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 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.

“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?

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.

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

2007: Year of the Video

Coming away from the conference, I learned that 2007 is going to be the year of the online video. No doubt about it, broadband has reached the tipping point and quality video production capabilities are pretty much available to anyone with a mouse and a keyboard. The question then becomes: how do I make my video become viral? I asked this question during many panel discussions only to be met with a common response: you can’t make a viral video. Poppycock! You can. But it doesn’t happen by itself.

The key element of making a viral video is ensuring that it’s infectious and/or contagious (just like a room full of coughing and sneezing kindergarteners). Without going into the details of DNA and cell splitting, I will simply say:

Viral Videos Must be Contagious:

Successful online videos are just like successful plagues and viruses. They mutate and travel outside the host body and pass from one organism to the next. There are no cures, no treatments and no controls. You might be able to mask the symptoms, but the viral infection is still propagating and growing until it works its way successfully out of the population or the inhabitants develops an immunity to the condition (i.e., get bored). Yes, you want your video to become a plague. And who doesn’t cheer for the plague to make a comeback?

Here are the steps that a biological virus spreads:

1. Absorption
3. Entry
4. Replication
5. Assembly
6. Release

I’ll spare you the scientific analysis; even if it would permit me feel smart for a few minutes. How often can you use words like Etiology (the study of causes) and Pathogenesis (diseases development) while talking about Interactive projects? Allow me to jump into the details.

Marketing Your Contagious Video:

The first steps in marketing your video online (beyond last week’s suggestion of begging your friends to watch it) are:

Enter contests. There are several of them out there and they’re begging for people to submit videos. Sometimes you have to re-write your project, other times you can simply upload your current content. These contests might actually pay you something if you win. If not, you’ll at least expose yourself to the marketing that the contest is providing to encourage user participation.

Post on multiple sites. YouTube is the king, but there are hundreds of sites challenging that reign. Just like the explosion of photo hosting sites over the past couple of years, this year you will no doubt see a massive growth in video hosting. Just remember: MySpace was second to the prom, but ended up … ok, I’ll spare you that analogy too. Here is a partial list (I’m sure there are others):

EyeSpot
Google Video
Grouper
Jumpcut
OurMedia
Revver
Videoegg
Vimeo
vSocial
YouTube

Include your URL. I know this sounds simple, but for those of you that are creating episodic features, this is a really key element. Depending when people start watching your video (episode 5, for example) they might want to catch up all at once. You should be able to point them to all the other episodes on your Web site or on your YouTube profile. For bands and other folks that might have multiple songs or sessions, this could be the first step in your quest to be the next American Idol (er, or something)

Know Oprah. Seriously. Does anyone know her? Video of the month club?

Post previews. Hollywood has mastered the preview. From the 30 second spot on Thursday night to the epic pre-roll spots during the summer blockbuster season … they know what gets people hooked. A series like iGlory can rely on this strategy to encourage people with shorter attention spans (i.e., All of you) to tune in. By making some short clips or best-of previews, you can bring users in for a more intimate experience (and then totally infect them). I hope that all of you have caught a case of iGlory once in your life. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.
Digg it. Get out there and use services like Digg.com, fark.com and other tagging sites. You never know where that next carrier might be hanging out. Just be sure that you’re not crossing the spamming line.

Multiple formats. Before YouTube, the only way to spread a viral video was via email. For some of us, that would mean downloading a 5 meg file and cursing our friends if it turned out to be lame. Let’s not forget this fundamental distribution channel. Make your video available to the masses to download, spread around, post to other sites and take with them on their portable media devices. One of these days I’ll get me an iPod Video Player and/or a phone that does more than drop calls. When that happens, I’m taking my videos on the road. I’m relying on all of you to make content that I can bring with me while I wander.

Local Media. Don’t forget that your local print media. You know, those guys that throw a paper on your step every few weeks. If you build up enough online credibility, you might be able to have them write a story about you. For iGlory, we got several papers to do stories on our project. And we didn’t even need to post the incriminating photos of them online (yet).