Designed to entertain visitors attending the 2010 Australian tennis open, Microsoft Surface technology was chosen for its unique multi-touch rewarding experience and capacity to push the creative boundaries of ideas.

Microsoft Surface enables friends and strangers to collaborate and explore content on a 30-inch (76cm) tabletop screen using hand gestures. The result is a surface interaction that is both rewarding and social at the same time.

Technology can be empty if not creatively lead. So it was equally important to ignite development through a truly engaging idea.

Watching people explore Microsoft Surface for the first time was intriguing. People would immerse themselves without hesitation. And it’s exciting to think how gesture technology will continue to stretch creative ways of relating product specific experiences to the real world of customer banking.

Our surface applications consisted of rich educational content that unveiled insight into the philosophy behind ANZ’s brand’ “we live in your world” as well as entertaining through multi player tennis game content.

You can check the video footage as part of our agency reel here M&C Saatchi

Advertisers realised influential behaviour was real. Extensible reach through social networks was achievable. Many brands looked to replicate successes, and many failed. Nevertheless, in 2009 advertisers welcomed with open arms the opportunity to integrate social media activity into their campaigns.

As we close the door on 2009 and look towards a new year of social community infiltration, advertisers appear ready but what state of readiness is the client in?

I was recently fortuitous to sit in with an exclusive council of clients who regularly get together to share inner challenges, fears and frustrations around social media and their brands. Given no advertisers were allowed, (I was an exception to this rule) this was a golden opportunity to gain insight into the mind of the client and understand from their perspective the implications on their business.

As the group gathered and settled into a collaborative chat I expected the discussion to be dominated by fear of the unknown and naive caution. After all as advertisers were often expected to be experts who will enlighten and lead clients through new media channel execution. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

In fact I sat back in awe as these clients were very much on the front foot pioneering social communities for their brands. And by the end of this session I came away feeling rather positive yet inwardly dizzy with how arrogant I was to generalise these clients.

With the discussion heating up I quickly regathered realising my opportunity here wasn’t to preach social media best practice but to learn and absorb the genuine business challenges facing clients  participating in this space.

Impressively the group was collectively insightful but it was apparent their own scenarios were quite different. As I listened and analysed each scenario I quietly divided clients into four separate segments. I refer to them as the Simplifiers, Observers, the Politicians and the Justifiers.

The Simplifiers were savvy and had been actively pursuing social media initiatives for at least 12 months. Like many compartmentalised brands starting out they had quickly built up multiple Facebook fan pages and unnecessary twitter profiles. However, through analysis and clear strategy they had culled these back and consolidated their presence. And with a new streamlined approach they were mindful of community equity so were careful not to ram product or new campaign messages down their throats. Rather they had confidence to relinquish their brand to their community. Simple strategies such as uncomplicated hash tagging were implemented to empower followers to generate their own content. Overtime they steadily nurtured community momentum. And they treated bloggers with respect by remunerating them 100% of ad serving revenue knowing visitors would click deeper beyond the blog and into further site content. By keeping it uncomplicated and above all monitoring customer sentiment and engaging directly with them was proving to be a winning formula for this group of clients. I was humbled and impressed.

The Observers knew they needed to start getting active and like pawns on a chessboard had begun to tactically position themselves forward.  Rather than leaping straight into Facebook fan page promotions and Twitter engagement, this group focussed on listening and responding. Customer service was their approach and their objectives were to gain relevant insights in order to enhance product development and service delivery. Like any smart business they were weary of their customers and determined to consolidate and change if necessary to improve satisfaction.

The Politicians were similar to the Observers but had trouble implementing their strategy due to political conflict within their organisation. They found themselves ostracised as ‘boat rockers’ and frowned upon for attempting to alter business strategy that had been operating just fine. In this group, the client became the diplomat nursing egos of those resisting change and philosophising business integrity with stakeholders happy to be ignorant of their customer opinions.

The Justifiers had a different yet equally frustrating internal battle. Their main conflict came from the risk adverse. These were the lawyers fretting about adequate moderation and believed staff should be instructed to engage customers with official business responses. And of course the lawyers were deeply obsessed with the risk of acknowledging (yet alone interacting with) negative sentiment within branded content. Frustrations didn’t end with the lawyers. There were also financial controllers demanding immediate return on investment. To the bean counters, any effort spent to build communities should equally remunerate the business in the same way a retail transaction takes place.

So these were the segments I shuffled each client into. Each had their own unique category complexities and there wasn’t one right solution to suit all businesses. But in the true nature of social collaboration, willing brands can support each other to overcome challenges and confidently build community equity. However the main upshot I took away from this client session was that they don’t need to be preached to participate. They’re already actively committed to social media activity.

Like most profit driven businesses operating in tough economic times they’re concentrating on servicing the customer and raising satisfaction scores. While certain clients are more advanced in their social community strategies at least they’re all listening and developing ways to overcome internal issues.

