A decade ago, Facebook had not been invented and the idea that a souped-up cellphone could represent the future of marketing sounded like science fiction. But the past 10 years have turned the world of advertising on its head: The big three traditional media models of radio, television and print have taken a back seat to growth in the exploding realm of digital marketing and communications, and there is a lot of uncertainty about the next decade. Financial Post reporter Hollie Shaw asked three advertising leaders to share their thoughts on 2010 and beyond.
Green marketing
GEOFFREY ROCHE, founder and co-owner of advertising agency Lowe Roche
The computer and a bunch of other devices have profoundly changed how we as an industry have to interact with people. I think you need to figure out where [consumers] are. Understanding how to speak within social networking will be important. People run ads on Facebook but they need to be tailored to Facebook; you have to tailor [advertising] to the medium in the same way you tailor a message to a billboard ad. Otherwise it's like you are interrupting a cocktail party.
I'm also excited about creating content relevant to consumers [and] relevant to a brand. I think you can go backwards in time, back in the days when [Procter & Gamble] was producing TV shows. That to me is not an unrealistic expectation given all of the places [you can view creative work] -setting up a YouTube site for your client and doing a [Web] series and creating content. I think you are wasting your time to some degree wanting to do [branded entertainment] on TV; it is more realistic to get it done now on the Web.
Four years ago we wanted to convince one of the breweries to do a series of webisodes where you would follow a cast of characters and it was a question of finding someone gutsy enough-and you see this happening now. We [advertising agencies] should think of ourselves to some degree as entertainment companies. I also think that green marketing has to become a much bigger part of where we go in the next decade and where we can convince clients to go. How companies are perceived as part of their position in terms of taking a lead role will not go away. I think having an environmental strategy for each and every client will be an important part of our business going forward.
A new physical reality
MITCH JOEL, president of Twist Image, a digital marketing and communications agency
When people ask, 'What is the future of advertising?' my initial thoughts are that it might already be here in terms of that type of understanding of having four or five different check boxes of consumer experiences. With any sort of push towards the future you have more and more platforms and more and more capabilities, and my real hope is that the more open a platform is, the more revenue it can ultimately make. Let's take the example of a movie: With a new movie opening, why not make it available immediately on Blu-ray and DVD? This is stuff [consumers] are doing now anyway. I think we will see the pervasiveness and persistency of connectivity and as brands, we will have to figure out how to complement what the consumers are experiencing.
I think part of the flux we are in is that when we look at marketing we often talk about advertising and I think advertising will be an important but arguably a smaller part of the marketing experience [in the future]. When you look at newspapers, they sell advertising, but they are not marketing the brand to the extent that they rely on advertising dollars to drive it. So if you can create platforms where you are marketing more you will win. I think there will be an erosion of this idea that advertising leads marketing and what we will come to is actual marketing-this idea of creating real experiences that people connect to, and the ability to have real interaction and engagement with brands.
Another thing I talk about is a great untethering -we are moving very, very quickly away from this idea of logging on to the Internet and we are moving away from wires. And any time you switch the physicality of someone's engagement with a media channel like that, it makes sense that the advertising models around those have to be different than what we have done before [to engage consumers].
ADRIAN CAPOBIANCO, president of digital agency Quizative Inc.
I polled my partners at Quizative, Adam Oliveira and Allison Laux, for insights and this is what we came up with: Social media will become more personal. The time and effort to manage various social media platforms such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Twitter will keep rising and the novelty of individuals being able to connect globally to anyone or publish content like never before will continue to fade -- think of abandoned Twitter accounts. This does not mean social media will fade away, but it will get less social, and more personal. People will begin to cull their networks of friends and followers, be more discerning about who they connect with and begin to build privacy walls around their digital social activities. Digital media will become so pervasive and the complexity of the medium will continue to escalate meaning that the digital marketing experts will be trusted to take the lead. The concept of being "online" will no longer be associated with a computer -- being online will be everywhere, anywhere, anytime. Also, I think service will make a comeback, aided by technology. The busy mom will chop her grocery shopping time to mere minutes a week -- she'll order her groceries through her Web phone and pick them up at a drive-through on the way home from work. And new digital brands win the entertainment distribution battle.
Telecoms have made a rather late and definitely flaccid entry into online distribution and they will lose the battle. But entertainment producers haven't exactly cracked the model yet, either, so enter the savvy marketer. The new digital brands will bring together entertainment like TV and music and gaming from different producers and package it for [individuals]. We'll pick the digital brand for 'people like me' and learn to expect highly customized and simpler delivery at a flexible pricing.
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