When will the word ‘interactive’ become irrelevant in marketing? Soon, I hope.

Back in 2001—before the first dot-com crash, before the app marketplace—our predecessors in the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association produced the very first MIMA Summit. I was working in Boston at the time, and recall the fervor that era required, distinguishing interactive marketing from its sluggish parent. ‘Interactive’ described a new approach to thinking about the practice of marketing. It defined a rejection of bureaucracy, an embrace of entrepreneurial action and much better taste in eyewear.

Working in and creating ‘interactive’ has certainly rewritten my deepest understanding of the role of marketing and how it can best serve the needs of the world. And I believe the inception of ‘interactive’ has changed business, not just marketing, forever. A few examples of how interactive marketing advances have impacted business over the past ten years:

Data

The sheer amount of digital data created in the early days used to numb and crush but now serves to inspire, fuel and sustain. In the past decade we have seen data become the new storytelling device. Yet, as our 2011 morning keynote Avinash Kaushik has noted, the vast majority of marketers still do nothing with the incredible stores of data at their command. Where is the next Nike+, which is already over six-years old?

Empowering Tech, Empowered People

Perhaps the greatest impact of the past decade has been the technical means and avid culture inspiring individuals to produce, curate and promote as they see fit. Marketers are no longer the only ones marketing, nor are they entirely in control anymore. This has re-shaped how creative agencies operate and opened billions in realms of new marketing services.

DIY Revolution

Home Depot’s “You can do it. We can help.” tagline synthesizes the effect of interactive upon marketing over the past ten years. Consumers don’t need brands and marketers the same ways that they needed or utilized them in earlier decades. It’s not about passive consumption anymore. Marketers need to embrace the ability and willingness of people to tinker with the inner workings of the brand.

“Good Enough” Revolution*

The flip side of easily empowering technology is a lessening interest in product quality and craftsmanship. The new enemies are cost and time. The World Wide Web and ubiquitous computing creates a false confidence, that anything can be done faster and cheaper. And the truth is this revolution cuts and challenges agencies and marketers with equality.

“Free” Revolution

We also now have the dramatic reduction in costs of processing, data storage and transmission – what was prohibitively priced is now almost free. Where the “Good Enough” revolution lowered expectations of quality, the “Free” revolution made it okay for anyone to act big. Small agencies now have access to tools and functionality that only big agencies could afford in the past. And ‘pro-sumers’ can effectively act as agencies if they want, which they often do.

There are more, and there will be more of these examples. That is the nature of a rapid re-combining, testing, and mutation of existing systems and rules. This is why I’m convinced all marketing is inherently interactive now, and we probably don’t need the term quite as much as we used to. We’re not over yet, not by a long shot.

Good thing there’s the 2011 MIMA Summit coming up, featuring Wired’s Chris Anderson and Google’s Avinash Kaushik. You’re sure to hear about all of these ideas, and many more. And currently all for the same ticket prices as 2009. Hurry, before time runs out.

*Kudos to our 2011 afternoon keynote, Chris Anderson’s Wired magazine for first coining this term.

— Tim Brunelle

The programming committee continues to impress with the quality of the monthly presentations they plan and host. If you need proof, just look at the more than 200 MIMA members and guests who showed up at the Metropolitan Ballroom bright and early Wednesday morning for the July event: a panel discussion on integrated communications.

The panel format works well for challenging topics, such as integrated communications, for a number of reasons. You get to hear more than one point-of-view. You get to learn from some of experts we have right here in our local professional community. And you get to participate in the conversation yourself, as was evidenced by the many thoughtful questions and insights offered by the audience.

Moderator Andrew Eklund, CEO and Founding Partner at Ciceron, set up the conversation by showing three charts describing the media environment that underscore the degree of difficulty marketers have with integrated communications.

The first chart showed media channels available in 1975. It featured a dozen or so data points – television, radio, newspaper, outdoor, direct mail, etc. – and corresponding arrows pointing at how they touch the consumer of the media. Very neat, organized and easy to look at.

The second chart showed the media channels available in 2008. With the addition of digital media, the number of data points and delivery arrows mushroomed. Imagine a chaotic web created by a hyperactive spider on mescaline. (That’s a powerful and dangerous mind altering substance, kids; leave it alone.) There were many nods of agreement when this slide was displayed.

The third chart showed the media channels available in 2010. With the addition of social media, the number of data points and deliver arrows was so dense that it was, indeed, a solid black box, with every pixel filled with information. This got a few knowing, and nervous, chuckles.

Eklund then opened the discussion by stating that, with our evolving media environment, integrated communications is like a holy grail to marketers and asking if we have found it.

Paul Ratzky, Interactive Director and Vice President at Olson, observed that the concept of integrated communications keeps changing, because the integrator is shifting from the agency to the consumer, as people select their own channel pathways. Which means marketers need to follow their audience and deliver messages in the audience’s preferred channel, as opposed to trying to move them into the marketer’s channel of choice.

Glenn Karowski, Managing Director, The Business of Ideas, added that effective integrated communications is about conversation and relationships. And the key is to be a good listener.

