Williams, DMO Section Editor, Head of Content, Made by Many

From Owned Media to Earned Media: Working with the Crowd by Sara Williams, DMO Section Editor; Head of Content, Made by Many The Next Big Trend in Social Media Is Social Rewards by Jennifer Van Grove, Social Media Reporter, Mashable Why Twitter and Foursquare Are Dying by Andreas Roell, Chairman and CEO, Geary Group Pulling the Trigger to Purchase: Insights on Marketing to Avid Gamers by Ken Martin, Chief Creative Officer, BLITZ Online and Offline, Its All Real-Life Communication by Irina Sheveleva, Editor, Grape Focusing Your Facebook Strategy: 10 Tips Toward Better Status Updates by Victor Pieiro, Strategist, Big Spaceship
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Case Study: Thierry Mugler/Starvibes by Benjamin Laugel, CEO/Creative Director, Soleil Noir Case Study: Emma Watson Digital Strategy by Rob Salmon, Director of Communications, Great Fridays Case Study: GuitarHero.com: Global Franchise Hub and Community by Ken Martin, Chief Creative Officer, BLITZ Case Study: Chrome FastballRace Across the Internet by Petter Westlund, Creative Director and Co-founder, B-Reel Case Study: SAP Friend Network Optimizer by Sandhya Suryam, Client Partner, Dare Case Study: It Isnt Lonely at the Top: What the Most Liked Brands Are Doing on Facebook by Victor Pieiro, Strategist, Big Spaceship
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Social Media
By: Sara Williams DMO Section Editor Head of Content Made by Many
A lover of words and a teller of stories, Sara Williams worked as a journalist, copywriter, and blogger before joining Made by Many to help develop the agencys content offering. Sara writes a lot about international issues and the social development/ social media crossover: how emerging technologies and corresponding cultural shifts can create lasting social change.
opinion

Agencies have traditionally paid for attention, but social media tools are facilitating a shift whereby brands can earn their own cultural capital. The move to earned media isnt an easy one, but the rewards can be immense: its adoration you just cant buy.
Last year was all about doing social media, as more and more brands recognized the importance of conversing with customers. As everyone from Old Spice to Starbucks went about this with varying degrees of success, a distinction opened up between owned media, where brands seek to engage customers through paid partnerships, and earned media, where brands listen to what customers want and respond with targeted seedings of personalized content. If current trends continue, 2011 should see more brands pursuing the latter approach and becoming media owners in their own right. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter make it easy for brands to create social spaces with plenty of walk-on traffic, but they also raise a few challenges. Nestles disastrous experience on Facebook demonstrates that if a brand wants to go social, it has to respect the crowd, regardless of what the crowd thinks. This can feel a bit counterintuitive. Whats more, by entering a conversation space, a brand agrees to abide by the rules that govern that space. A Facebook page where fans cant comment is a tease. A page where snipey comments are pulled is even worse: its not playing fair, and the crowd knows it. Going social means going all in. Brands ignore critical feedback at their peril. In the Nestle example, caustic posts exposed the brands vulnerabilities, as you would expect, but the brand ignoring that feedback resulted in a much greater weakness: it looked like Nestle didnt care. This turned the digital space into a branded no-go zone stacked with damaging (albeit
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humorous) content...and no one wants to earn that media. Whereas owned media is about one-way communication from brand to customer, earned media is the net result of conversations between brands and customers. My Starbucks Idea nailed this, as did Pepsis Refresh Everything. The best bit about initiatives like these is that they bear fruit content. That content can go on to become a draw in itself, as the Old Spice campaign demonstrated beautifully. But we need to remember that the earned media return isnt measured using the owned media yardstick. The quality of engagement is different: its not about getting a million people to see a TV adits a longer game with different goals. For customers, talk has become...well, if not cheap, plentiful. For brands and marketers intent on carving out a space in the social media ecosystem, readiness to converse with the customer is no longer enough.
Its time to offer branded utilities and socially rich services that add value to peoples lives, whether thats by entertaining, delighting, or just making life a little easier. Its a tall order, but Im confident well see a few of these in 2011.
For brands and marketers intent on carving out a space in the social media ecosystem, readiness to converse with the customer is no longer enough.
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By: Jennifer Van Grove Social Media Reporter Mashable
Jennifer Van Grove is a Social Media Reporter with Mashable. Jennifer has been featured in the San Diego Union Tribune and San Diego Magazine, participated as a guest expert on news programs such as BBC America and CNN Live, and is frequently quoted by local and national media outlets.
opinion

If Morgan Stanley analysts are right, the mobile web will be bigger than desktop Internet use by 2015. Nielsen research also points to the present tense where social networking dominates our time spent online.
The convergence of these two huge trends has already begun, especially in the form of location-based social applications such as Foursquare and Facebook Places. Still, were at the very beginning of a new trend were calling social rewardsor the intersection of social media and rewards programs. The trend is starting to take shape as more traditional business-run rewards programs upgrade to support digital and mobile consumer activities. In turn, many start-ups are working to make technology that uses location, barcode scans, and social behaviors to help businesses get a better snapshot of customer behavior.
Loyalty Reinvented
Measuring loyalty is a tricky but important reality for business owners and brands. Most employ physical rewards cards, punch cards, or other loyalty programs to try and incentivize repeat customer business. In todays mobile-centric, social mediadominated landscape, however, start-ups are happening upon different formulas for measuring and rewarding loyalty. Foursquare, for instance, has its own system that incorporates check-ins, points, badges, and venue hierarchy to chart real world place behavior. Foursquare mayorship has become such a celebrated title that battles for mayorship break out at chain restaurants like Chipotle, where theres never before been a social incentive to return on a regular basis. Loopt has built its own spinoff application for branded mobile rewards called Loopt Star. It is designed to be a virtual loyalty card.
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SCVNGR has its own method that also encourages check-insindividuals use the app to explicitly indicate their whereaboutsbut the start-up takes a more active approach and allows app users and businesses to create quick, place-based challenges for points that can be applied to rewards. Facebook Places is still new and focused primarily around check-ins, but it too will factor into the social rewards equation by helping businesses create opportunities around patron check-ins. Not all SCNVGR, Loopt Star, Facebook Places, or Foursquare users that check in at a venue will be paying customers, but the social sharing behavior of a check-in, challenge, tip, or status update is a net positive because that message will trickle out to Twitter or Facebook and reach a much larger audience of future potential customers. CardStar takes an alternative approach and makes mobile apps for Andriod, iPhone, and iPad that let users merge all of their physical loyalty cards into a single digital repository. The start-up is toying with social rewards through Foursquare integration and retailer partnerships. Essentially, these servicesand the brands and marketers using themhave discovered that there is tangible value to providing consumers with a mechanism for virtually shouting aloud, Hey, Im here, and then configuring a dual in-app, in-store experience more tailored to their interests. The best brands are even finding ways to tap these platforms to turn social media into a currency customers can cash in on.
What the Future Holds

Todays social rewards landscape is replete with brands, small businesses, and marketers experimenting with social currency through oneoff campaigns, Foursquare specials, Loopt Star goodies, SCVNGR rewards, and so on. Very few are integrating social rewards deeper in their systems or continuing them on an ongoing basis.
In todays mobile-centric, social media-dominated landscape, however, start-ups are happening upon different formulas for measuring and rewarding loyalty.
Tasti D-Lite has gone a step further with its TastiRewards loyalty programa typical loyalty program that rewards customers who present their TreatCards at point-of-sale, except that the company incentivizes customers to share each swipe of their card with their Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare friends. The dessert chain is headed in the right direction: connecting the dots between customer, brand, and social web. The formula for social rewards is still a work in progress, however, and the future will hold better integration between loyalty programs, location-based services, and even tender type (Facebook Credits as opposed to cash or credit) or platform (Square in lieu of a traditional credit card terminal).
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By: Andreas Roell Chairman and CEO Geary Group
Andreas Roell is the Chairman and CEO of Geary Group, a holding company providing next generation digital marketing services. Under his leadership, Geary Group has established itself as one of the nations largest independent digital marketing service providers.
opinion

#Twitter and #Foursquare will be dead within 10 yearsbut marketers should still care. Like many platforms of old, Twitter and Foursquare are currently embraced by consumers and marketers. They are heralded as the next big thing. However in reality, they will not be around (at least in their current form) for much longer because users will evolve beyond them.
This is not to say these platforms are not innovative or praiseworthy. More than others, Twitter and Foursquare have opened a new era in consumer-marketer relationships. We are now living in a world where consumers have adopted short-form methods of communication to engage directly with marketers, and they are willing to share their locations with marketers. These are the key advancements behind Twitter and Foursquares success. Their extinction will not be because they didnt leave a lasting mark, but because they will have already served their purpose. The true marketing value comes from understanding the changes in user behavior. The acceptance of location-based technology is an important evolution from a marketing perspective. Before forums like Foursquare, marketing was limited to placing ads where consumers were likely to see themhello billboards, display ads, and paid search. Now consumers are volunteering their locations, and expecting to receive geographically relevant ads in return. This means that consumers are gaining control over the ads they see. They are not happening across an ad; they are inviting marketers into their lives with a mutual understanding that it could all end if marketers overstay their welcome. For marketers this requires additional strategic considerations, relevancy, and a need to broach marketing from a utility perspective. The question becomes how can we mold our offerings to fit consumer behavior?
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With social media, consumers leveled the communications field to the point where marketers are now accountable to their consumers like never before. This environment demands that marketers are actively engaged with their users. Marketers must understand how their particular users are adopting new technologies and social mediums, but more importantly, they need to identify how users are interacting with platforms. Have their privacy expectations changed? Are they receptive to advertising? Answering these questions will help marketers address concerns about where and how they should use such technologies as a marketing channel. As weve seen with mobile marketing, it does not matter if advertisers see value in a medium if consumers do not. Social media success is the result of assimilating a marketing message to user expectations and behaviors. The inevitable marketing challenge is developing a strategy that enables marketers to provide value to users in social mediums. This can be achieved by anything from product usage tips to promotional incentives, but no matter the manifestation, marketers must relate initiatives to existing and trending behaviors. At the end of the day, social media is not about being flashy or trendy; its about the evolution of how we communicate with each other.
With social media, consumers leveled the communications field to the point where marketers are now accountable to their consumers like never before. This environment demands that marketers are actively engaged with their users.
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By: Ken Martin Chief Creative Officer BLITZ
Ken Martin is Chief Creative Officer at BLITZ. He entered the industry at age 15, and since the beginning, has enjoyed solving seemingly impossible challenges with the most engaging, effective solutions and digital developments.
opinion
Pulling the Trigger to Purchase: Insights on Marketing to Avid Gamers

Video games are no longer childs play, dedicated to pimple-faced adolescents. With marketing spending increasing exponentially, and more diverse audience segments joining the ranks, it is imperative that marketers tailor their efforts to reflect the psychographics of those who seemingly have the strongest influence within the gaming community: the avid gamers. After performing a quantitative and qualitative study of this highly influential demographic, we believe that much of this spend is misdirected. Accordingly, we have created a set of diagnostic principles to help advertisers and CMOs establish a successful marketing strategy. These principles are to empower peers to become influencers, showcase actual gameplay footage, get your audience addicted to the game, build websites that reflect your audiences online behavior, and provide incentives for registration. Both online and offline advertising consistently fall short, which may be limiting video game sales or at least slowing growth within this expansive vertical.
Empower Peers to Become Influencers
It was unsurprising to learn that avid gamers prefer peer opinions to expert reviews. In fact, 88% of respondents said talking to friends was the most important factor in deciding to pull the trigger to purchase. What is shocking, however, is that only 11% of our audience felt that social networking utilities, such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, were useful in influencing a video game purchase. The majority, 53%, felt that these sites were not helpful at all. WHY? Simply stated, avid gamers trust their gamer friends and are heavily influenced by their own peer groups. And thanks to aggregator networks and user-rating systems, gamers can quickly get opinions, search recommendations, and publicize their own thoughts online. By referencing those in their circle, gamers can avoid the biases of expert reviews and publisher content, which they tend to perceive as commercialized.
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Showcase Actual Gameplay Footage

TV commercials still play a large role in driving initial interest during the decision-making process, but only 26% of the respondents said TV is one of the most useful factors. Because commercials create awareness and drive our audience online for further research, much of our panel felt that they are just as, if not more, important than peer reviews. Such is only the case, however, if a substantial portion of a 30- or 60-second spot is used to highlight gameplay footage. In terms of game-related online activities, 94% of gamers find downloading or playing online game demos, watching actual gameplay footage, and watching trailer videos to be useful factors. With 55% saying that playing a demo is the most important of these factors, marketers should always provide an option to demo, either online or on the console. WHY? Avid gamers want to get into the game as soon as possible, whether through a downloadable demo or a YouTube clip of gameplay footage. Because consoles and PCs have the ability to screen capture actual gameplay, many avid gamers even create their own moviesoften to highlight cheats and secrets or to showcase gameplay footage that marketers left out.
WHY? Because avid gamers develop trust with franchises, such as Guitar Hero, Call of Duty, and Madden NFL, theyre more inclined to purchase the next title in their favorite series. For new titles, the ability to get players hooked before purchasing positively affects the decision process. Even as publishers develop new games within a series, its important to maintain the integrity of the franchise, while working to improve the game experience.
For fully integrated campaigns, mobile phones and social networking sites can offer the most contextual and relevant information to help drive purchases.
Build Websites That Reflect Your Audiences Online Behaviors
A well-structured and immersive website is the strongest opportunity to feed gamers with influential content at a single location. Yet our surveys reveal that only 18% of participants called game-specific sites one of the most important factors that drive purchases. In fact, 39% rated these sites as least useful. WHY? Many websites have little impact on core gamers, even though they have potential to be the first and foremost effective means of driving interest that directly leads to purchase and praise. Sites can host everything from social commentary, peer reviews, gameplay footage, leaderboard statistics, wiki-based content, badging, and honoring top players. A properly built site can also provide a surge in traffic during a games launch by leveraging SEO and SEM.
For Sequels Call Out Whats New as Loudly as You Can

Avid gamers are loyal to their franchises. This is the most important influence that marketers and publishers can use to their advantage when releasing sequels. According to our qualitative research, highlighting whats new is also essential information. Avid gamers want to see how a game has been enhanced without taking away from the prequel that they know and love. For brand-new titles, marketers must first gain the loyalty of gamers before they can successfully push sales. As players experience more demos and invest more time with a game, so does their likelihood of purchase.
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Provide Incentives for Registration

Customer relationship marketing (CRM) still plays a huge role in building a strong, trusting relationship between avid gamers and publishers. Through registration, marketers can monitor their users habits, offer customized incentives, and react to their needs quickly. They can also leverage these relationship tactics to spark conversations among peer groups online and offline. In the past year, nearly 7 out of 10 gamers registered at game sites that had no associated subscription charges; however, registration was in part due to the presence of worthy incentives. According to 43% of respondents, game discounts were most valuable, followed by cheat codes, game unlocks, and access to game demos. WHY? While this demographic seems to have expendable income (as they skew younger), theyre as cautious about spending their money as they are about giving out their email addresses. The payoff must exceed the effort of registration for avid gamers to reveal their information.
conversion. For fully integrated campaigns, mobile phones and social networking sites can offer the most contextual and relevant information to help drive purchases. Mobile strategyrather than smartphone appsmust be utilized to drive gamers directly to stores, since brick-and-mortar retailers still remain the preferred sales venue. Leveraging mobile phone technology, marketers can offer exclusive promotions for game releases and slow-selling titles or can use GPS to provide geographical-based incentives, such as on-the-go couponing.
Closing Remarks
Shocker: Social and Mobile Remain Underutilized

