Accenture on high performance in the digital ad industry
Accenture Digital Ad Study
Accenture has just released their 2008 Accenture Global Digital Advertising Study. It’s the second annual report on important trends in the digital advertising industry where they surveyed executives of digital media organizations, traditional firms and media services companies about the attributes of high performance in the digital ad space.
While this is admittadley more of an ‘insider’s report’ on the digital ad space, the findings and recommendations from Accenture are worth noting at all places in the digital marketing food chain. Below are a few of the key recommendations that they deliverd in the report. Good advice for all marketers, but expecially those with digital advertising as a large component of their marketing mix.
Accenture’s recommendations:
- Consider core vs. non-core skills and capabilities and expand the scope of outsourcing.
- Focus on developing the right culture for success.
- Develop leaders who push to create a fact-based culture that extends even to suppliers and other business partners.
- Improve the capability to hire and retain employees who are data savvy or who can quickly become so.
- Develop new technology-based solutions to capture, sort and make sense of the data.
- Invest in more sophisticated customer segmentation capabilities.
- Target innovative new formats such as mobile gaming.
Digital marketing on the upswing
MarketingSherpa’s “chart of the week” takes a look at their recent Marketing and the Economy Survey and how much marketers are increasing or decreasing their spend in some of the major marketing categories. The really interesting thing is the large overall percentage increase in digital tools and the large decrease in ‘analog tools’.
A shift to digital spending
Kellogg’s move to the digital center
Special K goes digital
The best thing about tracking CPG marketers that are moving the focus of their marketing strategy & campaigns toward the digital center is that they are meticulous with their data and give us some great fodder for substantive discussion on the actual ROI of digital tactics vs. traditional media like TV. I particularly love this perspective from Mark Baynes of Kellogg:
In September, Kellogg chief marketer Mark Baynes said digital ROI for a Special K program had exceeded returns on broadcast by a “factor of well over two,” and that Kellogg, which spends more than $1 billion on advertising alone, would reduce commercial filming in 2009, and focus on ways of driving efficiency.
Wow! That’s an outstanding shift in the ROI. Yeah, I get that they spend a boatload of money on ads & marketing, but money or not, the results are compelling.
Thanks to AdAge for the tip.
The digital centered trade show…Digital=Green!
This is a peek at the invetability of where trade shows, conferences and events are going. They’re all going digital centered!
From yet another great article in Brandweek:
[Eloqua] interviewed 150 marketers for its Green Marketing survey and found that 90% of the marketing industry wants to be more environmentally friendly. Sixty percent said they believe that green marketing provides a competitive brand platform, while 60 percent expressed plans to switch from paper-based marketing materials to digital communication protocols in the next 12 to 18 months.
Eloqua recently adopted this approach at its Experience ‘08 Conference in Las Vegas. The conference featured an online portal where attendees could access the latest panel and speaker information, bypassing paper agendas. Also, instead of disposable name badges, attendees were given electronic devices with built-in digital networking capabilities.
So, it looks like going digital is going green as well! Bonus.
The means of production will be digitized
We didn't have this in high school!
Martin Bihl of 7419llc penned an otherwise ‘more of the obvious’ article for BrandWeek that highlights a truly digital centered example of how music (as well as everything else in the world) is moving quickly to the digital center.
He calls on the 25th anniversary Web site for the Brian Eno/David Byrne album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. Rather than a traditional ‘album’ like they had back in 1982 based on ’sampling’ (a wild concept at the time), they’ve posted all the mixing tracks to two of the album’s songs, allowing and encouraging the public to build new songs with them–just as they themselves had, 25 years earlier.
This kind of musical dialogue and interplay would not be possible in the non-digital world the same way it is here. This is a great example of what digital user-generated content really means, and this is what it will look like in the future. According to Martin:
A genuine “back and forth” between consumer and brand that regularly evolves and changes. What’s holding us back is that brands–trapped in a monologue mentality–are merely using the trappings of the new technology to help consumers create their own monologues.
DADA.DATA.ALPHA.BETA
This is one of the presentations that got us started down the whole path of “digital centered”. It’s the debut of Ogilvy’s work on the future of marketing. See below for the content from SlideShare.net.
