Andrew Walmsley on digital: Marketing's new age ushers in geeks

Steve Rubel, who first identified this fresh strain of marketers, writes
in his blog that dozens of Fortune 500 firms are hiring geek marketers
to take control of the complex, digital world they have found themselves
in, as technology transforms business.

The rise of digital media has created enormous challenges across
functions and skill-sets. Marketing has borne the brunt of this, as, for
many businesses, digital has opened up a direct communication channel to
their consumers.

As this has evolved, marketers have been faced with more data, and more
ways of using it. From cookies to behavioural targeting, RSS feeds to
dynamic keyword insertion, technology has brought complexity to their
roles, and firms that have mastered this have created competitive
advantages for their businesses, leaving others behind.

But while businesses have wrestled with the fusing of technology and
marketing, digital has brought other skills together, too.

The role of the media agency is changing. Traditionally, they have used
consumer insight to fill holes in other people's media. They use
relatively shallow consumer understanding to determine where they should
place the messages that they have been given, but have no influence on
what should be said.

But in digital, the lines between creative, content and media have
blurred. Consumer insight is no longer the sole responsibility of the
agency creating the TV ad - instead it is coming from those who
understand how an audience relates to its media. Executing these
insights is not straightforward either.

Ideas cross between the creation of content - be it widgets, advertorial
or social networking - and 'traditional' creative ideas involving ads,
and media ideas.

When the Talk to Frank drugs advice scheme wanted to extend its reach
using the web, it worked with MSN to create a bot, a computer program
capable of responding to questions about drugs in everyday language. It
knew that more than 50% of teens used instant messaging every day and
within 12 weeks more than 250,000 teens had added the FrankBot to their
buddy list, having more than 1m conversations with it, and asking more
than 20m questions.

This is not just a media or a creative idea. It is a hybrid, with
technology added in. It would be relatively easy to discover that
teenagers have high usage of instant messsaging. But a traditional
response to this would have been to place ads in this environment.

Instead, the creators of this programme reflected the way their audience
used this medium. They embedded themselves in their consumers' usage of
messaging, making themselves a part of that consumption pattern. The
result was a 17-fold increase in conversations with teenagers.

The ability to fuse technology, marketing, media and creative is a
potent driver of effective communication - but it can only be delivered
by people who understand the digital habitat and the behaviour of the
people who live there.

Whether you call this marketing, advertising, media or technology, this
hybrid approach is increasingly important in the digital age. So, step
forward the geek marketer.

- Andrew Walmsley is co-founder of i-level

30 SECONDS ON ... STEVE RUBEL

- Steve Rubel is a digital marketing strategist with more than 15 years'
experience.

- He is currently senior vice-president at PR firm Edelman, having moved
to the firm in February 2006.

- He previously spent five years at CooperKatz & Company where he
advised clients on using blogs.

- Rubel started his own blog, Micro Persuasion, in 2004 about blogging
in the PR industry. He also writes a bi-weekly column for AdAge
Digital.

- He was included in Media Magazine's '100 People to Know in Media' list
in 2005 and the AlwaysOn/Technorati Open Media 100 list in 2005.

- As Edelman's blogging expert, Rubel was criticised when one of the
agency's clients, Wal-Mart, helped pay for a couple to blog a trip
across the US during which they parked at local outlets of the store.
Rubel denied that he was personally involved in the project.