Marketing with social media sites and mobile phones has grown and has been seamlessly integrated into gamers lives. Even so, advertisers have not been able to effectively use them to influence video game purchases. Of those surveyed, 39% own phones with web browsing and rich media capabilities that have been used for video game-related activity. Though the bulk of mobile users with capable phones use them to play mobile versions of games they already own, less than half use their phones when making purchasing decisions. WHY? Because mobile and social media are fairly new channels, marketers have only used them to build buzz and have yet to grasp the benefits of The quantitative and qualitative studies indicate that most video game marketers arent using their digital dollars efficiently. Avid gamers: Are immersed within the digital/online space but disregard many staid advertising methods. Rely on peer recommendations and friends for advice, yet social media is currently underutilized and ineffective. Have their interest piqued by commercials, yet find they lack all-important gameplay footage. Find game websites interesting, yet marketers have not integrated gamers preferred functionality
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components (social commentary, peer reviews, gameplay footage, and online demos) Because avid gamers are the most influential audience segment, marketers must provide digital content that facilitates their video game research, review, and purchasing processes while online. As marketers, we must create effective integrated strategies that empower avid gamers while welcoming newbies into the experience. We must encourage our target to become influencers within
gaming-related websites as well as the websites of video game publishers. We must reconsider the role of our primary communication vehicles (websites, social marketing efforts, game trailers, television commercials, and mobile extensions). And though were constantly pushing the boundaries of technology, we must remember that the innovation isnt in the execution. Its in the strategy.
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Social Media
By: Irina Sheveleva Editor GRAPE
Irina Sheveleva graduated from the faculty of Philology, Lomonosov MSU and entered the media market as a reporter of Adindustry Magazine. She later became Editor-in-Chief of a corresponding website. As Editor at Grape Irina runs the agencys digital media trends Trends Newsletter, Hotdigital.ru and its social media branches.
opinion

A speaker at one of the now-regular social media market events said he had felt totally odd and cast-out after a single weekend without Internet access. For me, this seemed really wildsure, the web is important, but so is real life! Only later did I realize that for him the web was equal to real life.
I set out to examine the overlap between online and offline communication. Just look at the most popular online activities, like checking news (public or personal), flicking through photos, commenting on an event. Are these not the same things we do in real life? We used to meet friends to show them our travel photos, for example. But if youre showing the album to your family, then to your friends, then once more to colleagues, and so on, by then it felt like you had told the same story a million times. Now we just upload them so everyone can see. What is this but optimization? Commenting online is very similar to the communication youd have, say, at a party, cruising from one group of people to another, occasionally saying a word here and there. So whats the difference? For some, the difference is that offline, if youre observing conversation but not participating in it, you might feel or look a bit embarrassed. However, online theres usually no one to notice youre just parasitizing. Thats why Facebook will never officially launch a service to tell users who accessed their profile. And thats why it has such a huge audience: theres much less responsibility in this kind of communication. In some cases, the web is becoming a preferable mode of executing commonplace actions we would have previously keep offline. For example, a Facebook chat is used as a substitute for a phone call. Because written communication tends to be more condensed than oral communication, an online chat can be a more efficient way of exchanging information.
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As a trend, digital communication becoming real is advancing so quickly that for early adopters and people in the digital and creative industries, the space between those lines (on and off) tends to disappear completely. It seems inevitable that more consumers will soon spend more time online. If engaging with social media is something most people want to do, its something brands have to do. Brands must become an essential part of users social media experience. Ideally, that means creating a new habit thats going to become part of a persons daily social media routine. To do this, a brand should build a function. Be it help-desk, chat room, media, or sweepstakes, a function or direct benefit to users is a brands best, if not only, way to break through in social media. This logic also holds in real lifea brand must offer users a benefit but in social media it may be easier to accomplish, especially while the sphere is still developing. Setting up brand fanpages and accounts is mostly free, and the audience isnt yet satiated with branded activity, though the end date may be looming.
The best advice, though, for brands and for people, is to apply the same care to communication and relationships online as they would in their real lives. The two may not be separate for long.
As a trend, digital communication becoming real is advancing so quickly that for early adopters and people in the digital and creative industries, the space between those lines (on and off) tends to disappear completely.
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Social Media
By: Victor Pieiro Strategist Big Spaceship
Victor Pieiro is a Strategist at Big Spaceship, leading social media strategy for various clients, including Skittles. He wrote/produced the award-winning documentary Second Skin and is the managing editor of Popten.
opinion
Focusing Your Facebook Strategy: 10 Tips Toward Better Status updates

In 2010, brands paid nearly $3 million to secure a television spot during the Super Bowl30 seconds of exposure to 100 million random consumers. Quietly and without much fanfare, last year also saw the top brands on Facebook gather over 10 million fans each, spending drastically less on a continuous conversation with their self-selected fanbase. Rather than speaking in 30-second segments, their medium has become the status update. How do you grow and maintain a successful Facebook presence? It all comes back to Facebooks primary building block.
1. Analyze Users Facebook Behavior
Many brands consider fan pages microsites in a new location and spend the majority of their resources on meticulously designed pages while treating status updates as an afterthought. Doubt the power of status updates? Analyze your fans touchpoints with your brand using Facebook Insights. Less than 1% of most brands Facebook fans visit their page after liking it. If 99% of your audience only sees your status updates, plan accordingly.
2. Find Your Voice or Dont Get Heard

Whatever your brands presence on its own turf, its often an uninvited voice in a crowded room of friends on Facebook. Capture your audiences attention and hold it with a likeable, entertaining, and consistent brand voice fans look forward to hearing. Keep it casual, keep it conversational, and keep it fun.
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3. Be Short and Sweet to Rally Your Fans

Short, memorable messages tend to get the highest interaction rates, especially when theyre funny, witty, or friendly. And because fans generally press the Like button to cheer for your post, phrasing updates in a way that will get people rooting for them is key.
8. Give, Give, Give

Research has shown time and again that coupons and specials are the primary reason Facebook users Like brands. However, mere couponing betrays the community-building opportunities presented by Facebook. Rather than framing coupons as a series of deals, treat your Facebook fans like an exclusive circle with members-only discounts, much like Gilt Groupe or Groupon.
4. Dont Be Schizophrenic
Develop a consistent brand voice that doesnt vary update to update. While it often takes time to develop your voice, it should always sound like a single person, not an ever-shifting committee. This also means that its best to have one person manage the account and write updates, rather than giving your entire team the go-ahead to chime in.
5. Keep the Ask Low

Fans generally scroll down their Facebook walls fairly quickly, meaning that your 10-minute video has very little chance of being watched, while a simple, memorable update will likely solicit interaction and appreciation. Links also tend to have a low CTR, unless the call to action is strong or the reward generous.
Capture your audiences attention and hold it with a likeable, entertaining, and consistent brand voice fans look forward to hearing. Keep it casual, keep it conversational, and keep it fun.
9. Execute, Listen, Hone, Re-execute
Facebook is the ultimate sounding boarddont be afraid to use it. Strategize, execute, and then monitor your fans reaction. using what youve heard, hone your strategy. Your relationship with your Facebook audience has no end pointits constantly evolving.
6. Use Images
Images and photos have been found to spark the highest interaction rate on Facebook by a wide margin. Cute, silly, entertaining pics that are easy to make out as a thumbnail work best. Again, interaction usually means a fan is rooting for your content, so choose pictures that elicit cheers.
10. Measure Interactions, Not Just Fan Count

Some of the biggest fan pages on Facebook also have extremely low interaction rates. Though the number of fans is obviously important, keep in mind that users can hide your brands posts without it registering as attrition. Focus instead on the interaction rate with each post. Since an interaction can be as simple as merely clicking Like, it shows you how many fans are paying attention and engaging with (or rooting for) your brand.
7. Develop an Editorial Calendar

Your status updates should add up to more than a cacophony of announcements for each new brand initiative or program. Besides keeping your audience entertained, your content plan should help build community and provide a rich, ongoing experience for your fans.
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Conclusion
While these tips will get you started, the best continuing strategy is to constantly monitor your Facebook presence. Every brands Facebook community has a unique dynamic, responding to different posts, incentives, and content. And while these guidelines are specific to Facebook, the same logic applies to posts on other social networks like Twitter and MySpace.
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Social Media
case study
CHALLENGE
How do you bring the Thierry Mugler website and the buzz about the brand together into one place? The idea behind Starvibes was to build a separate space in the website where all the reactions and impressions generated across different social networks could come together. The challenge was to make this happen on an original and readable interface, so that all the content could be gathered together without disturbing the brand website.
Thierry Mugler/Starvibes
How do you bring the Thierry Mugler website and the buzz about the brand together into one place?
SOLuTION
We pictured each discussion as a star and built a galaxy where Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr come together on one site. users can filter the content by product, word, topic, or network, and they can also join in any discussion about their favorite subjects. Each time a fan creates a new topic, a new star is born inside the galaxy, thus tracking the growth of Thierry Muglers community of fans.
Author: Benjamin Laugel CEO/Creative Director, Soleil Noir Soleil Noir Team: Sophie Gaaloul, Project Manager Flaviio Ensiki, Developer Pierre-Francois Hagge, Art Director Romain Bouchereau, Graphic Designer Jean-Christophe Quilez, Sound Designer
The leading idea was to combine the main social networks and the brand site. We understood that we had to consider the hugeness of the Thierry Mugler community of fans as well as its home-rule aspect. Within these parameters, the project created an independent galaxy devoted to fans.
IMPACT
No results available, as the project has not been launched at the time of press.
Benjamin Laugel founded Soleil Noir in 2000 and serves as its CD and CEO. After a Masters of Communication, he created Soleil Noir with the aim of offering interactive experiences. Benjamin is SoDAs European representative and a Board Member of the Club des Directeurs Artistiques.
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users can filter the content by product, word, topic, or network, and they can also join in any discussion about their favorite subjects. Each time a fan creates a new topic, a new star is born inside the galaxy, thus tracking the growth of Thierry Muglers community of fans.
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Social Media
case study
Emma Watson Digital Strategy
Emma Watson is a British actress who rose to prominence playing Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter movies. Great Fridays challenge was to bring Emmas digital image up to date to reflect her 20-year-old profile as fashion model, actress, and fair trade supporter, without alienating her loyal core fanbase.
CHALLENGE
Emma Watson is a British actress who rose to prominence playing Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter movies. Many of her millions of fans worldwide have grown up with Emma. Great Fridays challenge was to bring Emmas digital image up to date to reflect her 20-year-old profile as fashion model, actress, and fair trade supporter, without alienating her loyal core fanbase. A multiphased strategy was developed to create a consistent presentation of the Emma Watson brand across all relevant digital channels. and briefings were held with all of Emmas core stakeholders to better understand the many different facets of her profile. These included meetings with her closest family to understand Emma the person, meetings with those responsible for Emmas public profile, including PR agents and brand specialists, and meetings with Storm model agency. The Great Fridays team also met and got to know Emma herself in order to create an authentic online voice.
Author: Rob Salmon Director of Communications, Great Fridays Great Fridays Team: Rob Noble, Co-Founder Dean Evans, Producer Jo Whelan and Mark Sugdon, Designers Adam Foster, Developer Chris Hardy, Developer
SOLuTION
The new website at emmawatson. com was launched on Emmas birthday on April 14, 2010 with the development of her official brand presence on social networks like
Detailed discovery workshops
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Author Bio: Rob Salmon is Great Fridays award-winning Director of Communications. With over 20 years of experience working both agency and client-side, Rob is a specialist in corporate and brand communications.
Facebook and Twitter following shortly after. The solution developed by Great Fridays included user experience design, visual design, messaging, and online branding, content, and detailed analytics and metrics. The strategy treated all channels as a single, coherent ecosystem, with individual elements working seamlessly together to achieve the desired impact of increased website traffic and regular dramatic spikes of user interest and engagement.
over 25,000 unique visits daily. Looking to social networks, Emma has over three quarters of a million friends on Facebook and a quarter of a million followers on Twitter, a huge increase on previous traffic and significantly ahead of target forecasts. The detailed analytics and tracking tools put in place by Great Fridays provide rich and valuable information to Emmas agents and representatives, building her brand equity and developing an impressive digital portfolio.
The strategy treated all channels as a single, coherent ecosystem, with individual elements working seamlessly together to achieve the desired impact of increased website traffic and regular dramatic spikes of user interest and engagement.
IMPACT
Emmas new website has received over 3 million unique visits since its launch, twice as many as the previous version. The site on average receives
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Social Media
case study
CHALLENGE
Every minute, 100,000 Guitar Hero songs are played in the 16 million instrument-game-playing households. Since the games launch in 2005, the Guitar Hero fanbase has grown from rock star groupies to pop-loving tweens, tech-newbie Wii moms, country folk, and every music lover in between. With the release of Guitar Hero 5, Activision wanted an online destination that would appeal to all its divas, while facilitating digital interaction, global community integration, user personalization, and product sales. This new, worldwide social hub would also double as a 24/7 one-stop-shop for everything Guitar Hero.
GuitarHero.com: Global Franchise Hub and Community
With the release of Guitar Hero 5, Activision wanted an online destination that would appeal to all its divas, while facilitating digital interaction, global community integration, user personalization, and product sales.
To connect gamers to one another, we needed to understand their interests and lifestyles. After discovering that 90% of gaming conversations happen outside of a franchises portal, we integrated popular social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Digg, and YouTube) as a way to distribute news, media, user comments, and worldwide community conversation. Research also revealed that gamers prefer peer reviews to professional industry reviews when deciding on a purchase, so we adopted a new rating system for songs, games, and instruments. This system allows users to mark their musical preferences with an iLike button, that encouraged participation, drove conversation, and increased camaraderie.
Author and Team Member: Ken Martin Chief Creative Officer, Blitz Blitz Team: Paul Hikiji, Senior Art Director Matt Murray, Art Director Thanh Gip, Designer Sean Scott, Director of user Experience Adam Venturella, Senior Software Developer Erick Louie, Software Developer Phil Tobias, Software Developer Dino Petrone, Senior Flash Developer Yosef Flomin, Flash Developer Lee Matsunami, Project Manager
Ken Martin is Chief Creative Officer at BLITZ. He entered the industry at age fifteen, and since the beginning, he has enjoyed solving seemingly impossible challenges with the most engaging, effective solutions and digital developments.
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SOLuTION
To facilitate social interactions, we built My Guitar Hero Experience, which allows users to customize their dashboards with performance stats, tournaments, friends, groupies, and information about their interests. We then went a step further with our state-of-the-art streamlined console linking process to increase user communication and drive purchases of songs and GH products. The Whats New section highlights the vast music selection with peer-tagged favorites, a detailed Guitar Hero music catalog, and downloadable music charts. Visiting this section enables users to easily keep up with new music while following recommendations from other GH fans.
IMPACT
The launch of Guitar Heros new global franchise hub brought an instant 50% increase in site registration and 200% increase in site traffic. Adoption of the iLike button drove interest among fansthey played over 20 million songs within the first two weeks of the sites launch and increased their video engagement by 500%. By combining the iLike system with the two-click purchasing process, we saw a 300% sales spike for Guitar Hero products through online retail merchants. And with over 1 million GH Facebook fans from around the world, devotees can continue to build relationships and talk rock every day.
Since the games launch in 2005, the Guitar Hero fanbase has grown from rock star groupies to pop-loving tweens, tech-newbie Wii moms, country folk and every music lover in between.
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Social Media
case study
CHALLENGE
BBH and Google Creative Labs wanted to create a browser speed race, using popular web services to create obstacles that users had to get through. How could this be created in the most entertaining and fascinating way while still providing a contained and focused experience for the user?
Chrome Fastball Race Across the Internet
BBH and Google Creative Labs wanted to create a browser speed race, using popular web services to create obstacles that users had to get through.
SOLuTION
We developed two main ideas that shaped our production. First, we wanted to build and shoot a Rube Goldberg machine to visualize the race. Second, we thought of creating the whole thing as a YouTube page, by connecting multiple video players to create an extra widescreen format that would fit the entire machine. Our idea was to let the space between each player expand to display the interactive test modules. The Rube Goldberg machine worked as a fun platform that connected the tests. By creating the project as a YouTube/web services mashup, we could create a smooth user experience.
Author: Petter Westlund Creative Director and Co-founder, B-Reel Team: B-Reel
We played around with different ideas for the best format for this project. We thought it was really important to keep the storytelling clear and consistent, establishing the setup from the beginning and surprising the audience with interactive elements along the way. It should feel fun and playful while also making use of everyday web services like Twitter, Last FM, Translate, Search, and Maps.
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Petter Westlund is a Creative Director and Co-founder of B-Reel.
IMPACT
unfortunately, we cannot release metrics for this campaign. However, we can say that within minutes of launching, the site garnered so many users, simultaneously, that the servers crashed. Pretty impressive.
The Rube Goldberg machine worked as a fun platform that connected the tests. By creating the project as a YouTube/web services mashup, we could create a smooth user experience.
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Social Media
case study
SAP Friend Network Optimizer
SAP has recently updated its brand and changed the name of its suite of products. To ensure the target market knows about the changes and what products SAP has to offer, Dare was approached to create a campaign that would build awareness for the brand.
CHALLENGE
SAP has recently updated its brand and changed the name of its suite of products. To ensure the target market knows about the changes and what products SAP has to offer, Dare was approached to create a campaign that would build awareness for the brand and the benefits of SAP Crystal Solutions Business Intelligence offerings. To reach business banagers and IT managers, SAP needed to distinguish itself in the market. The brand needed to position business intelligence reporting tools as relatable and personal. Doing this meant piquing curiosity about these tools in a new way to ensure they stood out from the competition.
RESEARCH/INSIGHT/ ACTIVITY
The insight was around the core audience, business managers and IT managers. These groups are on Facebook and we believed getting their attention in an unexpected way and demonstrating the power of data visualization with nonbusiness data would help drive the message to the audience. There is an unarticulated game with Facebook users around how many friends one has and how important this makes the user. Its a sense of social status. The Friend Network Optimizer lets the user see the power of intelligence data. By playing with sliders (situation variables), users can see the impact friends have on personal value.
Author and Team Member: Sandhya Suryam, Client Partner Dare Dare Vancouver Team: Jackson Murphy, Assoc. Creative Director Graham MacInness, Art Director Erica Lam, Social Media Strategist Chelsea Grisdale, Producer Tsung-Yin Tsai, Developer Steve Lindenberg, Flash Developer Dana Dansereau, Technical Director Angele Beausoleil, VP Strategy and Innovation
Sandhya Suryam is a Client Partner at Dare. She worked client-side for 12 years before leaping to agency-side which helps her understand the clients worlds. A consumer champion, Sandhya is comfortable in both traditional and digital worlds.
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SOLuTION
The solution is unique because Dare found a fun and interesting way to report on Facebook data, mimicking the SAP reporting functionality. Whats important is that the audience makes the connection from an abstract concept to seeing the value of the business intelligence report tools for any application or situation. A second point is that users can play with the data to see cause-and-effect results. If SAP can do this for your Facebook data, think of what it can do for your business.
IMPACT
Success was defined by engagement from SAP stakeholders and Facebook users, and gaining awareness in blogs and in the tech community. There were over 11,000 users in the first few weeks after launch and posts about the application were also discussed on blogs such as the Huffington Post, ZiZot.com, and TechNews.AM. It also received many tweets.
Whats important is that the audience makes the connection from an abstract concept to seeing the value of the business intelligence report tools for any application or situation.
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Social Media
case study
CHALLENGE
Since January 2010, many of the most popular brands on Facebook have seen their fan count increase from 200% to 400%, jumping from a few million fans to more than 10 million. Starbucks, the most popular brand on Facebook, went from 5 million to 16 million in the space of 10 months, while the top 5 brands all cleared 10 million fans each. What are these brands doing to engage their massive audiences, and what seems to be working?
It Isnt Lonely at the Top: What the Most Liked Brands Are Doing on Facebook
Since January 2010, many of the most popular brands on Facebook have seen their fan count increase from 200% to 400%, jumping from a few million fans to more than 10 million.
performances of brand-endorsed artists and gives its messaging a personal touch with a familiar, friendly voice. While Starbucks is initiative-focused, others take a different approach to community building. Coca-Cola unites its fans by celebrating the object of their fandom. Always product-centric, the brand shares short Coke maxims, asks questions about the product, and gives brief history lessons on the origins of the iconic beverage.
Author: Victor Pieiro Strategist, Big Spaceship Team: Big Spaceship
COMMuNITY BuILDING
Facebooks biggest brand builds community with perpetual activity. Starbucks constantly announces new flavors, rolls out green initiatives, highlights charities, shares live
CELEBRATING FANS
Oreo highlights a randomly selected Facebook fan each week from those who have posted their photos on the brands page. Besides showcasing the fans photo on the page, the
Victor Pieiro is a Strategist at Big Spaceship, leading social media strategy for various clients, including Skittles. He wrote/produced the award-winning documentary Second Skin and is the managing editor of Popten.
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brand announces each Fan of the Week on a status update, trumpeting their name and encouraging participation. Oreos Facebook initiatives tend to stay fan-centric. It recently had fans vote on their favorite summer songs, creating a Pandora radio station out of the most popular tracks.
WHAT WORKS BEST?

