Survival Guide

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I’m not always a big fan of online banner advertising. They certainly have their place in the mix. But display banners often try to entice people to stop doing what they are doing on the page (reading content, checking email, interacting with other users, etc.) and click through to an advertiser’s web site. And depending on the audience trying to do anything more invasive, like over-the-page ads, can be found to actually annoy and frustrate users. That’s not really what advertisers should be setting out to do. We need to strive to be more innovative and relevant.

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My Top 5 short-list of what a client can bring to the table to strengthen the agency relationship (in no particular order):

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Much has been written about for the past 12 months about behavioral targeting and many that I have spoken with over the past few months talk about it like it’s a silver bullet that will solve all of the world’s online marketing challenges.

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OK so this is long — but I’m the tech guy so what do you expect?

There’s always that big struggle between what you want to do, what you have and what your budget will stand. Regardless of that it’s important to define what you want to do without limiting yourself by existing infrastructure and policies. You can’t worry about what you can’t do; you have to allow the ideas to set the need and the strategy to define the project. After all you can always lower the scope and still retain much of the original thinking.

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That probably seems like a weird thing for an Interactive Creative Director to say, but truth is, it’s not. Not a single discipline, anyway. At least, not when you look at the way the people use digital things.

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In the many client meetings I attend each week, I often hear the phrase “we need to get on YouTube” or “we need a MySpace page”. Getting a brand into these popular online properties is often seen as akin to getting past the velvet rope that separates the popular kids from the rest of the world. But uploading brand content to these and other social networks needs as much of a strategy and objective behind it as any other marketing initiative.

Knowing the target audience is crucial in determining if these networks are right for your brand—does your product appeal to that younger, more internet-agile consumer? How often do they watch video online? Do you know what they do when they go online? Taking a strong look (ie. research) at how your consumer behaves within this medium is just as important as understanding how and why they read Women’s Day or watch Desperate Housewives.

Because most of the social networks require constant supervision and updating (more so than many websites or microsites that a brand would launch), having plans, and funds, in place for ongoing content development often resembles the plot points of a television or movie script. Telling a story, creating character, working with the variable ebb and flow of entertaining commentary can make or break your presence—the more you plan and create, the better you will be.

We recently learned one of our TV spots created for MTD’s Cub Cadet brand was one of the five least TiVo’d (read: least deleted) spots of their most recent tracking period. To me, that’s really exciting and significant. It proves a big hairy audacious theory: if we create great ads, whether TV, digital, print, whatever, people will actually watch them! This might be most true when it comes to online advertising where there is possibly more clutter and bad advertising than any other medium.

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