Demystifying the Art of (Digital) Conversation
Yesterday I attended The Art of Conversation: Establishing Brand Dialog in the Digital Era. Four sales-smiley and devastatingly diplomatic panelists weighed in, including the severe-looking (but ultimately rather personable) Bruce Rogers, VP of Marketing, Forbes.com; David A. Yovanno, General Manager, ValueClick Media; Mark Ribaudo, Group Director of Marketing, Scholastic Inc.; and Eric Picard, Director, Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions.
Moderator Sheryl Draizen, SVP and GM at the Interactive Advertising Bureau, kicked us off by asking the panelists what their favorite quotes were. Perhaps Ribaudo’s best embodied the frenzy that’s overcome our industry in a fast-paced landscape ruled primarily by Youtube and Myspace: “Seize the moment.”
With all media going digital, I wondered whether a marketer’s priorities have changed. Does on-the-spot conversion continue to define a successful campaign, or is it all about throwing dosh at engagement and brand-building in hopes of a long-term relationship with (ideally) enthusiastic consumers?
Forbes’ Rogers noted that marketers are increasingly coming to media to help engage audiences with their brands. There’s a playfulness, a kind of dialogue occurring between ads and their hosted sites as they try in tangent to engage the same consumer.
In contrast, ValueClick’s Yovanno confessed that for his company, the idea of “dialogue” breaks down to mean different things, depending on where the consumer is in the consideration process. Is he down the street? It becomes the brand’s job to build awareness. Is he in the metaphorical store? The brand must then educate him. Or is he at the register closing a purchase? CRM takes over - it is then the brand’s mission to take care of that consumer.
Ribaudo pointed out that the use of “digital media” as a term has become a shortcut for which companies are ahead of the curve and which have been left in the medieval days of the :30 spot.
In response, Yovanno swatted the buzz word aside and noted the economics around interactive media need to evolve more. Nine out of ten times, the bottom line is the final word. While interactive media is a lot easier to track conversion-wise, two questions remain: is anybody paying attention to conversions, and either way, are they still prioritizing ROI?
The panel painted an interesting picture of the future of advertising. Yovanno believes that in the future, companies will be able to buy one audience across multiple media channels, creative will be largely automated and the ability to “buy a campaign” will be easy.
Automation is necessary for the landscape to mature, and in order to get there digital media must find a way to marry itself seamlessly with myriad new marketing forms. TiVo ads, for example, cater to a proprietary on-demand audience. These ads need to be scalable across other media so one investment in TiVo can be reused.
Additionally, traditional forms of marketing also need to be included in this mix. This may get easier because they are growing ever more digitally inclined. Consider RFID-reading billboards, and poster ads that change with the weather.
To better illustrate, Yovanno brought us back to fundamentals. Two aspects of marketing remain consistent through time: the content and the audience. All that changes is how they transact.
Content formats may change (consider the transition of the printed word to online press), and the audience’s manner of consuming said content may change (consider all the handy new toys available to them: laptops, PDAs, iPods), but neither the critical presence of content nor audience make a budge to the left or right of center. When a marketer keeps this in mind, it’s easier to execute a campaign with good strong roots.
Rogers agreed, noting that at the end of the day, corporate resources flow to where accountability and ROI are evident. There really is no ROI if marketers disregard the notion of conversion entirely. Ribaudo confirmed this point, adding that no matter what kind of savvy tech tools come out to help with quantifying the return on interactive marketing, a marketer who doesn’t know what to do with that material renders the tools useless.
Longtime enterprises also need to divorce themselves from the idea that they’re in a certain type of business. “We’re not in the web business, we’re not in publication, we’re in the content distribution business and platforms don’t matter,” Rogers said of Forbes.
The moderator kicked in and asked the panel how it felt about letting go of their brands, a topic that came up in another panel called Left Coast Media. While Mark said it’s necessary to let a brand go but exercise caution, Rogers scoffed. “I think it’s interesting, the whole discussion about relinquishing control of your brand - as if you ever had a hold of it. Your brand lives in the mind of the consumer. The trick is to get it there.” Concluding this wise rant on a hopeful note, he called the internet a space where companies can experiment with and accentuate their brands.
So what about the question about whether marketers should target a short-term conversion or a long-term relationship?
Panelists Picard and Rogers invited us to look at Scottrade and Volvo, two companies that engage users with dynamic, useful creative, building a personality for themselves and relationship with their consumers. At the same time, the ultimate purpose of the ads is to generate conversions.
Long-term relationships can happen even while sealing the deal in the present tense. And while it’s nice to build for the future, it’s also nice to pay the bills every month.
“Numbers don’t lie,” Rogers said. “And it’s the last refuge of all marketers.”