Its surprisingly difficult to measure success on Facebook. Despite all of the available metrics, many of the most important ones remain hidden or difficult to access. For example, one metric visible to any user is the interaction rate: the likes and comments on each individual post, revealing who is listening and engaging with your brand on a regular basis. However, whether a brands posts are being liked by the same 5,000 people each time is far more difficult to ascertain, and key to understanding the size of its engaged audience.
CONTENT PROVIDER
Red Bulls Facebook page is so chock-full of extreme sports content, one might mistake it for the x Games page. Status updates highlight the latest event footage, while the Athletes tab aggregates tweets from all Red Bull sponsored athletes. The Red Bull Web TV tab streams constant sponsored content, while the Events tab invites fans to hundreds of global events. Red Bulls page is testament to the idea that content is king.
BRAND VOICE
Skittles and M&Ms, which boast some of the highest interaction rates on Facebook, use status updates to personify their brands. Following either brand on the social network means receiving day-in-the-life updates from the Rainbow or the Red M&M, much like a celebrity Facebook or Twitter account. Victorias Secret, another brand with high interaction rates, uses short, cheeky updates to foster an in-the-know tone, while brands like Oreo and Coke remain firmly product-centric, asking brand-related questions and sharing cute photos of their product.
Its surprisingly difficult to measure success on Facebook. Despite all of the available metrics, many of the most important ones remain hidden or difficult to access.
The metric that usually determines a brands perceived success on social networks is the fan count. High fan counts have led to countless articles commending brands for their winning social media strategies, assuming that their behavior garners them fans. A recent study from DDB Worldwide, however, revealed that 75% of a brands Facebook fans liked the brand after invitations or ads from brandsnot through word of mouth or organically through Facebook. Perhaps a successful Facebook engagement strategy should focus on retaining and activating fans, rather than aiming to grow them from within the social network.
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The use of digitally based channels is the differentiator between digital marketing and other traditional forms of marketing. While TV, print, and radio platforms are relatively unchanged in the last 50 years, digital has experienced massive changes in platform growth in the last five years. The continued growth of digital advertising is dependent on emerging technologies and innovative uses of those technologies. Marketers and agencies need to be at the forefront of this growth. Smartphones, tablet devices, and web-enabled TVs are now connected in ways unimaginable a few years ago. While the multitude of devices and the potential fragmentation can be intimidating to marketers, there is great opportunity to create innovative experiences across integrated devices. We can no longer rely on desktopbased web experiences to deliver digital content when people are accessing information from a multitude of devices. Well discuss strategies and trends for effectively creating for these channels. While the fight for the living room increases, we need to be smart with the technologies that we use to implement these experiences. Considerations for use of Flash in areas where its excelled, such as gaming and video, has been challenged with new technologies such as HTML5 and CSS 3. Are they simply the cool new buzzwords for technologists or will it require the emergence of IE 9 and the death of IE 6 for it to be really taken seriously as a dominate delivery technology? Well explore the effectiveness of HTML5 via case studies focusing on its implementation and results on ROI. Were at an exciting point in technology where the opportunities to innovate are boundless. Collaboration and innovation today will set the digital marketing trends for tomorrow.
By Charles Duncan Jr., DMO Section Editor; Director of Technology, IQ

Next Generation Mobile Applications by Charles Duncan Jr., DMO Section Editor; Director of Technology, IQ Interactive Mobile Is a New Medium, Not Just an Extension of Your Website by Brian Jeremy, Director of Technology, Exopolis Local, Social, and Brand Transcendence by Richard Cruz, Digital Strategist, AgencyNet Mobile Apps for the B2B Marketer: Its Not Just Fun and Games by Kirsten Corbell, Account Director, Strategy & Planning Group, Fullhouse Interactive Wearable Digital SignageThe Modern Day Sandwich Board by Jim Vaughn, Digital Strategy and Partner Development Manager, Fullhouse Interactive
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The Marketing Implications of Google Instant by Geary Interactive How Lean and Agile Processes Can Deliver Killer Results by Stuart Eccles, Founding Partner, Made by Many Mobile Super App Experiences: From Brand Extension to Engaging Customers by Tyler Lessard, VP Global Alliances and Developer Relations, Research In Motion Case Study: The Wilderness Downtown by Nicole Muniz, Producer, B-Reel Case Study: SoBe Reskin Yourself by Anna Edwards, Associate Copywriter, Firstborn Case Study: DonQ Rum by Guthrie Dolin, DMO Section Editor; Principal, Director of Strategy, Odopod
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By: Charles Duncan Jr. DMO Section Editor Director of Technology, IQ
As Director of Technology, Charles Duncan, Jr. (@sirchauncy) leads the strategic direction of IQs Development and Analytics services. Charles has over 13 years of experience leading the development of award-winning work across the globe for brands such as Nike, Xbox, and Gap.
opinion

The adoption of smartphones is steadily increasing at an incredible rate. Nielsen predicts that smartphones will overtake feature phones by the end of 2011. This shift will be the catalyst for innovation in the mobile marketplace. Marketers and their partner agencies need to consider how theyll create for the next generation mobile devices.
The adoption of smartphones is increasing at an incredible rate. Nielsen predicts that smartphones will overtake feature phones by the end of 2011. This shift will be the catalyst for innovation in the mobile marketplace. Marketers and their partner agencies need to consider how theyll create for the next generation mobile devices. These next generation mobile devices will push far beyond current devices in both hardware and software capabilities. Increases in mobile broadband, processing power, image resolution, storage, and connected services will drive innovation. A competitive mobile platform marketplace dominated by RIM, Apple, and Google has been the primary story line over the last few years. Previous market leaders such as Nokia and Microsoft are poised to challenge the current leaders and regain market share. The operating systems that have dominated the marketplace for the last few years have focused on an app-driven paradigm. The central focus was on the capabilities of the individual mobile application. Nokia, RIM, and Apple built successful platforms based around this type of user interaction. More apps in a platforms market provided the end user with more options and a perceived greater value than other competing platforms.
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The Android platform and its tight integration with numerous Google services have helped push the trend in a new direction. If someone is already using Googles Gmail, Maps, and YouTube via a desktop computer, these services can be leveraged to mobile in a unique way. A perfect example of this is the ability to broadcast my physical map location while searching for driving or walking directions. A user who is using these same services on a desktop computer has different needs than a mobile user. Another great example of this new direction is Microsofts Windows Phone Application Platform where the focus is on hubs (photo, video, and productivity) as opposed to apps. Hubs put the focus on your contacts and your social interactions with those contacts. For example, a photo hub where instead of only being able to see your photos, you are able to see your friends photos. This trend will result in an increased need for applications to support more social and contacted features. Many times we struggle with how consumer brands and their services can be more social, particularly when the context is personal (e.g., financial services and healthcare). While the solution may not be a public broadcast of status and personal information, well need to think more about the potential connection points that are relevant between people and how mobile can help bridge those points. The next key element to this trend is how our mobile devices physically connect to larger systems. Historically, this connection has been through the audio and video feed of a larger device such as the ability to play the songs on my iPod through my car stereo. Were starting to see more enhanced integration where someones mobile device is the main communication and data-display hub of next generation automobiles. With mobile devices having gigabytes of mp3s, streaming via 3G networks and updated map information, is it necessary to have factory-based car stereos or information displays? This will provide marketers with a new platform to create within while providing utility to the end user.
Innovations around mobile will mean that simply having a mobile application presence will not be enough for engagement. The next generation of applications will need to consider a new way to provide utility and communication with connected users. As the convergence of communication mediums continues, our mobile devices and the applications that power them will continue to become more of a central focus in our lives. Innovation around the constantly emerging mobile platform will be the key to marketers staying relevant.
Innovations around mobile will mean that simply having a mobile application presence will not be enough for engagement. The next generation of applications will need to consider a new way to provide utility and communication with connected users.
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By: Brian Jeremy Director of Technology Exopolis
Brian Jeremy is a California-based technologist with over 10 years of experience specializing in emerging platforms.
opinion

