& Commentary

What is Digital strategy?

In the traditional ad world—print, TV and radio—we hang our hat on strategy. It’s our reason for the ad. Our argument. We hold up our polished print or wisecracking television scripts next to our strategic statement, and we ask ourselves, “Did we accomplish what we set out to accomplish with this piece of communication?” Then we argue about it for a while and come to a decision. Or we look at our piece of communication and think, “Dear God! This is smart! How do we sum this up in a smart strategy and sell it?”

The latter way, backing a strategy out of an execution is more difficult to pull off, because it sends the creatives in too many directions (Especially on the typical 3-4 day turn around). But, since we are so familiar with these traditional pieces of media, these types of situations are easy enough to handle. Everyone in the room can easily get on board or kill a print or TV idea—because we’ve been doing it for years. We’ve all been on a shoot. We understand the process. Not just technically, but strategically.

The world of digital is much harder to think about. There are few scripts. As a matter of fact, the agency and the client don’t even have control over the end product most of the time. Especially in instances of social media or other user generated stuff.

In other instances, such as webisodes, banner ads, and microsites—there is more control—and it’s a lot easier for clients and agencies to wrap their collective heads around. We can look at non-interactive banners like fancy-shmancy print ads. We can look at webisodes like online television. And most of us have enough surfing experience that we get the basics of an easy user interface.

Before we get into what a digital strategy might be, I want to make a clear distinction between online stuff that the agency creates and online stuff that the agency doesn’t create. Let’s put them in two separate boxes. Let’s call one socially active advertising and the other controlled online advertising.

I’m not making a nomenclature parallel between the two terms on purpose. For a moment, let’s think about them separately. The connecting threads are that they use the same technologies, and that we view them through the same relative lens, a digital display. But that’s where their similarities end.

For both of them there needs to be a strategy, and that strategy may or may not be the same strategy that happens in general advertising. For the purposes of this document, I’m going to put that strategy on its own island—separate from the general strategy, more specific.

When we produce a roadside billboard, there are a number of strategies going on. The general messaging strategy that’s on the billboard and the strategic placement of the billboard. We have billboards for a hotel because that hotel is near. Hotels are for travelers, and if you’re on the road, you’re traveling. The general messaging tells us what kind of place the hotel is.

How that messaging is focused is how we talk about strategy. The media strategy for this is talked about as well, but it isn’t a measuring stick used for the general messaging. Most of the time it’s obvious. In the meetings I’ve been in there hasn’t been an explicit measuring stick for our socially active advertising. And because of this, there’s no way for us to have an intelligent conversation about socially active marketing.

Internally, from a presentation perspective agencies are falling short, because there is no strategy. There is no frame of reference for any of the ideas that are presented. Thus, the decision makers don’t know how they are supposed to think about those ideas.

Socially Active Advertising

There are a few questions we need to ask when we come up with a digital strategy for socially active advertising. And there is also an assumption we can make.
Assumption: Right now, there’s an online conversation going on about your brand or industry. 
Assumptions are a bad idea right? Fine. Test it. Google an industry or product. You’ll find a conversation somewhere. Nail polish, automobiles, cell phone carriers, Gene Simmons, breath mints, vacuum cleaners, scented candles, light bulbs. Everything.

Here are the questions you need to ask when you stumble on that blog, twitter feed or consumer advocate site.

• Do I want to react to it?

• What’s the best way to react to it?

• Do I want to start a new conversation?

• If I do start a new conversation will it be relevant and enjoyed by my audience?

The most important question to ask is “What is that conversation?” That’s how you can start to form your strategy.

Currently, there’s a conversation online about how poopy a hotel’s rooms are. So that hotel needs a plan to react to that conversation. On a general level, what are their options?

• They can enter the conversation as it is on the customer’s terms.

• They can ignore that the conversation exists and try to start their own conversation.

• They can start a separate conversation in reaction to the conversation that already exists. This may involve a company setting up a forum, and then inviting customers to comment.

After a company has chosen a way to talk online, then they can figure what to say. For instance, in the hotel example, people are saying that they have poopy rooms.
On the customer’s terms: The hotel can individually address the customer’s complaints and offer them something or try and prove them wrong.
They can ignore: The hotel can exclaim, “We’ve got great rooms!” If you say something loud enough and long enough, people start believing you—Right?
Conversation in reaction: The hotel can say, “Hey we think our rooms are pretty great, what do you think?” Or, “We want your help in evaluating the services we offer. What do you like, what do you dislike.”

Before the hotel sets foot on the online landscape, whether its Twitter, Facebook, TripAdvisor—They need to decide how they will enter the conversation that is currently going on. They need to listen. If they do not listen to the current conversation then how are they going to enter it?

Let’s take it to a dinner party scenario. Two friends are having a conversation over cocktails about the hotels they frequent on their business travels. One says, “Dude, I stayed at a the Dew Drop Inn in Des Moines. Don’t ever go there. It’s awful.” The other guy says, “You think that one’s bad. You should see the Continental Comfy Inn in Omaha.”

Then the Dew Drop Inn, a stranger with a clear agenda, enters the conversation:

• They can enter the conversation right then and there.

• They can learn from the conversation and apply it somewhere else.

• They can create a forum and invite customers to talk about them.

Regardless of how they enter the conversation, what do they say? The response could be as impersonal is as a press release, or it could be as personal as directly responding to a customer. Neither way is right or wrong. The important thing is that the hotel should respond with something engaging. And by engaging I don’t mean with fancy copy. They should actually engage with a customer, to keep the conversation going—something that will elicit a response.
Honest engagement is the key to having a healthy conversation online.

In a later post I’ll do my darndest to define what that is. But for now, honest engagement is when a company is talking with an individual or too a blog in an open and transparent manner. A way that isn’t so carefully worded that no one knows what the company is actually trying to say.

I’m so viral I can barely stand it.

It’s time to talk about a small section of socially active advertising people like to refer to as viral advertising. Yes, I know. Everybody knows what a viral video is. Sometimes it’s a fat kid pretending like he is Luke Skywalker, crazy wedding video, or one of my personal favorites, “David after dentist.” Where a kid is completely off his tree with medication after going to the dentist.

What do all of these have in common? Millions and millions people all over the world looked at it. Most laughed. And they don’t sell anything. Nothing. Zippo. Nada.

I don’t know how many meeting I’ve been in where a client has requested, “Something Viral.” It’s possible of course to make a funny video that somebody might pass around to their friends. And it’s possible that video might sell them something. However, it’s highly unlikely.
I call this a small section of advertising. Not that viral videos are a small part of the online world, they aren’t. In Time’s Top Ten Viral Videos of 2009, one was an ad. It came in ninth, the client was Post-it notes. Seventh was “United Breaks Guitars” a music video about United Airlines breaking someone’s guitar on a flight. Nothing else had to with advertising or a product. There is no real consistent content link. There is no formula. There is no format. What’s for sure is they are all surprising. Some are lewd, some are cute but all are unexpected.

And by the way, the Post-it note video was made from a student at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Not a client or an agency. It definitely could’ve been.
This is the where you should ask me what my point is.

If you are a client or an agency and want to try and make a video that has the potential to go viral—don’t make advertising. Make something cool. Take a risk. Your logo probably won’t be there at the end on an art card. It won’t sync up with your current campaign. And chances are it won’t sell anybody anything. So what will it do? That’s still up in the air. I can tell you this, I’d never heard of Carlton Beer, but I have now. This ad aired in Australia. It went viral soon after.

The moral of the story? If you want to make a video go viral, don’t make advertising. Make something cool.
Stay tuned for a post on Controlled Online Advertising