Can it be said that digital is simply an ‘add on’ to a strategy or are brands looking at digital in the completely wrong way?

With any new media there is always concern and uneasiness regarding its use, but the growth of digital has now surpassed this child-like stage, where more brands are now choosing to allocate a larger percentage of their budgets towards the use of digital media over the use of traditional media than ever before. According to the Digital Media and Marketing Association “The outlook for the South African digital publishing industry is positive with excellent results being recorded in the first quarter of 2010.”

It can therefore no longer be said that digital is an ‘add on’ to a brand strategy due to its rapid growth over the last few years. Digital should be seen as a viable platform; just like that of television and newspapers and just like with any other platform the selection for a brand will ultimately depend on the overall objectives determined within the strategy. A brand should thus always utilise a media neutral approach.

If digital does however work for the brand there are various advantages of its use. Digital can be updated and changed whenever necessary, unlike that of traditional media, so if there is an issue with a website for example, it can be fixed almost immediately. Secondly, the concept of instant links back to the world of digital and directly correlates with the ideals of the new consumer who ultimately thrives on instant gratification.  Digital media is also much more measurable in terms of reporting, as information is more freely available and through Google analytics for example information is collected and organised almost immediately.

There are many other digital tools for tracking and measuring data and many can be utilised free of charge, making it a lower cost medium in terms of measuring. Lastly, digital is more focused on Return on Investment (ROI), however it is vital to ensure what the set criteria is in order to achieve that success. According to Ahmed and Tunnah, who are both involved in large corporate digital endeavours “If you don’t have clear criteria for success and a way to measure your progress against them, there’s no way you can be deemed to succeed.”

Conclusion

Digital should no longer be seen as an ‘add on’ to a strategy, because it has gone through a rapid growth over the last few years.  It should however be viewed as a platform, whereby it is selected so as to achieve specific objectives. A brand should never just push digital to fit into a specific message, as this will simply result in wasted time and limited results. Digital offers many advantages over the use of traditional media and therefore if it is determined that digital media is relevant in achieving the objectives, the desired goals must be identified so as to measure the brands overall success.                                                                   

  How does your brand operate?

Have you used digital as an ‘add on’?

Are you operating in a media neutral way?

Welcome to another interesting Journal Debate and this month’s marketing breakfast takes an in-depth look at Social Networking with a range of experts. As always, the hour long debate will be hosted by Jeremy Maggs.

Global numbers released about 6 weeks ago about Social Networking sites:

• 47% of online adults using social networking sites
• 1.5 million businesses have active pages on Facebook
• Average user is spending 55 minutes per day on Facebook
• 73% teens are members of at least 1 social network
• 50 million tweets sent a day on Twitter

The interesting points from the morning debate include:

Mike Stopforth – CEO – Cerebra

• Begin by examining our motivation for engaging in social media
• Brands need to have a compelling business reason for being on Social Networks
• Problem with social media is that it’s not just applications and platforms. It’s actually more an evolving role of the consumer towards brands.
• I believe that we have to realize that consumers are no longer recipients of messages but are now participants
• People are going to complain because you are doing a bad job, bad service, not because of Facebook. So risks have always been there.
• Community self-regulate, brand advocates will come up for the brand
• Everybody is the media, every digital citizen has a platform and an opinion

Ingrid Rubin – MD – Virtuosa

• Social media is not about campaigns
• Social Media is an evolving technology
• Brands aren’t using the medium correctly because they are trying to advertise
• Use social media to the extent of integrating it into your business
• Take from social networks what is meaningful for your brand and filter out the rest.
• Mistakes that brands are making – start engaging without doing the necessary research, but need to first do research to see what is out there.
• Not just about marketing, it’s about business processes and how you facilitate this online.

Arthur Goldstuck – CEO – World Wide Worx

• Facebook is the mainstream 6.6 % of South Africans are Facebook members – need to use a combination of services to get to your market.
• Must listen and must engage
• Brands must have a social media policy – says what type of communication will happen from the brand and who is responsible for this interaction.
• Social media is no longer a youth platform, the age curve is becoming older every day

Brent Shahim – MD – Aquaonline

• Brands don’t need to regain control of their brand, key opportunities to gain insight. Consumers can talk to each other and the brand can listen in on this.
• Real opportunity to gain invaluable insight into the brand.
• Social media is just visible word of mouth.
• Social networking is a cheaper form of communication
• Organizations needs senior people to be responsible for social media
• You need to look at digital as a whole not just social networking

Toby Shapshack – Editor – Stuff Magazine

• Live in a brand new age, where brand belongs to consumers
• Brands have no choice but to be there listening to conversations
• A good social media strategy is not going to change the fact that it’s a screwed up company
• People want to be heard, ultimately they want acknowledgement

Pierre Odendaal – Creative Director Jupiter Drawing Room

• In the digital space you can cost effectively get your message out there and have a more profound effect on the brand
• Social Networking has a lot more punch then people think
• Digital is face to face contact, it’s just in a digital world
• Digital is the most dominant communication of our time and will shape our future

The next Journal of Marketing Debate: “Design and Packaging” -Thursday 28 October.