Mobile remains a buzzword in digital even though the term isnt recent; in fact, its origin is extremely dated. However, what is undeniable is the increasing growth in the mobile sector and the role it is playing industry wide. Disregard the hype, we are indeed slowly mobilizing, but the solution is not to take existing websites and experiences and port them to a new platform. Take a step back to fully understand all aspects of the platformthe evolution, the advantages, and the disadvantagesand then embark on strategic efforts to create the ideal solution.
According to the July 2010 PEW Mobile Access Report as of Q2 2010, 59% of uS adults have online experiences with mobile devices a usage increase in over 50% compared to a 2009 study. This is concrete evidence that mobile is a growing medium in the uS and an area where more consumption is occurring. The demand for mobile applications and experiences has also been on the rise: a September 2010 PEW report states that 35% of uS adults have applications installed on their phones. The growth in mobile applications and the mobile web is indisputable. What mobile developers, agencies, and marketers are failing to pay attention to is that (1) mobile content should vastly differ from website content and (2) the mobile experience in its entirety should be viewed from a different perspectivefrom design to execution. Patterns of mobile behavior vary drastically from web/desktop usage to mobile experiences. The key differentiators are intent, functionality, and screen real estate. Take a moment to think about the tools at your disposal for browsing the web on your desktop: a sophisticated browser, keyboard, mouse, and decent-sized display. Browsing on mobile devices doesnt offer the luxury of space or timeconsumption is in real time. Thus, due to the current limitations of the mobile medium, it is crucial that we focus on this platform as a new medium and not just an extension of a website.
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Successful mobile experiences should not require browsing, search, or any indirect/nonintuitive methods of discovery. Content, color, design, navigation, and information architecture should all be custom tailored to the mobile platform allowing users to quickly and seamlessly locate and engage with the relevant information or features they are seeking. Optimizing existing websites to be viewable on mobile devices is definitely taking a step in the right direction. However, thinking of mobile design, development, and delivery as a complete paradigm shift and treating it as a new medium will result in the most value for your visitors and business.
Take a moment to think about the tools at your disposal for browsing the web on your desktop: a sophisticated browser, keyboard, mouse, and decent-sized display. Browsing on mobile devices doesnt offer the luxury of space or time consumption is in real time.
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By: Richard Cruz Digital Strategist, AgencyNet
Richie Cruz is a Digital Strategist at AgencyNet, an award-winning digital marketing agency, where he has developed high-level initiatives for agency clients including Bacardi Global Brands, Def Jam Recordings, and Fuse TV. Also a freelance journalist, Richie has contributed to various publications including VIBE, The Source, Format Magazine, and BRIDGEZ Magazine.
opinion

Like most digital platforms in their infancy, location-based social networks (LoSos) have exhibited bursts of greatness but have yet to realize their place among mainstream culture. Now, with the onset of Facebook Places and the increased prevalence of LoSos throughout the digital and physical worlds, are location-based services ready to hit the big time?
We live in a world that is both incredibly challenging and a marketers dream. Consumers willingly leaving trails of data everywhere they go, presenting the kind of rich consumer insight that agencies and advertisers could only dream of in the past. But is it really right for all brands? Going into 2011, we expect to see the number of brands experimenting on Foursquare, Gowalla, and Facebook Places continue to growbut the reality is that before brands truly feel comfortable putting themselves in the hands of LoSos beyond sheer experimental use, these platforms will not only need to reach greater critical mass, but they will also need to create more consistent practices of measurement and analytics.
Going Mainstream
It goes without saying that early adopter, geek, and urbanite consumer clusters have always been quick to adopt LoSos into their lives. At their core, LoSos speak to these groups basic need to be in the knowproviding access to personalized, locally relevant information in ways never possible before. But for those non-early-adopting trend seekers among us, the value proposition of LoSos is perhaps less clear cut. Even so, both Twitter and Facebook faced similar periods of initial skepticism, and in time, both services have certainly managed to hit mainstream culture. Twitter, in
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particular, managed to reach its tipping point when celebrities (Ashton Kutcher, among others) stepped up and brought millions upon millions of new Twitter users into the fold. And now, given the increasing prevalence of mobile usage, its safe to say that more and more prominent figures and culture influencers will continue to select LoSos as their platform of choice. As this happens, we believe LoSos will also become the platform that early majority and late majority consumers turn to and that these platforms will reach much greater market penetration over the coming year.
A recent Harvard Business Review report correctly points out that showing up [via a LoSo] does not equate to profit. And while this may be true, brands and their agency partners need to work together to understand how LoSos can help not only drive revenue (for certain brands), but also build long-term, sustainable brand equity. The more these programs can be tied to metrics such as the net promoter score and purchase intent, the more brands will want to become involved. So, whether its Foursquare, or the next in a new generation of LoSos that follows in its place, one thing is clearlocation-based social networking, like the smartphone itself, is here to stay...and growing.
Quantifying the Check-In

As this happens, marketers will also increasingly demand the ability to quantify the results generated by programs on LoSos. Clicks-to-bricks, (a measure of the symbiotic online-to-retail dynamic that LoSos enable), is likely to become a more standard and relevant way to measure mobile programs success for retailers, but for the thousands of nonretail brands out there, it will be incumbent upon agencies and the LoSos themselves to help generate meaningful metrics that can help brands understand and quantify success. Just as in other media, there will be no one-size-fits-all success metric, though brands are certainly striving to find ways to tie activity on LoSos to sales and revenue.
Just as in other media, there will be no one-size-fits-all success metric, though brands are certainly striving to find ways to tie activity on LoSos to sales and revenue.
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By: Kirsten Corbell Account Director Strategy & Planning Group Fullhouse Interactive
Kirsten Corbell has 15 years of experience in integrated marketing. She provides account and relationship management for a number of Fullhouse clients, including strategic planning and execution of integrated traditional and digital initiatives.
opinion
Mobile Apps for the B2B Marketer: Its Not Just Fun and Games
Over the past six months, weve seen a shift in the type of client asking our agency about mobile apps. Mobile apps are now not only being considered for consumer brand engagement, but they are increasingly being found in the B2B marketers toolbox. B2B marketers are recognizing mobile apps as a relevant tactic for brand awareness and engagement as well as personal productivity and connectivity. Weve recently held several client workshops looking at ways their marketing programs are being distributed and consumed. People are starting to rely on their mobile phones not just for personal use, but also for professional use, and they are bringing their smartphones into the workplace. This trend is leading our clients to explore relevant new ways to add apps into their marketing mix. According to a recent Forrester report, 13% of information workers currently use smartphones for work at least weekly. And, the number of information workers using smartphones is predicted to escalate rapidly, hitting 34% by 2012. Based on the adoption rate, we believe smartphones will reach relatively widespread adoption over the next 3+ years. So When Is a Mobile App Relevant and What Should B2B Marketers Consider as They Weigh the Options?
We look at apps in three unique categories: entertainment, brand butlers, and tools. EntertainmentIts pure brand engagement, fun and gamesand even in a business setting, its still a way to escape from the daily grind. Brand ButlersBranded apps that help end customers make the most of their daily lives and tasks. ToolsPure utility apps that help internal audiences or customers do their jobs more efficiently and effectively. Entertainment is certainly still a relevant consideration even for B2B branding and audience engagement. Weve launched new apps in a trade show settingas a
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branded game accessible in a customer lounge area. Then, to extend the experience further, marketers provided links to the app when following up with contacts and leads postshow. We also have several clients from large manufacturing facilities where plant tours and customer visits are common. Having branded games available in their customer center provides another branded activity as well as a fun, cutting-edge way to point out key product differentiators. Brand butlers, a concept introduced by Trendwatchers several years ago, is now making its way into the app world. Brand butlers assist customers with tasks they already perform. Lets say your company sells construction products. Since weather is a critical aspect of a construction managers daily lifeis there another lens your brand could add to a weather report to make it more meaningful? A detailed wind report? A recommendation for best time of day to perform a weather-dependent task?
What Else Do B2B Marketers Need to Think about When Considering an App?
Its our favorite agency question: How much will that cost? And our famous answer: Well, it depends! Lets look at some budget drivers to put things in perspective. The largest budget driver will be type (and number) of mobile platforms. As B2B marketers, you need to consider what device your customers are primarily using for business connectivity. With more than 250,000 apps and growing, the Apple iPhone has been one of the most popular destinations for apps. If you are considering a native app to be included in Apples App Store, there are a host of other considerations around licensing and registration that will affect your cost. Googles Android is quickly gaining popularity and has shown significant expansion in market share in the last six months. RIM BlackBerry is still the most popular device among enterprise users and a likely destination for B2B apps. According to Nielsen, BlackBerry is the biggest smartphone player with a 35% share compared to 28% for Apples iPhone and 13% for Android. Ultimately, understanding your target audiences phone preference and knowing how many platforms you design for will be a large budget driver. Other questions to ask that will drive your budget: ContentWill you repurpose existing content, or develop content from scratch? User InterfaceIncreased expectations on ease of use and simplicity may require a focused investment in interface design, even if your content is relatively consistent. Security and IntegrationWill the data and interaction be public or private? Will you need SSL or integration with other platforms like your CRM tool or Facebook page? Clearly, the way information is being consumed and distributed is shifting drastically. Accessibility and ease of use need to be top of mind for marketers as they develop a channel strategy that spans todays range of desktop and mobile devices.
B2B marketers are recognizing mobile apps as a relevant tactic for brand awareness and engagement as well as personal productivity and connectivity.
Lastly, lets look at apps purely as tools. Were currently seeing the most growth and request in this category. According to a recent Nielsen Pew survey, 26% of mobile app users are using apps for productivity purposes. Sales support and sales tool development is always high on the list for most marketing teams. Apps can be a quick and easy way for a mobile sales team to access relevant, real-time information. This might be related to product training, it might be sound bites for a sales call, or perhaps a better way for sales to gather and track client information during a sales visit. Mobile apps allow a sales team to access information remotely that likely exists in many other, less accessible formats.
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By: Jim Vaughn Digital Strategy and Partner Development Manager Fullhouse Interactive
Jim Vaughn is the Digital Strategy and Partner Development Manager at Fullhouse. Fullhouse, based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin creates sales and marketing programs across a range of traditional, digital and emerging channels.
opinion

In the last 10 years, digital signage has evolved from monitors playing looping PowerPoint presentations to offering up real-time data feeds, dynamic content, and dayparting playlists. Advances in technology have allowed the digital signage industry to provide us with a new marketing channel at an affordable price. So it begs the question, whats next?
Wearable digital signage has been available for over two years. Seen as an in-your-face approach to marketing, its really how you execute a program that determines whether your messaging will be received as tacky or unbelievably cool. A quick search on wearable digital signage will provide results ranging from 15-inch LCD monitors mounted to a chest harness to 2.4-inch OLED lightweight units that attach to your clothing. All are very effective in getting peoples attention, but which type is going to enhance your brand and which one will hinder it? In my humble opinion, the modern day sandwich board needs to be small, neat, and well thought out. The smaller, lightweight versions dont produce as many laughs, but they definitely capture peoples attention. Viewers are often wowed by the technology, but its really about the message thats being presented. When creating content and programs based around this technology, the messaging needs to be clear, concise, and actionable. If you miss any of those three components, then youre wasting your time. The size of the screen and limited time to communicate and influence the viewer requires messaging that gets to the point and offers value. One of the more successful ways weve used the technology is to present SMS codes to offer marketing collateral delivery at trade shows. In retail, weve presented unadvertised specials that pique the interest of the customer. From there its all about how youve trained the person wearing the signage. These units should be
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considered a sales tool to assist the staff in starting a conversation. Its also critical that you have the right type of person wearing these units. If the person is self-conscious or is worried about people staring at their chest, its not going to work. We witnessed this in a pilot program at several bank branches. Many of the tellers (and some customers) had issues with placement of the units near the chest and the line of site for the tellers. So we learned a conservative environment may not be the best place to use them! On the other hand, we conducted a program in a large chain restaurant where we saw just the opposite. Servers wore the units and leveraged them to provide information on appetizers, some actually left the units at the tables as they were picking up drink orders. Appetizer sales rose 21%.
being worn and updates could happen in seconds. Yes, its becoming a little Minority Report, but were not there yet!
In the future, we imagine this technology could incorporate a wireless component once its small enough to fit into the housing. Content would be able to be downloaded while the unit is being worn and updates could happen in seconds.
Where do we see this going? Well, currently the units store all of the content locally. Depending on the vendor or model, new content is either updated by dropping and dragging the content via your operating system or through a docking station linked to a digital signage platform. In the future, we imagine this technology could incorporate a wireless component once its small enough to fit into the housing. Content would be able to be downloaded while the unit is
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By: Geary Interactive
Geary Interactive is the leading REAL RESULTS digital marketing agency that provides nationally recognized, full service capabilities in a performance driven model. Premium services include strategic planning, analytics, digital advertising, search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, creative design, and website development.
opinion

Google Instant promises to alter the way people experience their searches, how they absorb SERPs, and the strategies marketers need to reach their target users. This update aligns perfectly with societys ADD because now users only have to wait a few milliseconds before seeing search results, and now that Google is predicting our queries, we wont have to hassle with completing them ourselves.
Google Instant promises to alter the way people experience their searches, how they absorb SERPs, and the strategies marketers need to reach their target users. This update aligns perfectly with societys ADD because now users only have to wait a few milliseconds before seeing search results, and now that Google is predicting our queries, we wont have to hassle with completing them ourselves. As with all of Googles updates, questions arise. Two of the most popular questions are how will this change SEO? And what are the impacts to paid search campaigns? These two questions are percolating in SEM circles, and here are our thoughts on the matter. One thing that will be impacted is impressions. Users could see up to seven or eight different SERPs for a given query, so it makes sense that the number of advertisements users are exposed to will also multiply. Google Instant will favor the most popular terms and keyword variations (i.e., book vs. books). These keywords that appear in predictive results will receive more impressions and clicks, so campaigns that focus on exact match need to take into account Googles preferred terms to maintain campaign traction. There is also debate about Instants impact on long tail keywords. Before Google Instant, SEO professionals could optimize web pages to target longer tail keywords
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that are arguably less crowded and less expensive to achieve high rankings. Another reason they are an attractive SEO target is that they cater towards users who are deeper in conversion funnels. With Google Instant, users could avoid longer keyword phrases to find desired content because Google could predict their search and render corresponding results before users complete their query. On the other hand, the predictive nature of Google Instant might lead to longer keywords as users are exposed to keyword phrases beyond what they have typed. As of now, the two schools of thought are still fairly divided, but either way, it is agreed that a change in search behavior is likely. Google Instant will also place a heavier impact on universal search because multimedia assets will draw users attention as results filter in. This means that marketers need to put extra stock in their image, video, and other multimedia content to make sure it is optimized to be indexed and rendered with as much jazz as possible. This means adding rich snippets to listings that Google can incorporate into their universal search results, and marketers should revisit their meta descriptions and title tags to make sure they are optimized to grab browsers attention at a quick glance. Applying this to paid search, it will be important to try to integrate site links, product images, and other beta programs into their search campaigns to catch users attention on SERPs.
The Instant update and other changes like the Yahoo-Bing merger are validating the importance of solid search strategies that address keyword relevancy, search intent, and postclick optimizations. Ben Gomes of Google says, Google Instant seems so obvious, that in retrospect, youll wonder if search could have been any other way. For marketers, the implications are far less solidified, but in all cases, it is imperative that marketers and search practitioners keep a close eye on fluctuations in campaign performance and make adjustments accordingly.
Google Instant will also place a heavier impact on universal search because multimedia assets will draw users attention as results filter in. This means that marketers need to put extra stock in their image, video, and other multimedia content to make sure it is optimized to be indexed and rendered with as much jazz as possible.
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By: Stuart Eccles Founding Partner Made by Many
Stuart Eccles is a founding partner and lead technologist at Made by Many. He is an advocate of and frequent speaker on agile project methodologies and lean manufacturing philosophies applied to the strategy, design, and development of digital services and products, and he contributes to a number of open source projects.
opinion

