just another blog pressed for words

After returning from the Making Digital Work Conference at BDW, which included some of the most intelligent and forward-thinking minds in advertising, I expected to have all the answers to the digital future. Instead, I walked away with many questions, a revised outlook on the digital landscape, and a strong desire to affect our agency’s future.

I thought a meeting of great minds – like Matt Howell, Gareth Kay, Michael Tabtabai, Alastair Green, Edward Boches, Scott Prindle, and John Winsor – would have it all figured out. But even they, admittedly, didn’t have all the answers:

Stephen King quote – stolen from Gareth: “I’m just surprised that no one’s thought of a better idea yet.”

It took until Day II for me to realize that there wasn’t a single, simple answer. The rise of digital has reshaped our marketing landscape and removed much of the control marketers once enjoyed. Whether the presentation was geared towards art, creative, production process, briefs, agency structure, or the latest technologies – the Mad Men advertising model is useless today.

Solutions to today’s marketing questions are ever evolving. What might have worked yesterday, may not work tomorrow. And as scary as today’s marketing landscape appears to many, we are living through the most interesting period in our industry.

The rules have indeed changed. Campaigns as we once knew them are dead. Instead our commitment needs to be about creating experiences that encourage:

-       participation

-       transparency

-       value

-       play

-       conversation (social)

Despite the conference’s digital focus, it is clear that nobody believes interactive will replace all other forms of media. Though transmedia seems to be the hot term these days, I am a bigger fan of Tabtabai’s digiraditional. While this term was introduced jokingly, it highlights the fact that there isn’t an all-encompassing term for what a successful campaign should consist of today.

What does digiraditional really mean? Well, nothing… What it stands for though, does matter.

No longer will brands be able to shout at consumers.

Successful brands are providing real value through ongoing, relevant, and shareable content, experiences, and narratives. Agencies are beginning to figure this out. And yet many still have old agency structures, outdated internal resource bases, and broken financial models – which greatly hinder their ability to produce the brand experiences consumers’ desire.

In order to better service our clients, sell top-level work, and exploit today’s interactive toolbox we must break down archaic agencies structures.

Maybe that’s the answer. Prepare your agency for the digiraditional future.

…Oh, and by the way, it’s here.

More and more with clients and internally, participation is a focal point of conversation, as it should be.  How do we engage clients, consumers, and ourselves in the campaigns and concepts we create?  Without a more serious examination of participation on the Internet, we may see clients burnt by neglect (low participation) or, worse yet, by inappropriate actions that may cause embarrassment or negative impact.

The Internet is nothing without participation. It is just cold, inanimate, cobbled-together hardware and utilities that provide an infrastructure. So how can we inspire appropriate participation?

First, we should recognize that restrictions and labor intensity are not always a bad thing. For example, I have a DJ friend who makes music mixes available only if you send him a self-addressed, stamped envelope, which he uses to send you a CD. He does this not because he is old school or a luddite, but because he believes that music is so available now that for many people, collecting is more important than the content. He feels that if you have the patience to send him an envelope, and wait for your return CD, you may really desire to listen with a different kind of intent to the mix when it arrives.  This is a very interesting play on information exchange and participation along social networks.

In many projects lately, I have been stressing that we need to think hard about how we seek participation from potential users. For some projects, simply clicking on a “thumbs-up, thumbs-down” rating system can be very successful. (Consider the Digg social news service and how effectively news is shared with this simple gesture.) Other projects can escalate this ask with requests to #tag information (tweets), post photographs and videos, or even have the user generate original content.

We, as askers, makers, and marketers, need to take the extra time to create systems appropriate to project budgets and desired outcomes. Setting the bar too high and not getting enough return is a Fail, as far as I’m concerned. Many of our clients are still learning about social media and how they can interact with it, so we need to create feedback loops that create a desire for further exploration and success.

Simply put, we must practice, practice, practice. We must engage social systems, embrace as many opportunities as we can, and see what user experiences are like. We have to play with the network. At work, we should encourage this activity by as many of our colleagues/employees as possible, not just by a couple of creatives or planners. (You could use collaborative new-media tools to do this, like something from http://37signals.com or http://www.twiddla.com.) This internal experience must then be reflected back to the groups responsible for new-media output for clients.

In the end, I recommend having as much fun as possible. Playing games, interacting with forums and user groups, commenting on blogs, and investigating shopping reviews, recommendation sites, aggregators, contests, social networks, etc. Participate.