It was assuring to hear most clients were mindful of leaping blindly into Facebook fan pages, desolate YouTube channels and aimless Twitter profiles. And they all agreed that social media participation shouldn’t be restricted to specialised staff or require multiple people to resource. Social community building is expected to be an integral communication channel within their overarching marketing plans for 2010.

The New Year is shaping up to be one full of social branded activity. Where the customer drives brand direction and not a marketing team broadcasting how you should perceive it. So advertisers listen up as your clients may just be one step ahead of you.

New technology is inciting fresh ways to consume experiences and savour more meaningful engagement. And this opportunity is developing exponentially. Often faster than businesses can respond and keep up.

Unfortunately for businesses exposed in this turbulent sea of change find themselves lumbering behind their faster moving consumers. Their attempts to reach out and connect are either clumsy or out of context. And to be fair, it’s tricky being responsive when innovation occurs so quickly.

So it’s rather refreshing when brands proactively invent new ways to engage with their markets. Take for instance the incredibly successful Whopper Sacrifice campaign. A simple idea, it cleverly influenced users to sacrifice their friends to win free whopper burgers. This of course is paradox to the way users scrupulously use Facebook to build their network of friends. Almost as impressive, Mini launched a print ad using augmented reality to bring it to life in 3D. These campaigns are both incredibly influential in motivating other brands to evaluate how they engage consumers.

The strain for many businesses is their inability to be agile. This often stems from inflexible objectives and uncompromising processes. To innovate and keep up can feel like running through water. So as a business how do you maintain pace in this dizzy pursuit to innovate?

Often easier said than done it comes down to elusively adapting. Being prepared as a business to listen, engage and respond to changing consumer patterns.

To successfully innovate is to surprise and delight through new ways of engagement that invigorate consumers to evangelise their brand experience.

But what does innovation mean?

Certain businesses will be forced out of comfort zones. In order to open up and understand the opportunities customers seek.

This may involve assessing ways to reach and engage consumers based on a whole new measurement approach. An approach devised on fresh business metrics and shift in business strategy, resourcing, education, expectations and reallocation of budget.

For those willing, innovation will stimulate new creative ways to connect with consumers.

After all our environment is built around opportunity. We have faster broadband connectivity. Robust mobile devices enable us to access content on the run. And with real time data at our finger tips we can distribute content on demand to semantically where ever we choose.

Responsible of course is the dynamic duo Facebook and Twitter who are arguably the two staple diets fuelling content distribution around the web. From my early humble interactions on Facebook I’ve learnt to share more information and spread my social footprint across multiple applications. For instance, I can Twitter my attendance at a concert and use Brightkite to geo tag the venue. I can even snap off some photos and upload these directly to Facebook or my Flickr account which alert my network of this activity. This form of content distribution happens fast and all conveniently through my mobile apps. And I don’t even need to take a breather from sipping the cool beverage resting in my other hand.

What a feast of opportunity this type of behaviour provides brands looking for new ways to understand motivational triggers, reach and engagement. First Facebook and now Twitter have moulded content distribution into mainstream interaction. Both fiercely compete for our insatiable thirst for sharing and publishing vast amounts of new information to the web. And there are now many other applications which help us to openly share our thoughts, opinions and expose our lifestyles which can often be re-syndicated in rich semantic fashion to millions.

Consider 3 out of 4 Australians visited a social networking site in June 2009; the opportunity to launch brand communications from these is immense. After all we’re influential creatures with 75% of us more likely to consider the opinions of our peers before making a purchase decision.

So is the future of successful brand engagement behind how we leverage the wisdom of crowd sourced information and participate in their social sharing worlds? We do know the likely hood of real time data will substantially rise over the next few years. Brands need to create their social footprint now to optimise multiple touch point opportunities. Or at least learn how to dip their toes before diving right in.

Innovative techniques will stem from our ability to understand the motivation behind crowd sourced information. And power to influence this behaviour and facilitate the semantic channels to distribute it.

Innovation is constant. And to innovate is an incredibly exciting concept for brands seeking to surprise and delight their customers. The communication landscape is shifting. We’ll see new forms of search technologies, media discovery, advertising, analytics plus photo and video sharing applications. The ecosystem we currently refer to as brand engagement is about to incomprehensibly get better.

And while ROI should rightly be a guiding beacon, brands are often mesmorised in their quest to measure online marketing activity. Marketing communication is embarking down a road of ever increasing savvy internet users. And brands must adapt to maintain speed with this evolution that sees generation Y transition into adults. Interactive consumption is more sophisticated than before and brands are finding they need to sharpen their digital approach and in particularly evaluate their ROI objectives.

When it comes to commercialising interactive advertising, its interesting to observe the brands who are exploring longer term opportunities beyond initial quick fix wins. They are seeking to engage consumers who are naturally inquisitive for value-add experiences. New technologies are playing a big part in fostering this behaviour. But for brands what if anything are the commercial implications of advancing interactive consumer patterns and their marketing strategies?

Some brands may need to reconsider what success looks like in the online space. For instance, how will future consumers of your brand interact with content? How will they make decisions about your brand? What will motivate them and what if anything will generate long-term brand relationships?