Brands and agencies can take a nod from the webs most innovative start-ups not just in terms of what theyre making out of the Internet, but also in regard to the agile and lean methodologies these start-ups employ.
The last few years of rapid shifts in Internet culturefrom user-generated content and self-publication to the rise of social networks and now to an app-based economy have prompted a change in the way people behave online. Brands and organizations are realizing they need to form lasting digital relationships with people. More than just serving up a microsite about their latest product, they need to start offering utility and innovative new services enabled by technology. As a by-product, brands can form new CRM channels, deliver customer intelligence, and even find new revenue streams. But building these kinds of long lasting digital engagement platforms takes a new kind of agency and new kinds of processes. Launching a platform is more akin to building a start-up digital business within a company than it is to launching a marketing campaign. While the technologies are similar, the objectives, interactions, and the stakes are a lot higher. Traditionally, the processes used to create digital marketing campaigns tend to follow the waterfall project methodology. The linear, fairly rigid approach is far better suited to producing smaller digital communication ideas like microsites than it is to dealing with the emergent behavior needed to create new innovations that really engage. Agile project methodologies build the idea of change right into the process. This allows flexibility to respond to customer feedback, changing business priorities, and new innovations driven by the Internet. Technology can be released incrementally to get feedback from all parties: customer, client, and agency.
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From Twitter and Facebook to Groupon and Foursquare, innovation on the Internet has been driven by small groups of people with limited resources. The products these start-ups have created have brought about massive cultural shifts. While these companies benefit from the nimbleness and flexibility that come with being small, theres more to it than that. They do things in truly different ways. In recent years, there has been a dominant force in the mechanisms of great digital start-ups. This trend was coined by Eric Ries in The Lean Startup and blends agile development with rapid customer development feedback and metrics-driven approaches to determining what works. Paul Graham described this as make something someone specific needs, launch fast, let users show you what to change, change it, repeat last two. This is how the webs most innovative start-ups work: quickly, flexibly, and responsively. Agencies and brands can take a lot from this approach. Its not only about optimizing the right ideas and interactions, but about being able to test concepts and prototypes with real users to progress the winners and kill the losers. By combining rapid prototyping techniques with lightweight user testing and live dry testing, we can avoid backing the wrong ideas and concentrate on whats really important: finding something customers love.
We can start using these techniques to apply the lean start-up philosophy of nail it, then scale it to our ideas. By testing with real people and iterating in live environments, we can work out exactly the right kind of engagement for the people we are targeting. Only at this point, confident that this is a digital platform people really are going to love, do we scale it with paid media.
Brands and organizations are realizing they need to form lasting digital relationships with people. More than just serving up a microsite about their latest product, they need to start offering utility and innovative new services enabled by technology.
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By: Tyler Lessard VP Global Alliances and Developer Relations Research In Motion
Tyler Lessard is the Vice President of BlackBerry Global Alliances and Developer Relations at RIM. Since joining RIM in 2001, he has helped to build a community of thousands of wireless solution providers delivering custom applications and services for BlackBerry to large enterprises, government agencies, industry professionals, small businesses, and consumers.
sponsor
Mobile Super App Experiences: From Brand Extension to Engaging Customers

Super Apps Are All About Engagement
What happened to that new mobile app you released? Lots of people downloaded your app. You promoted it internally to your employees to show how youre embracing the next wave of social media and mobile technologies. You promoted it through custom marketing campaigns to boost download numbers. The questions are: How many of those users are still using that app? How are you tracking success? Did you change their relationship with you as a trusted brand? Companies often lose this one-time opportunity, but the next generation of personalized, always-on, deeply integrated, mobile Super Apps offer a different approach. Super Apps can help you forge stronger long-term relationships with your customers by delivering them the right information at the right time and by integrating seamlessly with the other applications that they already use every day. Success isnt measured by download numbers or impressionsits about long-term engagement and brand affinity. Super Apps can provide deep views into each customers personas, social graphs, personal interests, and purchasing habits, helping you reinvent the way you merchandise your products and build trust and loyalty with consumers.
Super Apps Stand Out

The best mobile apps become an everyday part of a users life. According to industry reports, most mobile apps are discarded or forgotten not long after download. No surprise there. Mobile device users often download dozens of apps per month until icons clutter the small screens or users find newer apps to meet their needs. If you lose their attention, that loss may be permanent. Trusted brand or not, you have to cut through the clutter and make your apps relevant and engaging to your users. By embracing Super App principles, you can design an app that wont get lost because users dont have to find the icon to access itits always one click away! Super Apps can become a natural extension of the existing core apps and notification systems already in use, fitting neatly into your users mobile lifestyles and daily habits. The BlackBerry application platformdesigned to embrace this modelhelps Super Apps rise above the competition and become the apps that users cant live without.
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Super Apps Go with the Flow
To build a relevant Super App, embrace the natural flow of how consumers use their smartphones. Most apps today operate in stand-alone fashion. A user needs a good reason to open the app and use it. In comparison, a Super App can take advantage of personalized notifications, event-based location services, and social media integration to become always-on and real-time in nature. Super Apps can also become a seamless extension to the core apps that people already usee-mail, calendar, phone, browser, camera, maps, and moreensuring your app is always one click away and contextually relevant. The app becomes part of the natural flow of activities as people use their smartphones. Adopt this mind-setbuilding apps that integrate closely with daily tasksand the power of Super Apps becomes apparent.
inbox, you can be sure that users will see them and take action. Due dates and important reminders can be added automatically to the users personal calendar and can include related information or links to enhanced content. Customer service contact information can be automatically added to the users address book as soon as the app is installed. A custom menu item added to the address book can enable one-click money transfers directly to any contacts. A retail store or ATM finder feature can use BlackBerry Maps to provide directions to the location. A default option in the BlackBerry Camera can be used to upload a photo of a check or banking statement to the users online account. Similarly, you can develop a Super App for BlackBerry that becomes a core part of the device experience and helps raise the level of user engagement, interactivity, and brand impressions. As marketplace competition grows and app publishers adapt to better support mobile platforms, apps will increasingly be designed to support these ideas.
Super Apps Leverage Context
Many types of apps can fit the Super App model, including games, content services, and companion products. As an example, imagine that your company offers a set of financial services products. Consumers gain online access to account information, money transfers, due dates, customer service information, and relevant news through a simple mobile app accessed from a dedicated icon on the smartphones home screen. Over time, users may tend to use this type of stand-alone app less often and may forget about it entirely. In comparison, a Super App for BlackBerry can contain the following features to become proactively engaging, ensuring the app remains relevant and valuable, building brand recognition: Personalized alerts can be delivered as custom, branded messages to the BlackBerry e-mail inbox. Users will identify these messages easily and can take action at any time. By integrating alerts into the
Super Apps for the BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet
With the BlackBerry PlayBook, many of these same philosophies will carry over to apps and content built for tablets. However, it is important to recognize that tablets deliver a different user experience that must be embraced. Smartphones excel at always-on connectivity and personal information management (PIM), making real-time notifications and integration with e-mail and PIM apps a natural fit for Super App experiences on smartphones. Tablets favor rich media consumption, touchscreen interactivity, and high-fidelity browsing experiences within the web browser and apps. Super Apps for BlackBerry PlayBook can differentiate themselves through rich-media content integration, immersive touch-screen experiences, and intuitive browsing models that
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bring an uncompromised experience to users whether they are interacting through custom apps or through the browser.
Super Apps Unlock Innovative Opportunities
Become a leader in the next generation of Super Apps for smartphones and tablets. Now is the time to become a leader in the mobile app spacewhether you are a consumer goods and services company, an advertising agency, or a mobile app developer. Research In Motion is committed to
growing the Super App market through investments in our BlackBerry products, app distribution channels, and partner programs. We saw over 2 million app downloads per day from BlackBerry App World by the end of 2010 with exponential growth continuing. We want to help our developers and partners be a part of that success and to differentiate themselves in a rapidly growing and competitive landscape.
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case study
CHALLENGE
Our mission was to create an interactive music video for Arcade Fires new single We Used To Wait. The idea was to create a personalized experience using only HTML5 technologies. There were a lot of individual challenges to bring this experience to life, especially related technology and making the final experience be as engaging and fluent as we wanted. But the most important aspect overall was being able to orchestrate the production of all elements, making sure that it all could come together as a cohesive final product in the end.
The Wilderness Downtown
Our mission was to create an interactive music video for Arcade Fires new single We Used To Wait. The idea was to create a personalized experience using only HTML5 technologies.
We basically went straight to prototyping, trying to find the right technology to match the ideas for the video. One key feature we knew we needed to create was the ability to tell the story across multiple browser windows. To get the degree of creative freedom we needed, we built a sequencing tool that enabled us to interactively create and manage the windows, much like you would edit video in an editing application.
Author: Nicole Muniz Producer, B-Reel Team: B-Reel
Nicole Muniz is a producer at B-Reel, NYC. She has worked on acclaimed productions such as Doritos Asylum 626, Perrier Mansion, and The Wilderness Downtown Arcade Fires music video.
SOLUTION
The film takes on a more personal approach by prompting users to input an address from their childhood, which in turn places them at the center of the films narrative. Using Google Maps and street view, we show them running through the streets of their old neighborhood.
REASEARCH/ACTIVITY/ INSIGHT
When we set out on this project, there was definitely a sense of stepping into unknown territory.
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With this and other elements in the video, we want to believe that weve nudged HTML5 as a storytelling platform a tiny bit forward.
IMPACT
The Wilderness Downtown received a lot of attention: when it was released it received close to a million visitors per day. The feedback has been very positive, especially from the music sphere and the technical community.
With this and other elements in the video, we want to believe that weve nudged HTML5 as a storytelling platform a tiny bit forward.
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case study
SoBe Reskin Yourself
SoBes scaly new plastic bottle needed a big introduction to the SXSW filmgeek and technerd scenebut how best to capture the attention of such a hip, easily distracted crowd? Between talks, parties, and updating blogs, the audience had little to no time for interacting with a brand.
Taking cues from the scaly new graphics wrapping SoBe bottles, we developed a campaign based on tattoos and self-branding. Called Reskin Yourself, it encouraged people to take pictures of themselves and apply digital tattoos. The technology used in Reskin Yourself utilizes a displacement map, which contours to the object in the camera, making a very realistic looking tattoo. The technology was researched and explored by the Firstborn development team, and then refined after realizing it could be used for a clientnot an uncommon event at Firstborn, where people are constantly tinkering and exploring new technology. Using this technology,
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we created two computer kiosks for SXSW and let the users go to town with a library of kooky tatoos. The application allowed the tattoos to automatically contour to the body part on which they were placed. Redness was also adjustable for the freshest looking tats possible. Pranks ensued. Finished photos could then be shared via Twitter, Facebook, e-mail and beyond, to the dismay of jealous friends not at SXSW. The SoBe tent was mobbed for six days by people hoping to get tattd up for an afternoon. Users created and shared 884 tattoos overall, Reskinning themselves and spreading the word across SXSWs
Author and Team Member: Anna Edwards, Associate Copywriter Firstborn Firstborn Team: Dave Synder, Associate Creative Director: Dofl Yun, Senior Developer Eric Decker, Senior Developer Francis Turmel, Director of Technology Marcus Schaefer, Designer Jackie Backer, Junior Producer Katie Fahrenthold, Junior Designer Anna Edwards, Associate Copywriter Mike Roushey, Tattoo Illustrator Brett Swanson, Sound Designer Crystinue Cho, Executive Producer
Author Bio: Anna Edwards got her Bachelors in Advertising at Boston University. She interned in Chicago, Paris, London, and New York before joining Firstborn in 2009 as a copywriter.
buzzy social media channels. Many users returned the next day with more friends. SoBe ruled the conversation at SXSW; thanks to the success, we released a more complex version of Reskin, Yourself for SoBe.com. Now, people across the Internet can upload photos, Reskin, and share. Never underestimate the power of tinkering with technology, and a well-placed digital tattoo. http://focus.firstbornmultimedia.com/?sobe_reskin
Using this technology, we created two computer kiosks for SXSW and let the users go to town with a library of kooky tatoos.
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case study
DonQ Rum
Odopods goal for the 2010 relaunch of DonQ.com was to direct the massive flood of visitors from our extremely successful branded content site, LadyData, to the adjacent brand and product destination. The expressed intention was to capture traffic and raise the awareness for DonQs line of rums in the US.
CHALLENGE
Our goal for the 2010 relaunch of DonQ.com was to direct the massive flood of visitors from our extremely successful branded content site, LadyData, to the adjacent brand and product destination. The expressed intention was to capture traffic and raise the awareness for DonQs line of rums in the US. To do this we needed to fortify the companys brand site with rich and useful content, as well as develop a robust and sustainable platform for ongoing maturation. Working with our agency partners, Undercurrent, Odopod developed a content
strategy and established a plan for the technological implementation. The core of the strategy was to develop a captivating user experience while leveraging technologies that accommodated the widest swath of modern web browsers. This included considering mobile devices, such as the iPad and iPhonea high growth category, exceptionally popular among DonQs target audience.
Author: Guthrie Dolin DMO Section Editor Principal, Director of Strategy Odopod Team: Odopod/Undercurrent
Rapid prototyping during the design phase of the project was critical to the sites success. By building UI experiments early and iterating them
Guthrie Dolin (@gee3) is a seasoned creative executive, an entrepreneur, and a connector of dots. He has founded two award-winning agencies and partnered to launch numerous enterprises. Currently, Guthrie is a Principal and Director of Strategy at Odopod, a full-service digital agency that develops innovative experiences for top consumer brands.
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repeatedly, we quickly saw which ideas worked and which did not. With designers and developers collaborating in this way, we realized that web standards could be used to deliver the desired experience. Prototyping gave us confidence in our ability to create a lightweight but thoroughly interactive story and helped build trust between the client and our team.
Modern web font embedding techniques provide a rich editorial typographic style. Javascript and jQuery are used to provide a rich and responsive feel for interactions including various carousels and the recipe filter. SVG (via the raphael.js library) is used for vectorbased graphics on the site. For example, SVG is used to create and animate the glow behind the
The core of the strategy was to develop a captivating user experience while leveraging technologies that accommodated the widest swath of modern web browsers.
rum bottles. Using SVG provided consistent visual elements across browsers without the need to export images for every permutation. It also simplified the process of modifying the design and scripting animations.
IMPACT
The results have surpassed the expectations of the client and those of our team. After launching the new DonQ.com, we all but eliminated bounce rates. This is primarily due to the compelling content as well as the innovative approach we employed with the required age gate. Additionally, weve seen nearly 14x increase in time-on-site for targeted searchesdemonstrating that the sites content is both relevant and engaging. Whats more, the Like buttons included throughout the product section have almost doubled visits to Facebook and provide visible evidence of brand consideration and intent to purchase.
SOLUTION
The sites front-end employs a cocktail of contemporary open web technologies (HTML, CSS, Javascript, SVG) and libraries (jQuery, raphael.js) to provide a rich, interactive experience that works in modern browsers without additional plug-ins.
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Innovation at the intersection of marketing and technology. From our 2011 DMO Survey, we learned that marketers and agencies agree that innovative brands must be fearless in their use of new social marketing platforms. Read through the next few pages to learn how to create a culture of innovation and embrace failure, diversity, and new technologiesfrom colleagues, corporations, and developing countries.
by Angele Beausoleil, DMO Editor-in-Chief and DMO Section Editor; VP Strategy and Innovation, Dare
Innovate or Perish by Angele Beausoleil, DMO Editor-in-Chief and DMO Section Editor; VP Strategy and Innovation, Dare China: An Exploration of Digital Diversity by Mark St. Andrew, Editor, Cream Rich Visualization in a Data-Heavy World by Alejandro Gomez, President, Zemoga Client of the Future: In Six Easy Lessons by Andre Matarazzo, CCO, Gringo Adopting the Kaizen Approach to Marketing by Stephen Foxworthy, Strategy Director, Reactive Innovation from the Inside Out by Dave Snyder, Associate Creative Director, Firstborn Case Study: Shrek 4 Happy Meal by Glenn Bakie, Director, Client Services, Fuel Industries Case Study: The Pepsi Refresh Project by Kate Watts, Group Engagement Director, HUGE SoDA Chat with Marc Gob, President, Emotional Branding LLC
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By: Angele Beausoleil DMO Editor-in-Chief VP Strategy and Innovation Dare
Angele Beausoleil is VP of Strategy and Innovation at Dare Vancouver. A tradigital marketer, Angele lectures on innovative and integrated marketing throughout the USA and Canada.
opinion
Innovate or Perish
Todays CMOs face increased pressure to redefine how their companies interact and engage with their consumers in order to survive. Yet, most are not taking advantage of the changes in consumer behavior and the possibilities offered by new technology to improve their product, retain employees, and manage the bottom line. So how can marketers and their agencies foster innovation? Here are a few suggestions from a digital renaissance woman:
1. New Process
For marketing executives, it should be about incorporating a new management process, one that is innovation-driven. Idris Mootee best describes a form of innovation management as, the economic implementation and exploitation of new ideas and discoveries, and the implementation of an innovation culture in an organization, to promote and make possible the development of new ideas and business opportunities. It consists of innovation strategy, culture, idea management and commercialization risk management. Simply put, its about building a structure for innovative thinking coupled with action and surrounding yourself with smart and creative types who offer the blend of business and design thinking.
2. Rethink the Org Chart

