While there was more than one declaration that “display is definitely not dead” in digital marketing, the consensus amongst panelists at the NextMedia 2011 event on Tuesday morning was that marketers and agencies still need to take things up a notch when it comes to innovation.
During the “Advertisers Talk Digital” session on the second day of the two-day Toronto event, Cory Pelletier, director of innovation at Zulu Alpha Kilo, said banners are a tool in an agency’s toolbox to bring consumers into a brand’s digital space, but they shouldn’t be the only tool.
In fact, Pelletier said he considers banners “as the wallpaper of the digital space.” He spoke of how clients should explore advertising opportunities beyond the typical display banner, such as content integration.
Raymond Reid, VP, group director, digital at Starcom MediaVest Group, commented that advertising should be more like content. “Consumers don’t go online looking for advertising. We have to think of advertising not as wallpaper, but as content.” Media and creative agencies must, therefore, focus on delivering creative that’s engaging, he said.
Part of producing that kind of creative, said Kaye Puhlmann, VP, creative director at Critical Mass, is “being passionate about the brand you own.” She’s seen that passion in a lot of start-ups, but not always in clients. If clients don’t have it, the creative will be average, she warned.
Pary Bell, vice-president and GM, digital media at Rogers Media, said clients are asking for ad opportunities they “can’t just buy off the rack.” The challenge is figuring out how to do that, especially considering the digital platform is still relatively nascent. “We’re still learning,” said Bell. “As publishers, we have to put more focus on audience intelligence—how and when we’re connecting.
“Now we’re constantly asked to achieve marketing objectives rather than just ROI. We need to help clients attain objectives rather than just ‘What are the results?’” he said.
Pelletier said brands that are always asking for ROI are “shortsighted.” He added that “ROI is not dead; it’s not going away,” but agencies need to ask themselves what the right data is, who is reading it (you may not want to delegate that task to an intern, said Pelletier) and how the data is helping attain clients’ objectives.
Later in the session, Puhlmann brought the topic back to innovation. Addressing the notion of “display fatigue” amongst consumers, she admitted it’s “not awesome to have all those banners.” But she pointed to the rich experiences the iPad and iPhone offer, and specifically the Flipboard iPad app, which lets consumers use the Google Reader service to access their RSS feeds, then interact with them via the app. Clients are starting to ask to have their content integrated within Flipboard, said Puhlmann. “It is super immersive and it gets us away from banners so it’s good to innovate there,” she said.
The panelists agreed that innovation comes with risks. Reid said it is up to the agencies to realize that and tell clients “We’ll do 90% of what we know works for your business, but we want to put 10% aside to test innovative new opportunities.”
And, to paraphrase an old adage, if at first you don’t succeed it’s OK to fail, so long as you try, try again. Bell said “it’s important to embrace those quick fails” in digital platforms, and that digital is built up over lots of small wins (as opposed to a big one-off success).
Puhlmann added that two key ingredients for success in digital are speed and responsiveness. Whereas there used to be more time given to get ideas to market, the current trend is to get in a room with clients and get a prototype up within a week. “Get it live and learn,” she said.
