The relevance of a big idea in a digital environment has been the subject of many conversations between digital and traditional marketers and agencies.

I have historically taken the view that, while you need some overarching vision or positioning for a brand (which I guess could be called a ‘big idea’), it is how the technology, the content and the engagement is delivered in the context of the audience that matters. If you follow this thinking, in digital, it is the execution of a multitude of different tactical, small ideas that are important, not some single creative idea.

Sometimes, it is the tactical implementation itself that is the idea. Sometimes, it is the audience who drive the idea through consumer generated media.

I have also argued that because a website or even a social media presence frequently lives beyond the life of a campaign, that the campaign idea, no matter how big, is not relevant.

After talking to Ashley Ringrose from Soap, I started to think it was time to perhaps reframe my thinking on this subject.

I wonder if we are talking at cross purposes because we are trying to answer too many questions at once and create a generalised view for a multitude of different situations.

The key I think lies in the fundamental difference between advertising and marketing. If we take the Wikipedia definitions:
“Advertising is a form of communication intended to persuade an audience (viewers, readers or listeners) to take some action.”
“Marketing: The systematic planning, implementation and control of a mix of business activities intended to bring together buyers and sellers for the mutually advantageous exchange or transfer of products.”
So in this context, perhaps advertising does need a big idea but marketing doesn’t. The reason we get ourselves tied up in knots is because “digital environment” is an incredibly broad term. It covers many marketing activities which may or may not be related to a campaign. A website, if created to support and advertising message, still needs to deliver an experience consistent with ‘the big idea’ but everything you do in the digital space does not necessarily need to conform.

The thing that underlies any strong marketing strategy is always a brand vision. That is what we need to replicate with consistency across every customer touch point (digital and non digital). All the big campaign ideas need to have relevance to this brand vision and all tactical executions need to support it.
That’s a bit about what I think. Hear more thoughts and perspectives from this – seriously impressive – panel at ad:tech next week. Last chance to book today, registration closes at 5.30pm, Friday 12 March.

SESSION LEADER:
Iain McDonald, Founder, Amnesia, Razorfish

SESSION PARTICIPANT:
Sudeep Gohil, Strategic Planning Director/Partner, Droga5

Ashley Ringrose, Founder, Soap Creative

Brian Giesen, Director, 360 Degree Digital Influence, Ogilvy

Sometimes it seems like we tie ourselves up in knots worrying about the exactness of the number and lose sight of the reason why we care. Is online the right channel to reach people, what is the right place to put our message and do the people who will see it even care. Perhaps the question we should ask ourselves is whether or not we can measure that.

Increasingly, marketing activities demand accountability. Did it work? In order to assess this, we need some sort of yardstick. Statistics and measurement are our only tools for assessing this but just as it is difficult to compare two lengths when one is measured in imperial standards and the other in metric, the current inconsistencies in measurement make any true comparative assessment of reach or effectiveness pretty hard to do.

Our industry, as it has matured, has turned more and more focus on developing a unilateral standard around this topic. I spoke to Monique Perry from Nielson who promises that a consistent measurement currency is very close to launching in Australia so perhaps we are starting to see some light at the end of this tunnel.

The challenge however still remains that whether or not we can decide on a consistent way to measure the audience on one site, or even the web universe as a whole, how can we measure the cross platform effectiveness.

Measuring the interactions between platforms remains a problem. Although we have agreed currency around TV and radio audiences and by integrating these with a standardised online measurement tool we will get half way there, it does not solve the entire problem. When we start to consider other online channels such as social media, mobile, email and outdoor, the measurement task becomes even more complex. When we decide we want to look at how the interactions between platforms may have a multiplier effect on a consumers propensity to respond, measurement of this becomes almost impossible.

It is always an interesting area of debate and one which is a constantly evolving. The ad:tech panel have certainly got their work cut out getting to the bottom of this and I’m looking forward to hearing what they’ve got to say. Here are the panel details:

Wednesday 17th March The Evolution Of Audience Measurement

• How do we get a fixed method of measuring and reporting online audiences?
• What are the steps towards cross platform audience measurement: can we get a true view of the consumers’ activity
• Beyond reach and frequency: how do we move to measuring advertising effectiveness, not audience numbers

Session Leader: Megan Brownlow, Editor, Entertainment & Media Outlook, PriceWaterhouseCoopers

Gai Le Roy, Programmes Manager, IAB Australia
Stuart Pike, Asia Pacific Research Director, Nielsen
Gordon Towell, CEO, Audit Bureau of Circulations
Lisa Walsh, Head of Audience Research, ABC

Registration closes Friday 12th march 5.30pm. Register now.