For agencies, its about design-driven innovation. Designing the right team structures that will drive fresh thinking. The cross-functional teams of the dotcom era need to evolve further and represent diversity not only in role, but in gender, age, race, and culture. The old paradigm of agency rockstars (copywriter and art director combo) needs to add a creative technologist and/or social scientist to the mix. If innovation is about re-invention, how can one innovate using the same conventional teams or
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methods? For example, look at your creative brief, it was developed 20 years agoblow it up and start again. Considering CMOs now view strategy and innovation as a top factor in hiring a marketing agency, it would be wise for agencies to pay attention.
4. Risk Budgeting
Its funny the level of comfort one has in failure when there is a budget attributed to it. Take 5% of your entire marketing budget and apply it to innovation planning. Innovation planning is key, as it prepares you for the unexpected or ensures a budget is available when you need it. Consider the risks associated with inaction.
3. Find Inspiration through Failure

Take a lesson from farmersthey learn to fail, succeed, and then fail again. Sometimes by their own mistakes; sometimes its out of their control. They learn to deal with failure like the death of animals, crops that didnt grow, or bugs eating their prized peaches. They experiment a lot, trying to figure out why it happened and think about solutions quickly. And most of the time, the experiments are smalllike putting a fence around the base of the apple tree, digging a ditch around a strawberry patch, or converting unsold corn into cow feed. Learn to fail courageously and how to spin it, as Thomas Edison once said, I have not failed. Ive just found ten thousand ways that wont work.
5. Agents 3.0
Move over change agents, what we need now are innovation agents. They possess a high IQ (imagination quotient), wake up with a different idea every day, act as a catalyst for discussion, and truly think and look at the world differently than you. Provide the right environment, and they will sprout.
So how innovative is your company? Answer these questions: How diverse are your executive, management, and functional teams? Does your culture embrace scientific processes: test, refine, and test again? Do you have a room or backup drive full of previously failed products?
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By: Mark St. Andrew Editor Cream
Mark St. Andrew is the Editor and Curator of Cream (www.creamglobal. com), an online marketing resource that houses the best examples of marcomms innovation across different media channels around the world.
opinion

China is without doubt regarded as one of the most exciting economies of the moment, but is there really a culture of digital innovation behind the great firewall? Does size of a market translate directly to strength of innovation? Or should we be looking to other markets for digital thought leadership?
The quick answers to those questions, in order, are sometimes, not really, and without doubt. When trying to examine the Chinese media landscape in detail, there are so many unusual local factors to be considered that it can become difficult to see the wood for the trees. Omnipresent censorship, infrastructure, and cultural Internet usage habits make the Chinese media landscape a tricky place to navigate. Using the recent Spikes Asia awards as a benchmark, China turned in a frankly underwhelming show, securing no Grand Prix awards and barely a handful of Gold Spikes. Size of market obviously doesnt translate to greater innovative thinking, for all the excitement about China, theyve clearly got a lot left to prove before theyre seen as leading on quality of output as well as price. The issue of creativity, or lack thereof, in China also indicates that international brands that operate in large markets could be reluctant to leave their comfort zone, which only serves to generate average creative work. Chinas lack of creative thinking is thrown into sharp relief by the success of Hong Kong. Although technically part of China, the special administrative territory obviously fosters a greater creative talent, scoring an impressive nine Gold Spikes. Because of its history, Hong Kong could be regarded as a more mature media environment, with a demanding media-saturated audience. Traditional style ads no longer cut it, and agencies and creative shops have to continually innovate to break through the clutter.
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The outstanding campaign from Hong Kongs Metro newspaper, which invited readers to take part in a Future Daily edition of the title, was an textbook example of how print media can use digital platforms to inspire its readers. But if there is a critical mass of creativity, above which an otherwise productive market actually seems to inhibit the process, the question still remains regarding innovation culture. Can a market be culturally innovative, or does it depend solely on where the talent pool lives? In terms of talent pools, two of the most interesting locations of Europe seen to benefit from this are Scandinavia, particularly Sweden, and the Benelux countries of Belgium and the Netherlands. The Netherlands benefits from its location as commercial and technological hub for Europe. Amsterdam houses the largest Internet server in the world, and the city has one of the best high speed fiber optic cable infrastructures in the world, making it a natural home for technologists and those playing in the digital space. Similarly, Sweden has a strong technology heritage thanks to its experience in the mobile technology market. Swedes are incredibly strong team players and that fosters strong creativity. Its common for Swedish companies to be made of very tight teams with key roles held by people at the top of their field. There is also a strong culture of collaboration and respect amongst Swedish
agencies, which in any other market would regard each other as fierce competitors. McDonalds Dreaming in Mono mini-series (from Swedens Perfect Fools) and the Legend of Akhtamar film for Ararat cognac (masterminded by Amsterdam Worldwide) are both examples of strong digital strategies with excellent creative work at the core. So China has yet to deliver on its creative potential before the international media community looks beyond the numbers and starts being impressed by the creative output. The old adage of quality versus quantity was never truer than when discussing Chinese creativity. The digital space evolves at such a pace, that its centers of excellence shift to reflect the changing developments in technology, and the changing applications of that technology by the industry.
The digital space evolves at such a pace that its centers of excellence shift to reflect the changing developments in technology, and the changing applications of that technology by the industry.
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By: Alejandro Gomez President Zemoga
An award-winning designer and developer of interactive solutions, Alejandro Gomez is the co-founder of Zemoga and a recognized industry leader in the fields of user-centric design and technology solutions.
opinion

As modern data collection and hardware technologies evolve to gather, process, and store a mind-bogglingly immense amount of data, it becomes increasingly challenging for humans to fully analyze and comprehend this information. To create consumable, actionable information, innovative companies from around the world are developing a class of advanced data visualization technologies. They are delivering intuitive, graphical representations from raw data and exploring never-before-seen phenomena that will aid human discovery and understanding.
An emerging class of interactive visualization applications and techniques are converging art and science to create stunningand incredibly usefulvisualizations of complex information. These powerful visual analytics solutions enable a more thorough understanding and provide actionable insights into previously overwhelming data sets. Leading this evolving marketplace, Barcelona-based Bestiario has dedicated its work to the creation of spaces for the collection presentation of knowledge. Working based on the mantra of making the complex comprehensible, the company creates interactive information spaces in a powerful framework based on graph theory, advanced topological algorithms, and modeling and geographic representations that enable insightful analysis of a wide range of abundant data sources. Bestiario partnered with Zemoga to design the Hoorray Mozaic, an online photo collection that catalogs users uploaded photographs based on the relationships of each image. Using the metadata from each photo, including name and event tagging, dates, times, album names, etc., the site creates a spatial relationship view of all the
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images, rather than a scroll-through matrix. Similar to the concept behind six degrees of separation or the human web, the graphical presentation allows users to see and better understand the relationships between their friends, events, and other correlations based on the quantitative metadata associated with each image. This groundbreaking approach to data visualization by association could be applied in other social spaces as well, as a visual comparison of trending topics on Twitter or relational visualization of Facebook status updates, which could have tremendous potential for marketers and others who study consumer behavior. In another project that promises to revolutionize urban public transportation, Zemoga partnered with Field Office of Clemson, SC to develop the Bicing community bicycle program platform in Barcelona. The Bicing program itself is a shared bicycle rental program that allows users to pick up and return bikes at various stations positioned around the city to provide convenient and affordable climate-friendly transportation.
are available, and even watch those in use as they travel on their journey. Some are even outfitted with a webcam, allowing Bicing.com visitors to see what the rider sees along their path.
The interface is not only fun and informational for Bicing users, but it also has tremendous potential for the future of traffic analysis. By tracking each vehicle, patterns in movement and usage begin to emerge that can allow city planners and transportation officials to analyze traffic patterns and behaviors beyond tedious and less-than-insightful number crunching. The same concept could be easily applied to municipal bus routes, rental cars, and virtually any other form of transportation. This kind of cutting-edge data visualizationbeyond traditional quantitative analysisis becoming a tremendously powerful tool in the discovery of all types of knowledge. The proliferation of mobile devices puts the power of knowing and sharing where we are, what were seeing, and what were thinking right in the palm of our hands. In truth, we as a mobile society are generating massive amounts of datadata that can be used to better understand the world around us and ourselves as human beings.
To make the program more appealing, convenient, and enticing for users, Field Office and Zemoga designed the Bicing.com platform to provide real-time availability and location data overlaid on a city map. The Zemoga-designed interface leverages the data from each bike to display each vehicle as a red dot on the Barcelona street map. With each bike equipped with a GPS sensor device, visitors to the site can see a graphical snapshot of where bikes
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By: Andre Matarazzo CCO Gringo
Andre Matarazzo had worked in agencies in Brazil, Canada, Holland, Sweden, and Japan before starting his own in So Paulo in 2006. Gringo is a strategic agency that is online-centric but media-agnostic.
opinion

Much has been talked and written about regarding how agencies are preparing to take on challenges that brands are facing and will face in the near future such as message and target superfragmentation shorter attention span, integration of online and offline capabilities to create unified communication structures, extension of agencys offerings to cover new formats, and emerging technologies and the like. Yet, little has been written or talked about with regard to how clients should brace themselves for that shift.
It is somehow assumed that if a creative and strategic agency brings a completely new way of thinking into the companys structure, all will magically fall into place and the brand will be ready to roll into a new level of communication effectiveness. But this unfortunately is not quite sofor it takes two to tango. Clients should put some hard thought into how they are internally structured and how they inspire their staff to take on the challenges in partnership with forward-thinking agencies. The fear of risk taking and the tendency to fall back into a complacent position of letting agencies struggle to fit a square peg into a round hole by themselves will inevitably yield more of the same.
What Should the Client of the Future Bear in Mind Today?

Understand its not about your brand story, its about peoples stories. Communication is much more powerful when it allows people to take something away from your communicationjust a little somethingand create some fantastic stories of their own with it. That is about planting a seed.
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One misunderstanding is that a 30-second TV ad is content that allows for easy multiplication. Even if its a truly eye-blasting spectacle, it will be sent around by perhaps thousands of people, but it wont allow for the social capital we are looking for. What does sending a great video to your friends say about you? It says that you also saw some interesting content online. In 30 minutes you will see more great content online. Its irrelevant. On the other hand, lets assume brand X creates a nifty and simple test that figures out how old you truly are, based on how well youve cared for yourself (or not!) in the last few years. The content is nothing spectacular if you just let it sit, but as soon as users interact and make it personal, the brand will offer people a simple new truth about themselves that really defines who they are. And so they spread it around, since the branded content now has added extra personal value, and that will generate the highest form of engagement and value.
proud! And they will poke each others eyes for getting a larger share of love from their mothers heart. You will not get extremely bright kids to follow each others lead. They will simply make it all seem integrated in the most makeshift way to make you, the mom, happy! That will be your loss.
We are starting to use our technology know-how to drive innovation to products and create new services that broaden the opportunities for connection and deeper recurring engagement models.
Lesson 2
Get all agencies together in a room, brief them, and allow them all to put forth their best ideas. Yes, let all of them stand on equal ground. If you always get the lead offline agency to create the communication strategy and structure, you will have lost the opportunity to find THE new opportunity in digital, in POS, in packaging, in service, or in any other segment that can possibly represent the change your brand is looking for. Let the best idea, not the largest agency, take center stage. Its not about changing perceptions, its about changing engagement. We usually operate in the realm of changing brand perception through communication, and thats part of the story. But nowadays, agencies are starting to ask deeper questions and putting their creative arsenal and know-how of technology to good use. We are starting to use our technology know-how to drive innovation to products and create new services that broaden the opportunities for connection and deeper recurring engagement models. That relates to anything from the oh-so-talked-about Nike Plus case
Lesson 1
Create an environment that allows people to tell their own stories. Your brand story is secondary and should be worked into theirs. Its not about digital, its about communication. Well, who even talks about digital these days? Everyone, unfortunately. Clients are eager to jump on the integration bandwagon, and in the process, try to find agencies that can deliver in every single specialty field. When they realize it is an almost impossible task, they bring in a bunch of specialty agencies and assume they should just get along and create magic together. And why not? They are all just so good at their stuffthey must be able to get together and just integrate! Well, it doesnt work quite like that. Why? Because the best agency creatives are like chefs in the kitchen. Too many chefs equal disaster. They are all like needy kids who want to play and make mommy
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study to the more nimble and nifty application users may download to their mobile phones or social profiles.
Lesson 3
Give agencies space to explore, to help you build better products, to help you create new and much needed services, more intelligent operational structures, facilitate user interaction through other channels. This realm is not occupied by the traditional agencies as they do not dare to enter because they did not dominate the technology that could potentially be game changing. These ideas are now starting to be put forth by the new agencies, but they are harder to push through the approval chain for they go beyond the marketing departments domain. Try to see the larger operational picture, and ask your agency to see the brand as a living organism that is not only in possession of a communication mouth. Its not about the big idea, its about the little ideas. Yes, its not about one big idea that gets pushed and adapted and elevated to fit different points of contact. We are beyond the age where our ploy was to make clients understand that ideas must assume a totally different format to work best in different channels. Now we face a different challenge. Try to think of digital communication as a pinball game. Take advantage of the game that launches several balls onto the board while keeping them in play. Its fastpaced, difficult, and you have many variables to watch out for. Some balls will go straight into the gutter, others will live for a while and then disappear, and a few lucky ones will allow you to play the game for long time giving you great joy and satisfaction.
field of possibilities, and you should set aside a fraction of your budget, if nothing else, to high-risk enterprises, such as emerging technologies, wild ideas, things that are difficult to operationalize, and your teams passionate visionsAllow for wild dreams to come true!
Its not about motivation, its about participation. So you want your brand to motivate millions, to what? Be better people? Help change the environment? Create a new social order? Finally be an integral part of culture? And you want to use the magical ingredientsocial networksto make that happen? Well, youre in for a bumpy ride. The fact is that high levels of motivation are achieved through deeper experiences. Consider how you may stop smoking only after you or someone in your family has suffered serious smoking-related health problems. Maybe that will motivate you to change your behavior. You may click on Facebooks Like button when you bump into an important message for saving our planets water, brought directly to you by a friend who did the same. But that will most likely not be motivational enough for you to really change your habits.
Lesson 4
Have the courage to dare, to hit and miss, to launch several little ideas onto the board and see which ones come to fruition beautifully. We are playing in an open
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Not to worry, that should not be the purpose of messages that move around and across networks. The medium excels at increasing participation by lessening the degree of motivation that participation requires. Clicking a button? Passing on a message? Sure, millions can do itand therein lies its strength.
Lesson 6
Try to instill passion and fearlessness in your team, especially the communications team that work directly with agencies. Consider how many great ideas have been pushed aside particularly because they represented risk to the everyday junior marketing manager. The math is simple: if you dare and fail, you put your career on the line in a corporate world that privileges well-scripted and calculated moves. If you dare and succeed, you get a pat on the back and maybe youre eligible for a small bonus. Create a culture that awards calculated risks that foster innovation. You may have to account for a good degree of trial and error, but eventually you will leap far ahead.
Lesson 5
Ask for less. Instead of urging consumers to grab their webcams and their mothers and friends and their dogs and create a funny video, or get them to feel inspired to write a short story that will win them a prize, ask for less. Ask for support in the shape of a click, a tweet, an I like this, and you may see participation soaring. The golden rule of thumb is to give a lot and ask for very little in return. Its not about staying ahead, its about leaping ahead. Everyone wants to leap ahead. We know the competition is biting on our ankles, and we need to start sprinting. But then most clients get weighted down by their own systems. Risk aversion is a corporations sure path to spending more money than is necessary on actions that do not generate much value and drive brands to near oblivion. In our competitive market, doing good work is not good enough. Walking fast will inevitably place you in last position in the race where many are running.
Conclusion: Are You Ready to Be a Client of the Future?

