Post Digital
Just a few years ago marketing was dominated by ‘traditional’ agencies offering ‘traditional’ services, albeit with the occasional twist. Digital outfits were seen as niche players. Now the marketplace embraces digital agencies and many traditional agencies have bolted-on a digital function to satisfy the growing needs of their clients.
So what’s next on the agenda?
Too many cooks
Increasing media convergence and the expanding digital platform create fantastic opportunities for clients, but it means that they are being faced with the choice and management of a wealth of smaller more specialist delivery partners to handle each individual discipline: analytics, social media, usability, mobile… the list goes on.
On the face of it, the coming years look frighteningly complicated. Our multi-channelled, multi-disciplined world calls for multi-tasking on an unprecedented scale. ‘Digital’ has become ‘interactive’ and ‘Interactive’ has become ‘integrated’. Clients are faced with the challenge of delivering against every interconnected facet - elements which grow in sophistication every year.
The new breed
Amaze is a new breed of agency offering integrated marketing services with the interactive elements at its core.
The ethos behind the company is simple: we believe that by combining digital and business skills with solid expertise in the traditional marketing disciplines like advertising and PR we can help clients exploit opportunities in new ways that can both address complex communication challenges and transform business models.
A Coming of Age
Much of what we will see in the year ahead isn’t actually ‘new’ at all, its application, however, will be. We’ll see a coming of age of some of the tools and practices that have emerged of late: online brand reputation management, increased mobile content and social media to name but a few.
The headlong dive into social media is fascinating. What was seen as a passing fad only two years ago now dominates people’s interactive time. (Remember when upstart search engine Google dared to suggest an alternative to index-based search?) It doesn’t take long for a digital craze to become an interactive establishment… as long as it’s useful. We believe that 2009 will prove to be the 'age of reason' for social media.
Social media’s astonishing rate of growth will present particular challenges to brands operating on a pan-European basis. They must base their social media activity on a deep understanding of their individual consumers’ changing behaviour and predisposition to engage across the numerous social platforms. For some of our clients who operate across numerous markets where technical adoption and cultural usage differs, deep insight is even more critical; what works in Sweden won’t necessarily work in Spain.
Virtual reality
The dominance of social media has an impact on a brand’s reputation, irrespective of the brand’s channel – or channels - of choice. More and more businesses want to know what’s being said about them online, and where it’s being said. We are concentrating on mapping both emotional responses and the influence rating given to those opinions. What does that tell us about how people perceive a brand? Is the TV campaign working? Is our PR facilitating the right conversations?
Understanding and analysing social media provides not only fantastic opportunities, but also essential information for many brands. The exciting challenge for us is to build proactive campaigns to influence and interact with today’s consumers – people who can speak their mind whenever, wherever and however they want to.
Interactive movement
Instant, easy and ‘always on’ access has been a long-promised ideal. As each generation of mobile phone has been released, various seismic shifts in user behaviour have been predicted. It’s been a long time coming, but it’s finally here; where the iPhone leads… As consumers’ demand for immediacy of content increases, mobile will, at last, deliver on its promises over the coming months.
As operators look to content initiatives and the rollout of partnerships and platforms stimulate consumption of mobile content, we will see massive growth. This will include a big push on mobile broadband, which could see education, sport and youth-based portals attempting to capture the sector by combining social networking and truly rich media.
Everybody’s talking ‘bout it
With interactivity at its heart, Amaze is perfectly placed to address our multi-channelled world. TV, press, PR… all are hugely important and influential – and long may they remain so – but where do consumers go next? Their wallets? Let’s hope so. Actually though… they go digital; that’s where the conversation starts proper. Why just listen to one voice when there are many more itching to talk to you?
Consumers choose how, when and where they receive and discuss brand messaging. And it’s the agencies that understand the market that will strive to shape it in the coming year.