Brands have always leveraged the web as an interactive medium to engage with prospects. And of course the demonstrable benefit is the ability to track performance and measure interaction. Naturally direct marketers were of the earlier groups to embrace ROI opportunities in the online space. The web enabled them to be present where consumers were searching and deliver targeted incentives with measurable call to actions. Google’s pay per click model propelled direct marketers forward in a revolutionary movement to connect brands with consumers. But as we know online user consumption is evolving fast and beyond early search orientated behaviour to more meaningful experiences. Their interactive curiosity and expectation goes deeper than a few clicks. They want to engage and brands need to respond.

Now and again I hear, digital marketers have created a rod for their own backs by concentrating too much on consumer metrics, such as click through rates and number of ste visits. So does this mean we’re missing a more obvious trick when engaging consumers? Are traditional consumer metrics obscuring a bigger business metric opportunity? These questions should be haunting us daily and thankfully there are brands who we may learn from in their resolve to rapidly match evolving online market behaviour.

Brands who are comfortable with their market and know what their brand means to consumers are breaking free from traditional digital strategies. For instance, display and SEO marketing isn’t necessarily always enough to earn brand consideration. In comparison to real life realtionships, these brands are in tune with their audience and embrace them not as sales but as people worth having a relationship with. These are the brands who are diversifying their direct response initiatives with multiple applications that connect with consumers through value-add opportunities.

Integrating interactive strategies rewards brands in many ways. In particular, it elevates expectation and raises brand perception. If you can connect your brand with consumers beyond a transaction level and into a more personable space you’ll start to build trust that can lead to positive brand relationships and even advocacy. Many brands are successful in this space. Dell for instance, successfully transformed negative brand perception to positive simply by engaging consumers directly through one to one interactive forums. They addressed consumer issues and acted to resolve them in a transparent manner bespoke of any relationship worth fighting for. True to the rules of engagement, they listened and responded to customers on the customers terms. As a result, Dell became one of the brands to pioneer the benefits of social media marketing and inspire other brands to follow suit.

Sometimes we undervalue good old fashioned brand experiences that consumers appreciate in an interactive space. Social media is one of many techniques to help strengthen brand positioning. And brands are benefiting from not just interactive converstations, they’re building reputations through emerging and multiple touch-points. New channels are elevating new ways to reach and engage prospects, untap genuine insights and nurture consumer loyalty.

At M&C Saatchi we’re fortunate to be working alongside clients such as ANZ who actively optimise interactive opportunities to communicate their “more convenient banking” brand positioning. And whatever the communication idea maybe, it will always pivot around convenience and interpreted across multiple touch-points. For instance, ANZ launched late last year their ANZMoneyManager product with a diverse blend of direct response advertising, rich media and social media marketing. This integrated approach helped surpass an ambitious annual target within the first 9 months. It was quite simply achieved by diversifying the creative idea through muliple touch points. Initial direct response was supplemented with a video tutorial plus social engagement facilitated through product blog and twitter profile. ANZ realised they needed to be present where their prospects were active and more importantly, prepared to engage to demonstrate product and path the building blocks towards long term affinity. They were focussed and disciplined with a much longer-term objective. An objective led by great relationships and consumer advocacy.

Beyond social media, brands are realising longer term opportunities through exciting new interactive consumption. Which is important when you want to be first point of consideration in this highly competitive market. So to be top of mind, brands are learning to be conveniently within reach and on call to engage. Whether its problem solving, customer service or even product demonstration, the fresher the brand experience the higher chance of securing a longer-term bond.

Technology will drive interactive communications. More importantly it will bridge a semantic gap to connect information between multiple touch-points. iPhone applications for example, provide end users with contextual relevance and value add. Conveniently they map information and resolve issues. They even create new reasons to engage beyond consumer expectation. And of course this interaction can be measured. Commerically this is quite exciting. A great example is Nissan’s new iPhone app for their electric car. The app adds value to car owners by notifying them of remaining charge time when they are away from their car, as well as where nearby charge stations are with prices.

Supporting this wave of emerging mobile technology comes Augmented Reality. In a relatively new way to ‘wow’ consumers, AR visualise’s data and brings to life a richer channel of engagement. For brands, the ability to interpret data visually simplifies the process of connecting a consumer need with product benefits. This of course opens up vast commercial opportunities. On the web, YouTube viewers can now interact directly through video hot spots enabling brands to introduce retail messages and track them.The key of course is to link data measurement back into the over-arching business objective and integrated digital strategy. Which of course is an extension of your business model and evaluation of success.

What ever your long term business objectives, it always pays to continually evaluate your communication path to success. For instance Gen Y may not necessarily be your audience right now but in 5 years time they may well fall into your target market. And when they do they will bring with them an evolution of interactive characteristics. For brands it pays to know the behaviour of future markets now and apply learnings to a longer term strategy.