Creating movements that change the way brands touch peoples lives is no easy task. Clients must build solid partnerships with one or several agencies it is no longer what we encountered from the 50s through the 90s. Today we are literally on the same boat, fighting the same battles, trying to see the larger picture, and finding creative ways to do everything better at a lower cost. Do allow for true partnership, and be part of re-inventing our industry and our world.
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By: Stephen Foxworthy Strategy Director Reactive
Stephen Foxworthy is Strategy Director at Reactive. Stephen has over 15 years of experience in digital, with a focus on high performance online retail, customer experience management and multichannel marketing.
opinion
Adopting the Kaizen Approach to Marketing

Now that tracking and attributing online campaign activity directly to customer action has become simpler and easier thanks to sophisticated software, why do marketers still insist on fixed campaign budgets and media spend?
Kaizen Budgets: Why Business Needs to Adopt a Continuous Improvement Approach to Funding Marketing
The Japanese word kaizen, meaning improvement or change for the better, has been adopted by business to describe the process of continuous improvement as a business strategy since the 1950s. From manufacturing and engineering to software development and healthcare, the kaizen approach to business has been a proven formula for success by empowering employees to refine and improve processes and services with a focus on better performance. Its a concept that works extremely well for online businesses, such as e-commerce retail, where the continuous analysis of customer behavior and user experience can yield dramatic increases in onsite conversion; hence, revenue when applied in a systematic way. Now that tracking and attributing online campaign activity directly to customer action has become simpler and easier thanks to sophisticated software, why do marketers still insist on fixed campaign budgets and media spend? As an agency working with high profile brands and big budget campaigns, were often frustrated that production budgets, campaign activity, and media are all scheduled and paid from a fixed budget pool, with no allowance for the very dynamic nature of digital media.
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A fixed budget almost guarantees that tactical opportunities are missed as part of a fast-moving digital campaign. Its time to adopt a kaizen approach to marketing!
Share of Revenue Re-investment

Another successful performance-based budgeting trend is to re-invest a proportion of overall revenue into marketing effort. While not as dynamic in the short term as the CPA model, this approach ensures that all stakeholders in the marketing effort are aligned around generating revenue and driving sales, safe in the knowledge that increased performance and effort will result in an increased investmentthis results in a proactive approach to solving marketing problems and a drive to find new opportunities for growth.
How Can You Adopt Kaizen Marketing Budgets?

There are a number of approaches to kaizen budgeting that can improve marketing performance. These approaches include increasingly popular kaizen techniques, such as dynamic cost-per-acquisition budgeting and share-of-revenue re-investment.
Cost-per-Acquisition Budgeting
One of the oldest ways of allocating a marketing budget is on a cost-per-acquisition (CPA) or cost-per-sale basis. Theres nothing new about forecasting how much youre going to spend on advertising based on your sales volumes and revenue. What is new is the pace at which marketers can now refine budget cycles. For anyone involved in pay-per-click search or social advertising, such as Google AdWords or Facebook Ads, the tactical opportunities to respond to changing market conditions are now directly measurable and can be responded to in near-real time. With the ability to directly measure and attribute conversion to these channels, theres now no need to preset a marketing budget, as spend can be directly proportional to the return and adjusted daily or hourly to ensure it remains efficient. Why cap your monthly budget, if it continues to generate more money than it costs?
From manufacturing and engineering to software development and healthcare, the kaizen approach to business has been a proven formula for success by empowering employees to refine and improve processes and services with a focus on better performance.
Banzai, Kaizen Marketing Budgets!
With a wealth of new measurement and tracking solutions at the disposal of marketers, the time has come to do away with restrictive capped budgets and to migrate to much more dynamic approaches that allow for continuous optimization, as well as tactical flexibility. This requires not just an open mind, but an open wallet, marketers be brave!
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By: Dave Snyder Associate Creative Director Firstborn
Dave is passionate about progressive design and technology, and has worked in digital his entire career. Currently, Dave is heading up the creative team on SoBe, along with many Wrigley trademarked brands.
opinion
Innovation from the Inside Out

You cant be an expert at something youve never tried. This is especially true when it comes to emerging technologies. Understanding how something works isnt a concept that should remain siloed inside the tech department. Its something that everyone in an organizationplanners, technologists, producers, and creativesshould be tuned into.
The Best Way to Innovate Is to Hire an Innovative Agency
You cant be an expert at something youve never tried. So it makes sense that an agency cant produce innovative work without first taking time to experiment. This is especially true when it comes to emerging technologies. Understanding how something works isnt a concept that should remain siloed inside the tech department. Its something that everyone in an organizationplanners, technologists, producers, and creativesshould be tuned into. Its paramount, unless you enjoy riding the perpetual hype machine that is buzz marketing. Experimenting with new technologies allows an agency to understand what ideas are worth exploring for clients, where the industry as a whole is heading, and how a project gets builtall before any brainstorming starts. Clients come to agencies for solid advice as much as they do for the ability to create and code. Agencies serve the clients needs, not the aforementioned hype machine. But specifically, what are some of the benefits to R&D?
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The obvious benefit for developers is familiarity with a new system, device, or language: no surprise here. Slightly less obvious, however, is how it impacts project timelines. Familiarity with new tools or concepts helps speed the development process and the ideation phase, allowing a team the ability to cut to the chase and ask: Is this really a good idea to begin with? Is it feasible? or even, Is it worth it? Its a pragmatic approach applied to the concept phase that streamlines production time and, therefore, costs. The second most obvious benefit to R&D is how prototyping visualizes complex ideas, allowing the rest of the team to go, You know whatI could use that for a project Im working on for a client. This type of internal tinkering led to our SoBe ReSkin kiosk at South by Southwest. According to our Senior Developer, Eric Decker, playing around with new technology and developing an idea from that new technology leads to a more natural user experience.
something one of our senior developers, Dofl Yun had been working on. So when the client asked, Can we do that without affecting the product packing? We could proudly say, Yes, and heres how. Dofl notes that innovation is felt at every level. Not only does it help solve technology problems, but it often inspires and awes the end consumer too. If we had not experimented internally, we probably wouldnt have been able to execute that solution.
Experimenting with new technologies allows an agency to understand what ideas are worth exploring for clients, where the industry as a whole is heading, and how a project gets builtall before any brainstorming starts.
The most beneficial part of internal innovation is the same thing that is most often overlooked. Internal innovation and R&D boosts team morale and fosters camaraderie. Developers have an innate desire to create new things. Its that drive to answer questions like, Can this be done? with Yes, it can. Ive already been doing it. You dont get that level of passion without a unified team. When in-the-lab innovations leave the lab and solve real-life brand problems, it fuels the internal innovation engine. Its a cycle thats habitual and moves our company forward.
When an idea is spawned from a new technology, there is a connection between idea and implementation. These new-tech-driven projects are what make for great user experiences, and thus, great products for the client. Perhaps the greatest benefit of innovating internally is the ability to solve problems creatively with tech solutions. For example, object recognition is
So innovation is great. How do we encourage it with our agency? Talk to them. Its a no-brainer. Share your overall goals in both digital and traditional. Digital agencies of today are capable of much more than a generic banner ad. Theyre dynamic shops with many different mediums and technologies at their disposal. Telling your agency
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you want to experiment with new technology, and stretch whats been done means theyll have to innovate. In the same vein, dont shoot down wishes and dreams internally. Some things seem impossible technologically, but your ideal idea may be possible. If its not, something similar that obtains the same benefits probably is.
However, by far the easiest way to get your agency to innovate is to get an agency thats innovative by natureone that does it without direction. The most innovative agencies do it because its who they are, not because theyre told to. So let them tinker. Encourage it. Just make sure to pay attention to what theyre discovering. The tinkering will pay for itself, I promise.
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case study
CHALLENGE
Develop a Happy Meal for the European market around Shrek, one of the most powerful family entertainment brands in the world, and make it about the family experience.
Shrek 4 Happy Meal
Develop a Happy Meal for the European market around Shrek, one of the most powerful family entertainment brands in the world.
board game mechanics that, in keeping with the films plot, brought two disparate universes to light: Shreks alternate reality and his real life. The object is ultimately the same as Shreks within the filmto undo what the sneaky villain Rumpel has done. By traveling down the cobblestone paths, exploring the rich and immersive areas, and engaging with the characters via mini-games, consumers perform tasks, answer trivia questions, and avoid Rumpels requests in order to turn each area back to its original state. In itself, the experience was a vast and entertaining interpretation of Shreks world and the film, leveraging the Happy Meal character Happy, as well as a distinct visual style that was McDonalds-ownable. But the true innovation was in creating a family experience. Our objective
Author: Glenn Bakie Director, Client Services Fuel Industries Team: Fuel Industries
McDonalds challenged Fuel with creating a version of the Shrek franchise that was true to the property, but distinguishable as unique to McDonalds. The creative team accomplished this by developing a unique style for the Happy Meal brand within an experience that enabled family moments and collaborative play.
Glenn Bakie is the Director of Client Services at Fuel Industries. When hes not appearing on the covers of local magazines, hes managing clients, such as Microsoft and McDonalds, and keeping a team of digital cowboys in check with his delightful sense of humor.
SOLUTION
We developed an online adventure in 37 languages using traditional
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was to bring families together, and by encouraging multiplayer experiences, we did just that.
IMPACT
The game was incredibly successful in its own right, with an average site visit of more than 16 minutes across all 41 European markets. But the real delight was seeing the incredible use of family play. More than 30% of engagements were multiplayermeaning that not only was one person engaged on the site, but two, three, and many times, even four people were working together to accomplish Shreks goals.
The true innovation was in creating a family experience. Our objective was to bring families together, and by encouraging multiplayer experiences, we did just that.
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case study
CHALLENGE
In October 2009, Pepsi approached HUGE in search of a partner for a history-making campaign. For the first time in 23 years, Pepsi decided to redirect its annual $20 million Super Bowl budget into an ambitious campaign called the Pepsi Refresh Project that would empower people and organizations with great ideas in communities across the country. HUGE needed to deliver a new breed of marketing platform that would not only inspire people to take action, but give them the tangible tools they needed to do so, making Pepsi both the motivator and the enabler.
The Pepsi Refresh Project
For the first time in 23 years, Pepsi decided to redirect its annual $20 million Super Bowl budget into an ambitious campaign called the Pepsi Refresh Project that would empower people and organizations with great ideas in communities across the country.
Pepsi and HUGE recognized that a new movement was taking hold of the country, not based on geography, ethnicity, or other segregations, but rather, born of a collective optimism. Studies with the Pepsi Optimism Project found that 94% of Americans agree that optimism is essential in creating new ideas to positively impact the world, and a full 66% believe that the best ideas are more likely to come from ordinary people than public figures. These figures indicate a new momentum for Pepsi to engage with. But a standalone website that people visit once wouldnt be enough to fulfill its benchmarks for customer loyalty, acquisition, and engagement. Pepsi would have to go further.
Author and Team Member: Kate Watts Group Engagement Director, HUGE HUGE Team: Gene Liebel, Partner, User Experience David Skokna, Partner, Executive Creative Director Sasha Kirovski, Partner, Executive Director, Technology Joe Stewart, Creative Director Felipe Memoria, Design Director Ross Morisson, Copy Director Liang Zhang , Art Director Ryan Frank, Art Director Ana Breton, Senior Project Manager Tessa Barrera, Social Media Strategist Rafael Mumme, Senior Web Developer Lukas Mairl, Senior Web Developer
Kate Watts, Group Engagement Director, leads strategy and execution across some of HUGEs largest initiatives, including the Pepsi Refresh Project, NBC Universals iVillage.com and History.com.
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SOLUTION
HUGE laid out a plan for a fully integrated digital initiative that would build on the Refresh Everything program that Pepsi launched in 2009. This new platform allowed the average person an opportunity to submit a worthy cause for grant funding, ranging from $5,000 to $250,000. Visitors can vote up to 10 times a day on the 1,000 ideas in the running, culminating in 32 grant awardees monthly. HUGE also developed a mobile platform and an overarching social media solution to further promote sharing and participation. The entire campaign syncs with offline efforts such as TV, print, outdoor, college programs, and retail display.
IMPACT
The programs success, visibility, and popularity has far exceeded both client and industry expectations. To date, the project has attracted more than 2.8 billion earned media impressions, 4 million site registrations, and over 54 million votes. A recent study from Forbes and the Reputation Institute found that Pepsi jumped to the No. 5 spot from No. 16 among the countrys most reputable brands. The Pepsi Refresh Project is now a global marketing platform for one of Americas most trusted brands, with plans to expand into Europe, Asia, and Latin America in 2011.
Pepsi and HUGE recognized that a new movement was taking hold of the country, not based on geography, ethnicity, or other segregations, but rather, born of a collective optimism.
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Interview
with Marc Gob
SoDA chats with Marc Gob on Brand Innovation and Sao Paulos Transformation
Angele: Can you comment on the project you are currently focused on?
Angele Beausoleil VP Strategy and Innovation Dare Marc Gob President Emotional Branding LLC
Marc: I am working on a multilayered project with a documentary film at its core that explores brands and place making through the lens of visual pollution. The essence of the story is about The Year Advertising Came Crashing Down and how an audacious So Paulo mayor, Gilberto Kassab, decided to ban all forms of outdoor advertising and force an unprecedented level of imagination from marketers, advertisers, and designers in their effort to respond. So Paulos story is truly about courage in the face of transformation. (The film will be screened at the Toronto International Film Festival in July 2011 with a full theatrical release in Fall 2011.) Angele: How did So Paulo come to your attention? Marc: Considering the fact that a total of 100 cities across the globe account for 70% of the world economies and that by 2015 70% of the world population will be living in urban centers, completely fascinates me. I had been following the news stories of the mayor of So Paulo and how he was forced by his citizens to fix the pollution problems. So he took a holistic look and identified all sources of polutionair, noise, and visualand decided he had to answer to his citizens, remove all sources of pollution, and make the city more prosperous. The visual pollution was essentially brands upstaging each other to the point of emotional cacophonous impact. Angele: On the creative and political process? Marc: The mayor had to prove his leadership and had identified that brands were not having a positive effect on the city. Thus, he set out to test a small neighborhood, and he banned all advertising and forced brands to move their experiences inside. Thus, advertising executives and CMOs were forced to re-invent their brands.
Designer, photographer, filmmaker, respected author and sought-after public speaker Marc Gob focuses on connecting brands emotionally with people in a positive way. As President of Emotional Branding LLC, an experimental think tank, Marc and his daughter Gwenaelle Gob, Creative Director, offer insight into the trends that move consumers.
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Angele: How does innovation, culture, and courage play a role? Marc: Brands were not currently embracing new opportunities to engage with their consumers culturally and did not take responsibility in creating ugliness in the citys outdoor environment. The mayor had to be brave to face the brands and deal with their visual pollution in terms of permanent media (such as exterior walls, digital screens, billboards on buildings, etc.), and he simply stated that somethings gotta change.
The hard questions around advertising still had to be asked: Who owns our public space? Who owns my view? Who owns the quality of my environment?
The mayor has empowered the creative community of So Paulo to bring green to life through the use of emotion, sensorial experiences, and bold expressive design excellence throughout the city. This creative community is comprised of artists, architects, designers, and even civic engineers. Its inspiring to see the efforts in So Paulo because it calls attention to the need for exploring alternative modes of communicating green, shares Anneliza Humlen, president of the Emotional Branding Alliance. The hard questions around advertising still had to be asked: Who owns our public space? Who owns my view? Who owns the quality of my environment? Brands need to respond on how they could create a positive So Paulo experience. To see how they responded, you will have to see the film.
Angele: What is your motivation to share this story? Marc: I have a deep passion for innovation and consumer understanding into all the hidden corners of the branding process, and I produce documentary films, books, and blog articles on the emotional events that impact brands and consumers. So Paulo was my first stop: next New York. To follow our journey, please visit http://emotionalbrandingalliance.com/ ...and leave a comment.
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closing
Digital Manifest Destiny The Time for Building a New Marketing Infrastructure Is Here.
By: Chad Ciesil DMO Chairperson, SoDA Board of Directors; CEO, Gravity Federation
digital manifest destiny (n): consumption of everything is digitally served, connected, integrated, recorded and measured publicly or privately: TV, magazines, newspapers, billboards, photos, videos, books, music, purchases, opinions, observations, friends, relationships, daily events, needs and wants, consumption of anything and everything.
You wont find this definition in Merriam-Webster today, but we are close. Importantly for marketers, it is inevitable. I am neither endorsing this future, nor am I making a moral statement about how this affects society. It is simply the path we are on. And now is the time to make sure you are truly prepared. So what? You may already agree. You are already spending the majority of your budget on search and mobile and social programs and the likeand those programs are integrated. You are creating, publishing, and distributing branded content. You are a part of the conversation and consider earned media to be just as important as paid media. You believe there are so many opportunities to build strong, intimate, meaningful relationships between people and brands its hard to fall asleep at night. You are excited to be a marketer in this digital age. Just like the examples this report contains of agencies and marketers working together to create breakthrough digital work to achieve amazing things, you have pushed the envelope experiencing both success and failure. To you all, I am truly inspired and in awe. Three sobering thoughts, however, to bring you pioneers back to reality. First, you are unfortunately still in the minority. Second, you need to buckle up because this is just the tip of the iceberg. Third, to be truly prepared for whatever Titanic-worthy mass comes your way, now is the time to look both inward and outward. Current structures, processes, methodologies, and relationships were built on a predigital foundation. Many marketers have made a lot of positive changes; however, fundamentally this is still true. And the reality is that this foundation wont sustain a Digital Manifest Destiny. A new foundation must be put into place for this inevitability. Build new roads and bridges, lay new train tracks, and hire the engineers, entrepreneurs, and trailblazers now. Youll help better equip those currently on the digital path for success, as well as pave the way for future success when those finally joining dont have any alternative path because everything they do or consume is digitally served, connected, integrated, recorded, and measured publicly or privately.
RETHINK AND REBUILD, WITH A FEW NATURAL PLACES TO START