Out of home is going digital centered (surprise…)
DOOH + Social Networking! (via SeeSaw)
For this Friday, we’ll share some news from the department of obviousity…out of home (OOH) advertising is going digital in a HUGE way. Marketers and advertisers investing in OOH ads & marketing are no longer creating static billboards but are putting out media that’s full of sights and motion, and maybe even sound!
One such purveyor of great digital OOH is SeeSaw Networks. I came across them today in my research for a client opportunity and am amazed at what they have in place with their “Life Pattern Marketing” model. They even have a well crafted whitepaper to back it all up!
As a big fan of ‘convergence, I was also pleased to get another similar but totally unrelated email today from EPM Communications on their new report released recently on Digital Out of Home Media, entitled Digital Out of Home Media.
If this is your thing, I recommend also checking out the Daily DOOH, a great blog on the subject!
What are you doing in Digital Out of Home?
B2B not moving as quickly to the digital center
Where we last left B2B marketing...
In spite of all of the evidence supporting the move toward a more ‘digital centered’ approach to marketing planning on the CPG and B-to-C side of the market, we’re not seeing the same support from B2B organizations. Laura Ramos of Forrester recently release a research report entitled “Making Social Media Work In B2B Marketing” that chronicles the slow progress in getting B-to-B marketers to embrace social media and digital centered concepts. Some of the less promising stats include:
- More than 60 percent of the 189 b-to-b marketing professionals (across seven industries) reported using conventional lead generation digital tactics, including e-newsletters, Webinars, microsites and online display ads.
- Only 31 percent reported using tactics like blogs, podcasts and social networks as new ways to engage buyers.
- Less than 10 percent of respondents said they are including social media applications—widgets, mashups, advergames, mobile ads and virtual worlds—in their marketing plans.
But just because marketers aren’t using these tools doesn’t mean they aren’t interested, as indicated by the high level of awareness and interest that B2B execs have in learning about such new approaches.
- More than 95 percent of executives maintain a high interest in learning about and investing in new products and services, the study says.
- 25 percent of respondents believe that Web 2.0 features are integral to building brand awareness, and indicate they want to avoid alienating socially adept early adopters.
I agree with Laura’s premise that B2B execs shouldn’t just push into these territories without a clear plan and process oriented approach (like the Forrester POST technique…), but in my experience, marketers are leaving money on the table and customers and prospects unserved by not relating to them in the increasingly digital centered world.
[via: Folio]
What are relationships?
One of the exercises that we go through during the event is go define relationships as a group and then translate those relationship definition into how we create strong digital centered relationships. Here’s the Wordle word cloud of our discussion in Chicago.
Relationships as defined by Chicago AMA Group (via Wordle.net)
Agency choices signaling movement toward the digital center
Digital Centered Agencies
Organizations are signaling their subtle moves toward the digital center with their new agency selections. Namely, they are selecting their digital agencies first and asking them to lead the charge as they pursue their ‘09 and forward marketing strategies. According to a recent article in AdAge:
While most clients still seek best-in-class specialists for every discipline, more are showing interest in digital agencies to serve as the lead on integrated communications efforts, consultants said. The uptick is particularly visible among marketers in the retail sector and other product categories where there is opportunity for e-commerce.
Who knew? In fact, part of this can be pinned on the fact that digital is hot right now and talent is mirgrating that way. So as marketers search for the best talent, they are finding it in increasing numbers in the ‘digital first’ agency ranks.
This bodes well for the future of digital. So well, in fact, that Forrester sees this trend growing over the next 5-10 years.
Late last year, Forrester completed a study of several interactive agencies. The report’s author, Brian Haven, argued that interactive shops are closer to the consumer, in a better place to mine the rich insights and data available via the web, and in the right place at the right time to capture consumer behavior changes. Because of those things, interactive shops are poised to be the “foundation for all marketing efforts within the next five to 10 years,” he wrote.
What about you? Are you making decisions based on the ‘digital centricity’ of your agency and marketing partners? If not, should you be?