So to kick off the discussion, I’d like to float out the idea that you can’t discuss the impact between social content and e-Commerce without first recognising where the connection exists.

Read more on Mike Hickinbotham’s blog here

Yvette is speaking on the ad:tech panel discussion about the role of digital strategy (Tuesday 16th March, 9.45am). I wrote a post sharing my thoughts on this a few weeks back, you can read that here.

Ten days ’til ad:tech so book your tickets now.

ad:tech EXHIBITION, free to attend, includes international keynote presentations, expo seminar theatre and After Party
ad:tech CONFERENCE, the most thoroughly researched program and more brand speakers than any other event in Australia

Panellists:
David Whittle, Managing Director, Mark
Jason Davey, Managing Director, Bullseye
Brent Annells, Head of Radar DDB, DDB

The financial services industry is known for testing new and innovative ideas and campaigns in the digital space. But what have they really achieved? Has there been long term effect, benefit, on the interactive media industry as a whole? And can they prove it??!

At ad:tech Harry and other marketing executives from financial services will be addressing just this and discussing more about the areas of risk, and how to manage them; and the areas of opportunity, and how to capitalise on them.

Read details of the panel discussion here. The other panellists with Harry are:

Michael Weeding, Head of Website & Online Acquisition, Citi
Monty Hamilton, Head of Online, UBank
Murray Howe, Executive Manager - Digital Marketing, Suncorp

I mentioned in my last post the importance of data in any truly customer centric strategy. The problem we have in digital marketing however is the sheer volume of data that we can gather. It’s easy to be obsessed with the collection of it and then become overwhelmed once we have it.

While the technology enables us to get more and more sophisticated, the key to making use of data is the collection of the RIGHT data, the analytics of it and a culture of adapting based on what you learn. It’s an ongoing process. Putting proper analytics in place is not necessarily an expensive business. Google’s free analytics tools have opened up the power of analytics to a much broader audience. This has been a great thing for our industry as it has raised everyone’s awareness of what is really happening on their websites. However it also raises the debate of the benefit of free vs. paid tools.

An article I read recently claimed that Omniture’s market share of paid tools has grown from 18% to 42% in 2009 and WebTrends has dropped from 27% to 19%. It went on to claim that 80% of companies are using Google Analytics compared to 66% the year before. The conclusion they drew was that the market is rapidly polarising into two camps, with free Google Analytics at one end and tools like Omniture at the other.

The difference between paid and free tools seems to come down to the degree of personalised detail you want to be able to get and the integration you want with other systems such as data warehouses and CRM systems.

The decision of whether to go free or paid however extends beyond pure cost and integration requirements. One of the most critical components in an effective data strategy is the resources capable of interpreting the massive quantities of data available. It takes a special kind of skill to be able to unearth the real secrets that data holds and there is often an assumption that you will know what you are looking for once they find it. Perhaps the question that an organisation should be asking itself before they worry about what tool is who will be using it.

Christian Bartens will be moderating a panel discussion on this issue at ad:tech Sydney, other panellists sharing their view on the paid vs. free debate are:

Matt Langie, Director Product Marketing, Omniture (Global)
Alex Crompton, Senior Manager, Web Marketing, Aussie
Jonathan Kerr, Associate Director eCommerce, Budget Direct
Rod Jacka, Managing Director, Panalysis

You can share your thoughts and feedback on this issue right here, and keep checking in to see what others have to say and how the debate is shaping up.

Data is at the heart of delivering this kind of experience. If you know who they are, what they buy, what content they are interested in, what their preferences are and how often they want to interact to you, it is possible to tailor the experience they have with your brand to meet these needs, deliver offers that are most relevant and increase your chances of conversion.

But how achievable is this nirvana of a singular customer view? CRM companies have been promising this for years and businesses have invested millions of dollars and thousands of head hours attempting to achieve it. Still, few companies can, hand on heart say they have a holistic data solution in place as part of their digital strategy.

The challenges that most companies face in developing a single customer view seems to be driven by the volume of legacy data systems that need to be integrated and whether or not this integration needs to be in real time or not.

But having the systems that enable data to be consolidated in one place is only the first step in a holistic data strategy. No matter how much information you have on an individual is useless unless you have the business logic in place to connect the data elements together, understanding of relationships between these elements and determine outcomes in terms of the customer experience.

Because data is often collected from a wide range of areas within an organisation, including the digital and interactive mediums, and the return on the knowledge may be recognised in a different part of the organisation to where the data collection needs to take place, motivating people to maintain good data practices and managing the expectations of ROI can sometimes be difficult. If the call centre is measured by how many calls they can process and the CRM system slows them down, were is the incentive to use it properly?