1. C-Suite Acceptance, Involvement, and Leadership a. In the late 1800s, if the train ran through your competitors town and not yours, your town eventually was shuttered. This is just as true for todays digital train. Digital in all of its forms must be at the front of every CEOs mind. b. CEOs willl embrace this future. They will set the digital vision and tone for your company. They simply cant afford not to.
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c. When I first started in advertising a short 18 years ago, it was normal for CEOs to attend key meetings. Their marketing strategy, brand position, and television campaign were (and still are) critical to the companys success. Todays digital meetings are just as critical; however, too often in the recent past, barrierslexicon, technical experience, market maturation, etc.; some that have been created and perpetuated by those wanting to establish controlhave pushed CEOs away. That has to change. 2. Culture and Organizational Structure a. Pepsi provides a great example of an organization driving cultural change. Some highlights are shared in this recent MediaPost article. http://tinyurl.com/38267e3 b. In their book Empowered, Josh Bernoff and Ted Schadler share a vision for how companies have embraced digital and have thrived by empowering their employees and leveraging opportunities provided by the digital revolution. c. Other pieces to consider are as follows: i. Skill sets as well as talent acquisition, management, training, and retention. ii. Integration and collaboration versus silos of responsibility. iii. Command and control structures allowing for proactive, faster decisions (empower vs. control). iv. IT and marketing as collaborators with mutual goals and incentives. 3. Partner Relationships and Compensation Structures. Compensation is one of the hardest pieces to change, yet it must be addressed and changed. Agencies like Victors & Spoils are breaking out of the margin-squeeze game by establishing new models for creating and scaling. Marketers need to get actively involved in establishing a new service and compensation paradigm. 4. A New Approach to Process and Operations a. Definitions and briefs. b. Steps and milestones. c. Meetings and decision making. d. Outcomes and reporting. e. Integration and collaboration. 5. Content, Content, Content. Strategy, development, architecture, publishing, managementacross multiple screens and formats. Of course, this isnt anywhere close to a comprehensive list. It aims only to serve as a thought starter for analyzing and building the new marketing infrastructure that will be required for future success. Hopefully, you will agree that this report provides a wealth of valuable research data, insight, and ideas from agencies working with some of the biggest brands in the world. The changes we have all seen and experienced over the past five years are miraculous. We expect nothing less for the next five years. Success or failure will always require a mix of maximizing current opportunity while planning and positioning for future opportunity. Digital Manifest Destiny dictates a fundamental change in your organizations infrastructure and operations. It also presents a competitive advantage for those willing to start now.
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DMO Sponsors
Adobe Systems Incorporated BlackBerry
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Adobe Systems Incorporated

Adobe is changing the world through digital experiences.
Adobe fuels the content creation and delivery ecosystem in a way no other technology company can. We help our customers create, deliver, and optimize compelling content and applicationsimproving the impact of their communications, enhancing their brands and productivity, and ultimately bringing them greater business success. Together, were turning ordinary interactions into more valuable digital experiences every day, across media and devices, anywhere, anytime. Our solutions help you:
what they will wantbecause you know them and are there for them, via any channel they choose. When you invest in exceptional service, every interaction becomes a chance to turn your customers into advocates. What happens when you dont put customer experience first? Your customers will be off to your competitors in search of something better, and your opportunity is gone. When you place your customers at the center of your business, thats a customer-driven enterprise.
Put powerful real-time analytics to work

The marketing landscape is changing. In addition to the continuing shift from traditional to digital media, consumers now have more choices and control over how and when they engage with marketing messages, from mobile devices to web-based widgets and social networks. In order to effectively compete and connect, brands must adapt by providing relevant, consistent messaging across digital and traditional media. Adobe offers comprehensive analytical tools for helping to optimizing marketing campaigns, enabling marketers to continually refine their campaigns, improving their marketing effectiveness, brand differentiation, and ROI.
Engage your audience

As the digital marketplace extends across a growing array of screens and devices, audiences gain more choice and control over how and when they engage with content. Publishers, agencies, and broadcasters seek a comprehensive, flexible solution that will allow them to reach customers, monetize content, and build brands. Adobes complete solution for creating, delivering, and optimizing content is the answer.
Offer experiences that matters

Every interaction with your customers is a moment of truth. The best moments are when youre able to give them exactly what they wanteven anticipate
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BlackBerry PlayBook
Professional Grade Tablet
The BlackBerry PlayBook delivers the web without limits, including games, media, apps, and everything the Internet offers. With full Adobe Flash and HTML5 support, rich media can be experienced without compromise.
Free BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet Offer!

Qualifying applications for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet prior to its initial North American release are eligible for a free BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. To qualify for the free BlackBerry PlayBook tablet offer, your application needs to be accepted into BlackBerry App World, subject to certain Terms and Conditions. With our new SDK, we make it easy to qualify. Leverage your Adobe AIR and Flash assets, or your website apps, and use our SDKs to quickly create your BlackBerry PlayBook Application. The new BlackBerry Tablet OS and its application platform from Research In Motion (RIM) offers a wealth of opportunities for developers. Building on the exceptional power of the QNX operating systemuniquely suited for tablet computingthis Tablet OS establishes the foundation for the future while preserving the key investments that have made the BlackBerry platform so successful.
Enterprise Ready
Designed with professionals in mind, the BlackBerry PlayBook provides out-of-the-box compatibility with BlackBerry Enterprise Server for secure, manageable corporate data access. It offers seamless pairing for a secure window into your BlackBerry smartphone. Use your BlackBerry smartphone as a modem for high-speed 3G network access or gain 4G network access with the BlackBerry 4G PlayBook tablet. Supported media formats include 1080p HD video; H.264; MPEG4, WMV HDMI video output. Experience video conferencing at its best with a crystal clear HD display, rich stereo sound, and dual HD video cameras.
BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK for Adobe AIR

The BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK for Adobe AIRbased on Adobe design and development toolsunlocks a rapid development path for creating rich, powerful applications that take full advantage of tablet features. With this SDK, you can target multiple devices ranging from stand-alone computers to the BlackBerry PlayBook.
BlackBerry WebWorks SDK for Tablet OS

With the BlackBerry WebWorks SDK for Tablet OS, web and mobile web developers can create applications that incorporate JavaScript, HTML5, and CSS. Using the development tooling of choice, this SDK lets you develop, test, and package web applications as BlackBerry WebWorks applications for tablets. You can use one code path to create apps for both BlackBerry smartphones and the BlackBerry PlayBook. Learn more about the free BlackBerry PlayBook tablet offer and how to build an app at: www.blackberry.com/developers/tabletos
BlackBerry, RIM, Research In Motion and related trademarks, names and logos are the property of Research In Motion Limited and are registered and/or used in the U.S. and countries around the world. Used under license from Research In Motion Limited.
Unleash Your Creativity!

A mobile device that keeps pace with your creativity. With a dual-core processor and Adobe AIR and Flash integrated into the design, youre able to bring your clients a new class of mobile applications and capitalize on the ground-breaking opportunities.
The Society of Digital Agencies

The Society of Digital Agencies (SoDA) serves as a voice for digital marketing professionals worldwide with a mission to advance the industry through best practices, education, and advocacy.
A Society Is Founded
Miami, March 2007: 13 leading digital agency CEOs decided to meet up and have a talk about where our industry was headed. New friends were made, business problems and solutions were shared, and a society was formed. We were on a mission to advance this industry we all felt so passionate about. We made it official at SXSW in March 2008 and welcomed our founding partner, Adobe.
What SoDA Is
SoDA is an international association of respected digital marketing agency leaders and entrepreneurs with a history and a vision for the future of marketing. SoDA provides leadership, platforms, infrastructure, processes, and products to enable collaboration between members around best practices, education, and advocacy.
SoDA Members
N. America Europe Aus/NZ S. America Asia
SoDA Staff
6%
Steve Wages, Executive Director Paul Lewis, Director of Operations Kendyll Picard, Communications Coordinator Natalie Certo, Marketing Liaison
9%
61%
18%
Contact SoDA
communications@sodaspeaks.com www.sodaspeaks.com
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6%

Digital Marketing Outlook 2011

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Digital Marketing Outlook 2011

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2011

digital marketing outlook

By: Angele Beausoleil DMO Editor-in-Chief VP Strategy and Innovation, Dare

DMO Team & Guest Contributors DMO Advisory Board

Digital Marketing Outlook Survey

Digital Marketing Outlook Survey DMO Key Findings

DMO Detailed Findings

Digital in the Physical World of Retail

Designing Digital Intimacy

Digital Consumers Arent Just Regular Consumers with Keyboards

Case Study: General Pants Co. Online Store and Campaigns

Brands @ Play: Mastering the Art & Science of Engagement Design

Not Your Brand, Theirs!

Do You Really Need a Digital Agency?

101 103 105 107 109 111

Why Modern Brands Need Artful Content Strategy to Thrive Online

The Future of Online Retail

Case Study: Smoking Not Our FuturesKanvas

Case Study: El Tiempo Celebrates Its Past by Embracing the Future

From Owned Media to Earned Media: Working with the Crowd

117 119 121 123 127 129 132 134 136

The Next Big Trend in Social Media Is Social Rewards

Why Twitter and Foursquare Are Dying

Pulling the Trigger to Purchase: Insights on Marketing to Avid Gamers

Online and Offline, Its All Real-Life Communication

Focusing Your Facebook Strategy: 10 Tips Toward Better Status Updates

Case Study: Thierry Mugler/Starvibes

Case Study: Emma Watson Digital Strategy

Case Study: GuitarHero.com: Global Franchise Hub and Community

Case Study: Chrome FastballRace Across the Internet

138 140 142

Case Study: SAP Friend Network Optimizer

Emerging Technology & Trends

Next Generation Mobile Applications

147 149 151 153 155 157 159 161

Mobile Is a New Medium, Not Just an Extension of Your Website

Local, Social, and Brand Transcendence

Wearable Digital SignageThe Modern Day Sandwich Board

The Marketing Implications of Google Instant

How Lean and Agile Processes Can Deliver Killer Results

Mobile Super App Experiences: From Brand Extension to Engaging Customers

Case Study: The Wilderness Downtown

164 166 168

Case Study: SoBe Reskin Yourself

Case Study: DonQ Rum

Innovation, Culture & Courage

172 174 176 178 182 184 187

China: An Exploration of Digital Diversity

Seeing Rich Visualization through the Data Forest

Client of the Future: In Six Easy Lessons

Adopting the Kaizen Approach to Marketing

Innovation from the Inside Out

Case Study: Shrek 4 Happy Meal

Case Study: The Pepsi Refresh Project

189 191 193 195 198 199

Sponsors The Society of Digital Agencies SoDA Memebership 2011

Charles Duncan Jr.

Dr. Ginger Grant

Jennifer Van Grove

Mark St. Andrew

DMO Advisory Board

DMO Advisory Board Members

DMO Advisory Board