Commercial reward comes at the hand of brand perception. You can drive consumer expectation skywards simply through meaningful ideas. Maurice Saatchi once said, simple ideas enter the brain quicker and stay there longer. Its all about contextual timing and connecting with impact.
Case in point, when I was 15 years old Gillette handed out free razor blades to the boys at my school. I didnt think much of it at the time but funnily enough I still use Gillette to shave today. Gillette subliminally remains top of mind in my purchase cycle. Almost sinister in nature, it was a simple idea delivered in context and within the right environment resonating into a 18 year brand relationship.

The interactive marketing industry could be considered the contemporary battle field for brands. Now is a great time to look beyond reactive measures and act long term. It’s simply about applying your business model to an interactive game plan. As Warren Buffett once said, “In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield”.

Often brand campaigning is wasted by businesses who are invisible online. If you’re a retailer this is an issue as people are using the internet to research and comparatively shop. This means your above the line advertising is only as good as your ability to attract, connect and convert in the online space.

Retail trends dictate people will jump online to search for stuff they need. This leaves you and your business a narrow but equally positive window of opportunity. Start by leveraging your search marketing, any affiliate partnerships and display advertising. Optimise these online entry points by getting to know who you’re talking to. Evaluate the language prospects use to know more about their intentions. Look for commonalities, variances, misspellings in search queries and even queries based on campaign names. By being present where prospects are searching and listening to their voice, you may capture their attention and connect on their terms. You can filter insights into your display advertising. Test and learn different lines of copy and tone to identify what motivates prospects. Trial various options until you are relevant. If you understand your prospects at the point where they are searching (although they don’t know you yet) you are on your way to making your business appear more rewarding.

If you’re successful in connecting with prospects you’re half way to converting them. Now you must create a seamless way to access your product or service and demonstrate why it is relevant to solving their query. A difficult user experience at this point can be costly for your business. In the same light you wouldn’t invite new vegetarian clients to dinner without sending address details and a time to expect them. And you certainly wouldn’t serve them up a meaty BBQ when they arrive.

Make your online user experience easy but most importantly make it relevant. Demonstrate campaign continuity as you transition prospects into your online business. A positive user experience will most certainly increase your chances for conversion.

Get to know the people who are interested in your product or service. Profile them on arrival. Learn their interests and motivational triggers so that you may engage and educate them about your brand in a relevant way. By ensuring your brand is personally relevant, you’ll effectively minimise any barriers to conversion. Prospects will be prepared to go out of their way if they see the benefit of your product to them. Often business judgement is clouded at this point by focussing too much on product attributes. Rather than getting to know customers first and secondly educating product based on what they have learnt about their customers.

When it comes to measuring advertising ROI be sure to understand what you want to achieve when monitoring online activity. By all means track site visits, pages viewed and time on site but avoid the common pitfall of using this metric as a measurement of success. These are in a sense consumer metrics and not business metrics. A true business metric involves defining the path from when people first come into contact with your brand, the journey they flow to get to your product or service, and the final acquisition stage. This path requires constant evaluation at each key point. Through data analytics you may hypothesise insights and establish motivational triggers to deliver personable messaging and get prospects over the line. Get this right and you’re on your way to knowing more about your customers and converting new ones.

To me this is an interesting scenario and although interactive touch screens are nothing new the marketing opportunity is fascinating. Technology is evolving fast and the marketing opportunity even faster. For instance, interactive window displays have the ability to attract the attention of passersby. By inviting consumers to touch they are instantly engaging us with their business or brand. It’s a non-intrusive experience enabling consumers to explore and discover information such as a product’s features or evaluate customer reviews. More importantly it’s an effective way to capture an audience that wouldn’t have necessarily entered your store in the first place.

With the right expertise interactive windows can be a cost effective way to engage customers in an untapped communication stream. Consumers interacting with your window display have the opportunity to create deeper and more meaningful relationships with your brand. They can create their own content and even share this content. For example, you may invite consumers to complete a quick survey. Results are displayed in real time so they can view the outcome of their poll participation. Alternatively you may direct consumers to the internet to obtain richer information through their mobile phones using QR code displays. In fact consumers may even be able to evaluate product via the touch screen, go online via their mobile phone and purchase the product through e-commerce. The customer doesn’t even need to go into the shop to make a purchase.

Interactive windows offer endless opportunity. Especially as they invite a direct response from the consumer. Simply put you can capture consumer data and learn how to respond to their preferences. It enables you to evaluate and segment your marketing messages. Not to mention establish insights for product innovation.

In addition interactive windows enable you to tell a rich PR story. A mob of bystanders interacting with your store window will create general buzz and drive word of mouth. Recently we created an interactive window display designed to raise awareness of Melbourne’s drought and rapid depletion of water reservoir levels. Visually this window display was fairly compelling as we used flash animation to comparatively display the difference in water levels of today vs. a few years ago. To enhance the animation and bystander involvement we animated fish in the water. Cameras on either side of the display detected passerby movement and the fish would follow people as they walked past. The street buzz we created was so positive that the store manager invited us to replicate and run the same display in their other stores nationwide.

