Welcome to ‘The Digital Reality’, a discussion forum in partnership with Microsoft Advertising. Over a series of 4 parts, we look at how marketers can overcome their fears of the digital frontier, which they can capitalize on to create competitive advantages for the brands they manage as well as for their own marketing careers.
In this final part, we’ll explore how we can tame the digital cold waters that freeze most marketers with fear.
Quiz : How do you kill a dinosaur? Read on to find the answer.
The First Step Is Not To Dive In Immediately
Marketers today are suffering from paralysis by over-analyzing digital. It was the same when marketers faced the same dilemma as TV began its run as the new media darling during the days went radio advertising was all that was.
While we are already welcoming Web 2.0, some marketers are still stuck at Web 1.0. Marketers must act more than they think, especially during the current recession. Otherwise, their competition will pull even further away. Be curious about digital and take steps to lay the foundations of your brand’s digital regime.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, but the Romans didn’t stand around wondering how it was going to look like. They took the first step by laying the foundations.
You don’t dive immediately into a pond before checking how cold the water is. So you test it with your feet first. In the same way, you can start learning about digital marketing by checking with the digital experts.
The recent Mindshare business restructure was our first step to respond to the ever changing consumer landscapes, with the key driver being the digitalisation of the consumers. The aim was to deliver a comprehensive offering through a simplified framework while maintaining a media-neutral stance. We are moving beyond just media-centric solutions to integrating digital, content creation and business planning into our company culture, to create competitive advantages for our clients’ businesses.
Many of us in Mindshare didn’t become digital experts overnight, we learnt progressively but you need to take the first step to go forward.
So get your feet wet and you’ll learn along the way. That’s the first step to accustom yourself to the digital cold waters before your body is wholly submerged in the pond.
But we’re not talking about just hosting a cool website and banner ads. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Start with a small campaign, analyse the results, tweak accordingly and use the measurements to improve the next one. As you learn and modify progressively, your confidence grows and eventually you’ll begin to shape a long term digital strategy.
The tipping point
One of the biggest obstacles keeping marketers from “just doing it” is not recognizing when they’re about to hit their tipping point in their marketing strategies and their own careers.
If a marketer starts to ask, “is this all there is to marketing?”, then a brand is closely approaching its tipping point and their own careers would have reached a plateau.
At that point, there is no incremental value that traditional marketing can deliver for your brand and even yourself as a marketer. You can either succumb to your fears; let your brand wilt away in the barren desert of traditional thinking, or you can seek the oasis of long term brand and career survival, the digital arena.
If Nike and its people had already use digital to fortify the brand and their own careers, what risks are you taking for your own brand and career?
Nothing.
For those who really want new results during the current recession, you can’t keep doing the same old things. It’s time to do things differently, and that’s what new marketing is about.
In reality, “Just Do It” is much easier said than done. But choosing to ignore digital marketing will place a brand and even your career at a greater risk of slipping into oblivion.
So how do you kill a dinosaur? You don’t, evolution will.
Article by :
Jimmy Lim,
Executive Director of Mindshare Singapore,
For more information, please contact Jimmy.Lim@mindshareworld.com
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