This week the iMedia Breakthrough Summit brought together a mix of marketers from agencies, brands and startups to discuss the future of digital marketing, and the trends shaping our industry today. The mix of backgrounds creates a great environment to share ideas and combine different viewpoints around the future of marketing.
As expected a large portion of the event was dedicated towards social and mobile media. However, a recurring statement I heard from many participants was that we’re finally past the “Year of Social” and the “Year of Mobile,” those ubiquitous milestones that have become catch phrases. Rather than pointing to any specific event, these watershed moments have happened upon us quietly or not-so-quietly, leading to a sort of collective sigh: We’re here. The future is now. It’s time to get to work.
Rewards, Recognition and Game Mechanics
A common theme throughout many of this year’s sessions spoke about the advantages of Rewards, Recognition and Game Mechanics. Caroline Giegerich from Initiative talked about the check-in platforms from Four Square and GoWalla, to newer ones like Scavenger and GetGlue. An interesting point she made was the real-world laboratory experiment of Four Square and GoWalla: each launched at SXSW over a year ago to much fanfare, yet one is six times larger today. The difference maker? The overwhelming popularity of the mayorships and badges that Four Square uses.
BBDO also spoke about their current iAds compaign with AT&T. They unveiled flashy commercial quality video with original music, high concept narrative and professional actors. But the feature that had the highest engagement? An interactive iAd that functioned like a game, and allowed consumers to calculate how much data they needed based on their internet browsing, texting and email habits.
Not to be undone, iMedia promoted their hashtag on Twitter with a live stream of Tweets displayed prominently in the lobby area and prizes for the most interesting Tweet.
Any experienced community manager understands this concept of reward and recognition well, and consumers are only reinforcing the idea as we go forward.
The Sum is Greater
Rather than separating out into various tracks, as can be common with most conferences, Breakthrough encourages a mix of personalities in the same room working together—a whole is greater than the sum of the parts approach.
This is also a strong theme that was prevalent throughout the conference. As the number of channels, platforms and touchpoints grows daily, it’s become clear that the future is now—from social, mobile, check-in platforms and video advertising—a fundamental tipping point in consumer behavior is occurring. To that end, each of these avenues should no longer be considered experimental or one-off. Instead, each needs to be incorporated into the marketing plan, and play its part towards overall marketing success.
As Leonard Brody, President of Clarity Digital, pointed out, mobile is a great example of an “emerging platform” that needs to considered part of the overall marketing mix and not only to achieve its own marketing goals but also help activate other channels. “The only thing you need to know about mobile,” he said, “is that there are 3.5 billion phones and 600 million laptops.”
Consumers are embracing the many-to-many promise of the Internet and marketers need to do the same when selecting many different channels to reach audiences. Nichole Goodyear, CEO of Brickfish, noted that: Rather than fold each new channel into a general paradigm, we need to measure cost per engagement and find other metrics to judge success.
The Death of Touch
Stealing above from a breakout session of the same name, Marc Ruxin, EVP and Chief Innovation Officer at Universal McCann, gave an oddly insightful talk about the death of touch. He spoke at length for his affinity of the tactile experience he had when record stores like Amoeba Music, bookstores like The Strand and Powell’s, and video stores like Kim’s were the way we consumed media as a population. Walking in and talking to knowledgeable—if not a touch snobby—tastemakers allowed consumers to touch and feel their media, interact with others and create physical collections. I was even prompted to tweet to the iMedia hashtag that I missed my Sony 100-disc CD changer. It was simply a different experience.
Now we’ve got iTunes, Kindle Store and Netflix. And while something is indeed missing, not counting hilariously inspired films like High Fidelity and Be Kind Rewind, all is not lost. Social media provides new avenues to connect and inspire. Brands and marketers are just starting to understand how to socialize media consumption, with Apple playing some highly publicized parts with iTunes. There may not be those single tastemakers anymore, but there are millions of consumers around the world ready to collectively take their place.