In Japan interactive outdoor messaging is learning to respond directly to consumer segmentation for even more targeted advertising. Here a new series of outdoor billboard messaging takes photos of passersby. Through facial recognition technology the billboards dynamically change and serve advertising based on passerby gender and age. It’s rudimentary at this stage but the idea is to display ads to suit consumer profiles in real-time. Clever and intuitive, it ensures messages are relevant to achieve cut through.

For brands and retailers interactive outdoor communications is another semantic touch-point to connect with consumers. It is rapidly becoming a smarter way of extending integrated messaging and the benefits range from brand building through to direct response and data acquisition. As consumers we benefit too. With more consumer touch points we have more choice and access to more insightful information. The result, empowered purchasing and greater value for our spending dollar.

In particular there are complexities involved with targeting various consumer markets at regional levels. Value propositions or point of difference maybe established at a national level which is great. But is this message relevant to all consumer markets? Communicating your brand may perform well in Western Australian but may not necessarily resonate with consumers in central NSW. Even within cities, customer segments can differ greatly.

Business marketing models need to respond with flexibility. Core messaging and product offers need to adapt to resonate and be relevant in different markets. Flexibility can be achieved by delivering your brand through local area marketing techniques. More importantly, flexibility of LAM places your franchisee in the hot seat and makes them accountable for driving sales. However, problems may arise when LAM is inefficient and more often than not this can be detrimental to your brand perception and business sales.

For the head office of a franchise, LAM can be a fractured tale of woe. Catalogues designed off brand, inconsistent direct marketing and even local newsletters written in irregular tone of voice can be just the tip of the iceberg. Some businesses even produce their own websites and for a personable touch, send out emails to their local database. But without clear direction in how to position and deliver their brand, local advertising can appear clunky and lack purpose. Unfortunately, for the head office who spends millions of dollars on marketing, clunky LAM not only dilutes brand recollection but leaves their consumer market open to competitive brands. In addition to all this, there are many franchisees who don’t attempt LAM simply because they are business operators and not marketers. Marketing is not in their skill set and quite frankly they are too busy running their stores to advertise effectively.

So how can LAM be customised to motivate franchisees? And what about adhering to consistent brand guidelines?

It’s important to note any head office who seeks to control or dictate LAM will struggle to be effective. It is difficult for the head of a franchise to understand the business complexities of their local stores. Can you imagine running a small business in Margaret River only to be told how to market to your customers by some city dweller from Sydney’s head office? When this happens, disgruntlement from the franchisee sets in. The best thing head office can do is NOT to acknowledge franchisees as stores belonging to the head office but rather as franchisees are their OWN individual businesses. The role of head office is to guide and mentor. And if at all possible inspire and educate how to successfully establish business goals and communicate marketing objectives.

Rather than appear as the evil dictating franchiser, the head office should empower franchisees to sell at a local level. Empower them not only with information but also ability to connect with other like minded business owners within the franchise. Online tools will help achieve this.

To deliver mass communication and measure activity, franchisers have the opportunity to create an online social hub. A hub that enables franchisees to make informed decisions, connect, collaborate and share ideas. Ideas are the most powerful asset within any network. When shared, ideas become a unifying bond and are perceived as both credible and respected in the eyes of the community. A franchisee that is implementing successful LAM should be able to communicate their story to other franchisees. Particularly with those who share similar business environment and consumer base. The ability to socially connect online and provide advice, tips and share problems will benefit your franchise as a community and install pride and sense of belonging.

All online activity should start with simple online tools that require minimal effort or input from the franchisee. Activity should extend to user friendly templates that fit with brand guidelines and have flexibility to be personalised for local area marketing. Additionally head office should display latest marketing collateral with access to corresponding advertising tips. Access to the wider franchise community should be simple and communication channels transparent.

Empower your franchisees that do LAM well to evangelise their story and they will inspire their peers. The life of the business owner is such that they have so little time to promote LAM. But they will take the time to listen and respond to peers that can demonstrate measurable business success and share what works well for them. The head office should step back and facilitate this connection. Alternatively, the head of a franchise who attempts to enforce how their franchisees should run their business will be met with resentment and lack of commitment.

Leverage your online network to inspire LAM that works. Unify your community to educate one another and you may just find sharing ideas will be prosperous.

Amongst all of this is the beautiful parody emerging from ruthless business decisions made by our CFO’s or those who count the beans. Decisions with intent to cut back on outgoing business costs starting with the marketing budget. Although marketers will have less money to invest in communications, executive expectations will be just as high to deliver on forecasted results. However, unfortunately with reduced budget compounded with added pressure of achieving ROI springs risker initiatives that could easily turn sour and result in overall higher business cost!

But this pressure shouldn’t break you, rather it should make you as the opportunity to engage consumers is probably stronger than ever. You just need to know where to look.

