I’ve been thinking a ton about digital marketing for global brands as I prepare for 2010 business planning. My perspective on the importance of “where” experiences happen has shifted in the past year. In addition to the experiences we create on rented, loaned, or borrowed space on others' websites, brand marketers need to create meaningful digital destinations of our own. I believe this is critical.
I used to think that location of interaction was relatively unimportant. “Fish where the fish are.” was the best strategy. Quality of outcome and the number of the “right”consumers reached were what mattered. I now believe location of the interaction can be equally important. Who are your partners? What is their role in your overall strategy? What do you expect from your brand owned properties? How will your partners help build your brand owned properties in the long term?
What if you didn't focus on building your own presence for consumers and staked your brand’s primary community claim on myspace? How would you be feeling when what would have been inconceivable three years ago happens? Would you be concerned when myspace announces a layoff of 30% of staff (around 420 employees)? Maybe you didn’t invest heavily in myspace. I’m sure facebook is a safe bet today. Really? Things change and they change fast for digital marketers. Jim Banister thinks facebook will fail. He makes some good observations about specific approaches winning over time vs. general approaches. Will facebook be able to deliver “specific” without ruining the “general” it so clearly excels at? Only time will tell.
How about video? Surely we can continue to rely on YouTube as the place to consolidate our video views. Or can we? Silicon Alley Insider (with data from Credit Suisse) proposed in April that YouTube may be doomed because it will lose close to $470 million in 2009. NY Times (with data from RampRate) says YouTube’s loss will be only $174 million in 2009. Either way, those are losses that someone must be paying attention to. Do you want your entire video strategy to rely on YouTube when radical business model changes could be right around the corner for the video portal?
Maybe YouTube and facebook will win. Maybe myspace will stage the comeback of all comebacks. Something I've learned through experience as a digital marketer is that the digital invincible sometimes fail and longshots occasionally win. The best way brand marketers can be prepared for the success or failure of whoever comes and goes is to build something you OWN that is awesome. Build something exclusively focused on your brand, that your consumers/fans can count on over the long-term, and that is open enough to connect to whichever external general purpose platforms win in the future. And I mean OPEN with all caps. Maybe true openness will be a future post.....
Saturday, June 5, 2010 at 10:13AM 