As a follow on to Leanne’s blog post below, I think that Ingrid & Jaco’s presentation really gave the parents and students at HeronBridge College some food for thought.

This video was shown at the beginning of the presentation and in 5 minutes certainly shared some mind-blowing statistics …where would we be without the ever changing face of technology? I don’t want to imagine! If you haven’t seen this before enjoy, if you have watch it again

Last night I had the pleasure of attending a talk held at HeronBridge College dealing with all the new online trends and how one can make a career out of this. Guest speakers Ingrid Rubin and Jaco Meiring did a combined presentation, highlighting what is happening within the “digital space” and what effect it is having in our day to day lives.

Continue reading

1989 the year that changed the world – the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Tiananmen Square disaster, Mandela and De Klerk meet and, I suppose, most importantly for us in the digital arena the emergence of the internet – who would have thought that 20 years on we would be accessing internet sites on our mobile phones! Thought this article was very interesting.

Web design has gone from a simple brochure site to a full on service because of new tools presented to us being the web developers. Note I know longer refer to us as being just web designers _but as web creators, because of the awakening of technology and the willingness of clients and allocation of bigger budgets, we can offer services that brochure site could not. We have been presented with tools that enable us to go to a client and say, “we are able to monitor when a user actually goes onto your website, track them from the time they go on the site to the time they log out”. He can be identified, he can be branded. This isn’t possible in a plain brochure website, where you have no idea where the user is, or what he is doing.

Continue reading

So far Cracking the Digital Code has pointed out several key elements of the digital world. But all these digital parts cannot function alone, and are actually part of a whole and this whole you call a strategy. And this is what longtail’s local strategist Japie Swanepoel talked about.

Continue reading

So on this chilly Wednesday the 23^rd of April Christine of MXit gave longtail a brief rundown on the new IM craze to hit South Africa. Now for clueless staff (in the case of MXit anyway) such as myself this was a real eye opener.

Christine certainly exhibits the confidence and enthusiasm in her product as only staff that really believe in their product (or are getting massive salaries) can do. In this case, the confidence was well founded. I had heard of MXit in hushed tones before the presentation, not knowing much/anything about the product what really surprised me was the growth of the IM service, up to 14,000 new users and 200 million messages everyday is something not to be looked lightly at. MXit is the most used IM service in South Africa and this along with the fact that apparently men talk more than women(on MXit anyway) did astonish me.

The interface looks slick, if an iota complicated, but at 25 maybe I’m starting to show my age, can’t keep up with the kids these days. In addition we didn’t actually get to use the program on a phone where I’m sure the usability is excellent.

MXit have started to ramp up their advertising efforts after realising what a lucrative revenue stream this can become for the enterprise. The examples of which Christine showed us were fairly impressive if a little obtrusive for my liking but then again I think ads in movies are intrusive so what do I know.

In summation, MXit is a product destined to be on our radar for some time and if its current growth continues it is fated to be a major player in the digital market for the foreseeable future.

Ringtones, Broadband, 3G Connectivity, home theatres, console gaming, children’s toys, security, MP3 Players, vehicle GPS, home networking systems, smart phones, data backup, cameras, entertainment and gadgets . Anything digital you can think of and it is being showcased at this year’s DigitalLife expo currently on at the Sandton Convention Centre till Sunday 20 April 2008. Some of the members of the longtail team stepped out of the office for a couple of hours to explore all the new hot and happening things in the Digital arena.

One of the highlights was being able to see the fully equipped digital home with broadband and Wi-Fi connectivity. The Digital Home demonstrated the latest in cool home automation, home security and remote control technologies. It featured things like ADSL, Music and Movie Storage, Access Points, Music and Cinema centers, PC’s, and Gaming – naturally all wireless. The possibilities that the future hold is without a doubt exciting, just imagine for a moment a kitchen that can store your shopping list in a database, order online or download recipes to your taste. A family room where your music and movies are stored on a server that can be accessed wirelessly through your plasma screen tv. Just imagine the possibilities…