When the going is good we often cruise along for the ride. But when the good turns bad, the track becomes a little bumpy and shrouded with bitter disruption. One must must adjust and adjust quickly. For many marketers this means getting back to basics and getting the basics right.
Defining business objectives is fundemental to any marketing plan and in times such as these it is our starting point once again. Without clarity the journey to success will inevitably be a stumbling affair.

Understanding your environment is probably of most importance. And one that is pivotal in mastering uncertainty. Plan to adapt requires insightful consideration and will keep your business model afloat and on course with reaching your goals.

So what do we know about our current environment? Well, in the last 2 years global wealth has dramatically dropped by 45%. We are evidently exposed to this everyday through media and directly in our own business activity. Globally marketers will see their advertising budget reduced by 15%. Demand for effective ads and return on dollar spent will be high. Gone are the gluttonous days of swallon campaign budgets. Every dollar will be accounted for and advertising efforts will be measured for effectivess. Direct response and conversions will weigh heavily on business success. As we roll into 2009 I predict brands who are used to annually producing 4 brand TVC’s will be restricted to just one with more emphasis weighted towards spending budget in measurable channels such as digital marketing. Not only because of digital’s measurability but because brands are more cognisant of people spending more time consuming online media than any other channel.

Personally I believe 2009 will be a defining year for Australian online marketing. If digital advertising isn’t yet playing a key role in your marketing plan it should be. In fact you have no choice. Digital advertising has been mainstream for sometime and to put it simply your brand should be present where consumers are most active. For instance, 25% of Australian customer expenditure can be attributed back to some form of online interaction.

Adapting to consumer behaviour is imperative. While we know lighter consumer disposable income will influence price-related decisions, there is still opportunity to not necessarily compete on price but attract customers through more meaning full relationships. Or to leverage what some marketers refer to as consumer “flight to quality”. These are brand relationships fueled by value, loyalty, trust and transparency. This is particulalryl important with the rise of online comparative shopping. With fewer pennies to spare consumers are concious of obtaining value for their money and actively shop online to inform their purchasing decision. Product evaluation will remain a consistent blend of exposure to traditional advertising, word of mouth among peers and now with even heavier weighting, user initiated online comparison shopping. Web accessibility is faster and cheaper than ever. And people will utilise the web to search, compare and evaluate their spending decision. Brands or businesses that adapt are the ones that cleverly optimise consumer activity through smarter brand cues, supported by relevant and value offer incentives.

Adapting your web presence should be a phased approach to ensure minimal investment or disruption.

Phase 1: Cost can be neutralised by by simply phasing your online approach. Start by considering how consumers search for your related products or services. Engage their attention and convert behaviour by allocating advertising budget from less measurble activity and towards your online presence. Identify how best to optimise consumer search activity. Begin by bidding and purchasing key words or queries that specifically target your consumer activity and avoid expensive generic search terms. For example, if you are selling hardware online, focus on queires around home improvement or renovating such as “decorating the home”, “Tiling the ceiling”. These will be more specific to consumer needs while at the same time more cost effective than generic key words such as “DIY” or “power tools”.

Next step is to optimise your site experience and reward consumer queries with relevant content or value based offers. Responding to search queries with relevant content raises incentive for visitors to interact. If your content fails to fulfill consumer needs, they’ll simply move on. For instance, if a user is searching for a product you sell, you can add value by serving them related products specific to their search query while at the same time empower the user to evaluate related content to engage them even further. For example, you could display product reviews, indicate where the nearest retail outlet is to purchase the product and even serve exclusive web offers as incentive plus related products other people have purchased. All of which informs the user and influences their purchase decision. For many businesses, delivering additional value is marely a process of re-purposing content. A process of taking existing elements and making them more prominent to suit the user. This should be relatively painless and cost effective exercise.

To further captilise on user search behaviour, establish a presence in indusrty related blogs or forums. Partner or sponsor industry related content. Cross link to your site from key suppliers. While cross-linking may not necessarily see a huge rise in traffic volume to your site, it will improve your page rank to and more importantly capitlise on the ever increasing comparative shopping behaviour of consumers. However good SEM and SEO can be wasted if results to search queries are not relevant with value driven content.

So you are capturing search queries but what is the next step? You need to build your consumer relationships and install trust with your brand. Start responding to consumer behaviour. Measure their online activity, familiarise with their behaviour and connect with them through relevant content. Begin by incentivising data capture. Once you have profiled your consumers simply build your database by driving tailored and localised value. Your consumers should dictate how they consumer your brand online. Ultimately you want to achieve advocacy and establish brand loyalty. Brand loyalty requires a ‘test and learn’ communication method. Refine what resonates and connects personally with your consumers. Trial and test. Segmenting consumer behaviour and localising your content will make the experience relevant and personlised. This may require template flexibility to enhance your existing interface. Aesthetically responding with customer centric value will grossly outweigh the minimal cost required to enhance your user experience.