Additionally, perhaps the most important thing that a data strategy has to include is the ability to learn and evolve. People change, trends evolve and consumer demand shifts. Analytics need to not only measure the effectiveness of communications, content or offers but also identify changes that are occurring and how an organisation might need to adapt and evolve to meet these shifts.

Data is the key to truly understanding your customers. It is easy to become overwhelmed with the data that is available and lazy about how you collect and look at it but the future of our industry will no doubt begin to rely more and more heavily on the insights it delivers to improve our businesses and the relationships we have with our customers.

There’ll be some good debate around this in the panel session at ad:tech: What Are The Possibilities That An Holistic Data Strategy Brings To Your Business? The panellists for that session are:

Kevin Mackin, General Manager, Coremetrics
Sean Smith, Head of Brand and Communications, HotelClub.com, Orbitz Worldwide
Leila Seith Hassan, Senior Marketing Analyst, Datalicious
Michael Kustreba, VP Australia and New Zealand, Epsilon International

They’ll be sharing their points of view. You can pose some questions or share your thoughts here.

The interesting thing about social media is the breadth of areas within an organisation that it can touch. Unlike some marketing initiatives, which are all about a campaign, social media tends to be more about the relationship and the dialogue that customers (and potential customers) have with a company and each other in relation to a company.
These touch points might be in the corporate communications department, the call centre, sales, customer support, the list goes on. Social media is a two way channel of communication … like the phone. It requires both a proactive approach and the ability to respond rapidly to events as they unfold. It requires the ability to listen to conversations that you might not previously been aware of and it involves empowering but managing the voice of your employees in the social media space.
For many organisations this is scary and the last thing that they want is to engage in a conversation with a customer who might say something bad about them. In many cases, it seems easier to do nothing at all rather than navigate their way through a series of complex decisions that make the legal department turn blue. The truth is however, whether you are part of the conversation or not, people are talking. Whether you want to participate is really about just how deeply you want to bury your head in the sand.
Assuming you are ready to start the conversation, the next step is to figure out a strategy and what tools you should use to do it. This can be extremely confusing and frequently, the ROI is difficult or impossible to directly measure.

The financial services and insurance industries are amongst the most sophisticated digital marketers in the industry however they also face some of the greatest challenges in social media. First because they are the big targets for complaints and secondly because they are traditionally some of the most conservative in terms of risk aversion.

Magda will be leading a really practical session at ad:tech on how to use all the tools that social media has to offer. It promises to be a really interesting session.

According to a Forrester study, 71% of online shoppers read reviews, (http://www.ratepoint.com/resources/industrystats.html) making it the most widely read form of consumer-generated content. Additionally, a separate study by Coremetrics (http://www.bazaarvoice.com/resources/stats) found that people who read a review were 30% more likely to purchase a product and visitors who wrote a review were 80% more likely to convert.

Likewise, recommendation engines like Amazon (‘people who bought this product also bought that product’) go a long way to mirroring the retail experience and assisting in driving cross sell and upsell behaviour. When recommendation engines go social however, like LastFM (‘people who like similar things to you also like this’) it really starts to feel even more relevant and personalised bringing an offline experience truly online.

When Google announced their transition to real-time search this catapulted the importance of social media in the search game too. Real-time data is now placed above traditional web search results and as a result, it makes it even easier for a consumer who is purchasing a product to review social content that they may previously have had to work a lot harder to find.

The impact of the social content on sales is undeniable.

Social media has rapidly become one of the most powerful ways to raise awareness, build brands, drive customer loyalty and attract audiences to sites. Building a loyal community who are engaged and willing to contribute social content is potentially one of the most critical components of sales conversion in e-commerce and essential to the digital strategy of any marketer or retailer who is trying to sell their products online.

This is an area that any online retailer should be looking into seriously, and we’ll be discussing the key issues in the session at ad:tech ‘What Is The Impact Of Social Content On e-Commerce?’. The panellists will be reviewing the key issues. They are:

• Mike Hickinbotham, Social Media Senior Advisor, Telstra
• Tim O’Neill, Joint Managing Director, Reactive
• Dan Ferguson, Online Channel Manager, General Pants
• Michael Gorman, Vice President for Strategy, Acxiom Global Multichannel Marketing Services
• Tim Hughes, Vice President, Commercial, HotelClub.com, Orbitz Worldwide

Myself and the ad:tech panel would welcome your comments and thoughts here.

And you can see the video of Tim Hughes sharing his thoughts on the subject here: