‘Traditional marketing channels are dead’. This is the cry that we hear repeatedly from digital evangelists, who tell us that our more established channels of communication are being swallowed by online media platforms, sidelined into becoming one small, insignificant part of an overall mix that has digital at its heart.

A recent article published by the Harvard Business review made such a bold statement, suggesting that in today’s ‘social media-infused environment’, traditional marketing just doesn’t work as well as it used to.  Read more »

I’ve been wondering if a fixation with viral is preventing brands from getting the coverage their campaigns deserve?

There used to be something really cool, edgy and subversive about viral marketing. Like someone telling a secret online that suddenly ignited and spread like wildfire to the four corners of the Earth – boom! And there’s nothing quite like content sharing on this scale to take a brand global. Read more »

Kraft’s European vice president of marketing, Daryl Fielding, was recently quoted as saying “don’t forget customer needs in the rush to digital”, and for me this serves to highlight some of the problems that marketers face as they look at new technologies to help them deliver their messages to more and more people as effectively as possible.

It’s often far too easy to get caught up in the bright lights of digital, but marketers have to look closely at what they are doing and the “new media” channels that they are using, and ask themselves whether they are really delivering in the way that traditional media are? Yes, digital is by its very nature extremely measurable and has changed the way we look at many other media channels, but sometimes the numbers can be distracting. Read more »

Online advertising compares poorly in relation to paid-for and traditional media according to a recent  published Advertising Association report.

It also fires a worrying warning shot across the bows of those marketers seeking to focus their efforts extensively on social media. It claims that there are vast chunks of consumers who never use Facebook or Twitter and while those who do use social media represent a large audience – are they the right audience? Read more »

When I switched on my computer this morning I found among my emails at least five friend requests from Facebook brand pages. This set me thinking about the pursuit of branded content that marketers appear to be undertaking. Read more »

At the recent IAB Engage conference, Yahoo’s chief executive and president Carol Bartz was quoted as saying that brands aren’t doing enough to exploit the power of online display advertising.

Although this is a fair point, for me, the real issue is to try and understand why brands aren’t doing this and, furthermore, how we go about educating them to do so. Read more »