For most businesses this may simply involve re-purposing content or bringing to the front content which is currently too deep. Start by putting your self in your consumer’s shoes and asking is your site relevant and compelling to my needs? Too often businesses fall victim of chest beating or regurgitating corporate policy to their customers. What they consider to be important information relating to their business, such as heritage is prioritised over needs and preferences of their target audience. If you’re selling a product, show it. And show the price while your at it and even how or where to purchase the product. But don’t stop there. Add value to the user experience by enabling consumers to write or read reviews of your product. Why not incentivise with bundled product offers? Basically you should connect with value relating to why the consumer is visiting your site. Cut through the clutter and serve a user experience that is easily one click away for the achieving a result. Minimising user effort will lead to healthier customer relationships. What you’ll find is a smaller catchmment of dedicated consumers is more profitable than a wider catch of non-dedicated consumers. For any business whether its retailing or services, if your site fails to purposefully connect, consumers will simply move on.

Start by getting the basics right. Know your customer and know your environment. Your marketing budget maybe reduced but by evaluating your landscape and readjusting your communication channels you can be even more effective through online initiaitves.

Phase 2. Test your enhancements, learn your consumer behaviour and implement more of what works well. Strong consumer relationships will be your biggest asset in times of uncertainty. You should respond to consumer needs and preferences. Build their trust and you will earn their loyalty. Simple aesthetic tweaks driving consumer centric communications effectively enables you to attribute business results back to web activity.

So if Phase 2 is about implementing more of what works well to strengthen your relationship with consumers, then phase 3 consists of capitilising on return on investment.

Reaching phase 3 is part of a long-term goal. Initially your objective was to cost effectively phase consumer engagement and capture their attention with trust to deliver value based information. Now you can leverage both this relationship and revenue accrued to invest more heavily at a higher level of value (and cost). Aesthetic changes are surface remedies afterall. Utilise the opportunity you have created to address back-end development that may be required, enhance functionality and stabilise your web presence so that you may dress up and deliver an interactive retail experience that is aimed at best-in-class.

Business models are always in a constant state of evolution. And to operate in one of the most recent challenging economic climates, it pays to be nimble. Retail consideration has evolved with more decision making taking place through online consumption. While marketing to consumers across mulitple channels will always be necessary we must pay attention to the rise of evaluation taking place in the online channel. According to Google, 47% of intention or decisions made to purchase clothing apparel occurs online. Simply put, if you are selling clothing apparel virtually half of your market is online waiting to be engaged. Be present where your customers are searching or you will miss out on a substantial piece of the pie.

Adapting your digital marketing should not be a costly burden if you understand the lay of the land. That is, clearly understand your consumers needs and preferences and the environment in which they consume content to inform their purchase decision. Connect and build the equity in your brand through relevant value based communications. Optimise data insights to refine and roll out more of what works well and you have a business model to un tap unlimited potential that is only offered through online marketing.

Is your retail brand active where your consumers are?

Latest quarterly figures released by the IAB supports this with reports of 10.6% growth of internet advertising in the US. How does this apply to the Australian market or even your brand? Well, in uncertain global economic times what better environment than the US to observe emerging market trends to learn how to re-evaluate your brand approach and combat uncertainty.

IAB figures indicate search is still the dominant online engagement channel growing 20% and attributing to 45% of internet advertising. This completely makes sense as consumers look for greater value for money by comparatively searching online to inform their purchase consideration. What is also fascinating from a brand perspective is the rise of rich media. IAB reports a whopping 123% ascent of US activity in the last quarter. Engagement through rich interaction and video streaming is clearly growing stronger and proving worthy of our valuable attention span as consumers of online activity. The opportunity for brands is evident. Consumers are online searching for your products and services. They are even willing to interact and engage in richer more brand experiences.

What to do? Build your brand online if it’s not present already. This doesn’t mean replicating company logo and regurgitating corporate policy but assessing your brand attributes and translating this into the online environment.

Consumer markets are rapidly evolving so your brand must keep up. Initially you should step back and consider your brand. Your brand essentially is how you, your colleagues communicate your products and services and how consumers and critics perceive them. You must feel confident in what your products or services stand for in order to communicate and influence brand perception.

So if brand perception is influenced through communication, how do you communicate your brand? Traditionally broadcast channels have been dominant such as print, TVC’s, radio, outdoor, DM and even online. Their purpose is to inform and install brand confidence. All of which intends to drive an experience that leads to subsequent conversion. However, with more people consuming online content than any other channel we must consider consumer behaviour and the implication for brands in this space. Online consumption is rapidly evolving but this doesn’t mean shifting all your eggs from one basket to another. Rather you should manage multiple communication streams and establish integrated messaging for your brand. Each communication stream has a specific purpose and should link to form an integrated brand platform.

The emerging dominance of the internet has empowered consumers with the ability to conveniently assess information on their own terms. It can not be repeated enough, online marketing is not a passive medium but one which invites consumers to interact. Consumers search, connect, participate and influence online conversations based on their own individual needs and preferences. Brands must not only be present to capitalise on rapidly growing search behaviour but immersive with relevant content and experiences. Optimising search and utilising rich interactive content will help brands build relationships. But for brands to truly influence consumer perception in this space they must be educated and conversant in order to understand relevant engagement to respond. Above all brands should be transparent to establish consumer trust and confidence. Be aware of the consumer, their power to evaluate products and services, their ability to share opinions and influence behaviour through social networks before any attempt to connect.