When asked who is responsible for listening to consumers (marketing? branding? advertising?) Erik Erickson, Owner of Erickson McGee, LLC and former Vice President and Creative Director for Target commented that we are still in the early stages of figuring out how to listen. And that figuring out what to do with what we hear is the next big challenge.

Download the podcast (available soon, please check the Resources section next time you visit this website) and listen to the complete conversation for a number of practical insights. And be sure to leave your comments here, to share the key take aways you think are important.

On behalf of MIMA, welcome to the Feed!  We kicked off the 2008 MIMA Summit this morning with a keynote presentation from Rebecca Lieb, former Editor-in-Chief for ClickZ, who promised to tell us a story about consumer adoption of digital media and the subsequent decline of traditional media consumption.

“Once upon a time, advertising was an exchange of content for time spent and exposure to advertiser messages.”  This is no longer the case.  Today, consumers create content and advertisers can too.  Advertising agencies are now switching to a more marketing-focused model that depends upon viral content.

Lieb provided an excellent example of an advertiser creating content.  The Great Schlep is an advetisement for Barack Obama presented as an extremely entertaining and viral video.  The creator of this content knows how to reach her target audience; she presents her content in her audience’s voice.  This example fits all three of the content criteria that Lieb focused on during her presentation:

• Educates and informs audience
• Amuses, engages, entertains
• Creates a story that consumers can spread (viral marketing)

Another example of content being used for advertising purposes is Pet Charts, a consumer-focused website that aggregates pet-focused content from other sources and invites consumers to vote for their favorite content (stories, photos, videos, etc).  The beauty about content driven sites, such as this one, is that they also support organic search engine ranking.  Search engines look favorably upon websites that constantly add fresh relevant content and raise rankings accordingly.  

Lieb dubs this approach (advertising with little-to-no significant media buying) as the ”Jerry Seinfeld” school of advertising.  The recent Seinfeld and Gates commercials are successful in humanizing products to create viral momentum.  Consumers are so engaged by these commercials that they voluntarily go online to subscribe to subsequent commercials.  Note that the mention of the product in these ads is minimal.  Instead, the ads focus on entertaining and engaging the audience rather than hitting them over the head with product mentions.

Brands are now dedicating their budget not to media buying, but to creative and spokespeople.  Advertising is no longer about buying media placements that overtly promote products, but about finding a way to engage consumers via compelling content that gets consumers talking and only subtedly promotes a product.  As Lieb concludes, advertisers are becoming “storytellers”.  If you want to sell a product, you need a story.  What’s your story?

“Everything is based on the Burden of Interactivity,” Juan Antonio stated during the August, 13th MIMA event on video marketing.  As interactive marketers, this is where the rubber meets the road.  New and creative ways to attract and ultimately engage users with our online brand(s) is what we all strive to achieve and are held responsible for.  Video marketing is one force pushing that boundary of interactivity as video viewing and sharing continues to become increasingly popular.  This surge of online viewership is evident in the statistics discussed during the event.  Ciceron CEO and MIMA presenter Andrew Eklund states that nearly 33.7 percent of males age 18-24 view a video at least once per day.  Even more impressive is nearly 75 percent of people receive links to videos.  Even large brands such as Minnesota based 3M are looking for new and creative ways to take advantage of this surge.  For this they turn to video marketing creative firms such as Jake Nyberg’s Threevolts, who was responsible for 3M’s Protect Your Walls campaign, a viral spoof on NBC’s The More You Know campaign.   

As if video marketing isn’t cutting edge enough, video pioneers such as Christina Cordova are taking it one step further.  She is working on an interactive product placement video that would allow users to interact with the video and actually click on the product.  Chuck Olsen, a video journalist and MIMA presenter, is learning to embrace new video technologies that allow him to break news simply using his laptop web camera.  Video bloggers and journalists are learning to take advantage of new technologies such as Quik.  Quik is a piece of software that integrates into certain Nokia phones transforming your mobile phone into a streaming mobile phone camcorder.

As we all can appreciate, it is difficult to forecast/monetize the results of a particular viral video campaign. However, firms’ ROI expectations are still present.  With the surge of video creation, viewing and sharing the “Burden of Interactivity” already felt by interactive marketers is rapidly shifting to video marketers.  Firms such as 3M are becoming more understanding of the potential power of video marketing, but still strive to track and expect to achieve results.  Video marketers such as Juan, Jake and Christina are facing the “Burden of Interactivity” head-on, and their solutions are changing the face of marketing as we know it.

Hey everybody,

I started a little game for some Friday fun in the internet marketing realm. It’s called Guess the Internet Marketing Site and you guess by looking at a covered image of a home page with a few cutouts revealed. The winner wins a short post about them and their site with a link.

Come by and play, it’s at the MIMA Search Marketing site mimasm.com.

Cheers,
Chris

I recently returned from an amazing trip to the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive and Film festival in Austin, Texas. Despite the perfect 80 degree weather, I was able to suffer through and enjoy my time there. I was completely inspired by the experience and was lucky to be among the best and brightest minds in the interactive space – enjoying sessions from viral videos to designing on a grid. For a net.geek like myself, this was Internet-Mecca. If anyone else is considering a pilgrimage next year, I highly recommend it.

(more…)