Social media marketing allows consumers to connect with brands and is a channel on the rise. As a communications stream social marketing breaks down the broadcast walls of old and provides opportunity to develop stronger and more meaningful brand relationships through one to one communications. Consumers can make commentary and converse about experiences in social environments such as blogs and forums. In these economically challenged times brands who are present, listen and respond will differentiate from competitors. Leveraging social brand relationships and connecting through consumer communities can be an influential factor for brand perception.

However, be prepared to tread with caution. Along with the opportunity to connect your brand through one to one communications is public exposure to all feedback, good and bad. It is how brands respond that will determine their consumer perception and reputation in this space. Like any one to one conversation, responding or addressing feedback is crucial to the conversation existence. Being nimble to respond in real time to both positive and negative feedback is even better and enforces your intention to have a transparent relationship. Brands will be rewarded for honest social participation even when addressing negative feedback. Social etiquette dictates that humans who make mistakes but own up will be forgiven for their error but unfortunately there is little sympathy to brands who make mistakes and especially those who ignore their consumers.

Connecting with key influencers in social channels enables brands to filter positive experiences through their online networks. Social activity such as, syndicating information and sharing news feeds, bookmarking compelling content through Delicious, micro blogging commentary through Twitter or connecting through Facebook fan pages are all ways in which consumers have the power to spread their brand experience and influence their social networks. Bear in mind social marketing is a branding opportunity. Measuring sales conversions is dependant on your brand positioning, transparency, responsiveness and operational platform.

Know your consumer. Embrace their consideration behaviour and apply learning’s to influence their perception of your brand. Leverage the growth of search activity by responding to consumers with relevant dialogue or information. Develop richer more interactive content and reward consumers for their online engagement. Be present and personable and you may even influence their purchasing decision. Secure your brand position in the emerging torrent of online consumption and you will not only strengthen your multi channel communications but open your business to whole new level of exposure.

Sure some publishers may not support flash but the ones on this particular media schedule did. Personally I would prefer to optimise flash where possible. Animated gifs certainly aren’t as slick as flash banners and due to protocols they often restrict creative opportunity. Flash empowers us to inspire and influence user interaction. Heavy file weights and limited frames mean animated gif production can be challenging and comparable with flash banner building they are more cumbersome and consequently require similar head hours to produce. To this extent they are not necessarily cheaper to build. Cost saving is fairly minimal.

Media objective is to optimise client budget. This objective can sometimes overpower our brand engagement objective. This is evident when Media thinly distribute creative messaging across ROS placements which essentially is offloading bulk inventory to fill publisher holes. Effective targeting is inhibited by this carpet bombing technique at the expense of client budget and quality of reach. Ultimately though I’m concerned how media and creative engagement can at times feel so far removed. Aren’t we both working for the same client? Our roles are to accurately target and engage client prospects with a brand experience that influences a desirable response. In simple terms we both want to inspire our online audience to click through advertising to learn more.

With extended broadband services and faster computers our online experience is now habitual. Accessing favourite sites or browsing the web is an everyday experience. We demand richer engagement and empowerment to interact. Apple acknowledges this demand for content interaction and is initiating moves towards introducing flash enabled content for their iPhones. And so for brands who advertise online the challenge is to embrace their target audience and cut through the clutter. Successful online market penetration and consumer brand advocacy stems from initial engagement and positive brand experience.

As a client, your online presence is a window for prospects to evaluate your business. If this is slick, powerful and relevant to your audience then the experience will be aspirational. Successful brands optimise online constraints and invite their audience to experience the brand for themselves. These brands are comfortable with their business values and understand exactly who their brand is talking to. This allows them to convey compelling customer centric messaging.

When clients brief me to produce online campaigns my first instinct is to distill all the complexities associated with their brand and target audience. Identifying these complexities allows us to drill down into a creative springboard to engage the target audience. How we express this creative springboard differentiates us within the busy online environment. Brand engagement is key. And through positive online experience your audience will be stimulated to click.

To rise above the noise your brand messaging needs to be original, creative and desirable. As previously mentioned, technologies help you do this such as flash which opens up creative boundaries. Flash allows for slick, eye catching creative that is inviting whereas gifs can feel archaic, passive and detrimental to how you intend your brand and online message to be perceived.

So if flash attractively empowers online users to interact with richer messaging and allows you to express your brand in the light bespoke of a positive experience why serve gifs over flash? I always understood flash banners should be served as default to gif banners. Gifs should only be served as back-up options when users do not have flash enabled, have slow internet connections or slow computers. But surely this occurrence would be rare these days? So I question why media would propose animated gif engagement over flash, particularly when it is to the detriment of the online brand experience.

Maybe I’m overly critical and blinded to the bigger picture but would love to learn more about media intentions with serving gifs or your thoughts.