Digital: Creating conversation online

However, there are also pitfalls so it is vital that campaigns are carefully planned and managed. For example, alcopop brand WKD courted controversy recently when it featured pictures of brand ambassadors with intoxicated consumers on its microsite. Potential problems also lurk with user-generated content on outlets such as forums and sites that offer a video-upload service. Andrew Thomas, e-business director at parenting club Bounty, says responsibility is crucial. For instance, the group's website won't promote commercial messages that undermine government guidelines to breastfeed exclusively until the baby is at least six months old.

Donna McGrory, group head of advertising at digital agency Cheeze, says: "It's a careful balance between policing comment and making sure people are allowed to have a voice." The agency's online campaign for Co-operative's own-label ethical water brand, Fairbourne Springs, includes a microsite, co-operative.co.uk/water, where visitors are encouraged to sign a "water pledge" (sales of the bottled water help fund the donation of "PlayPumps" - drinking-water pumps that are powered by merry-go-rounds - in Africa). The site, which is promoted on-pack, includes a send-to-a-friend function, a viral game and a link to a Facebook page.

Elsewhere, Kellogg's Nutri-Grain is campaigning to reinstate the tea-trolley in the workplace by inviting consumers to enter their details on its website and print off a petition. Blossom Hill is asking people to send in pictures of them drinking the wine as part of a garden party competition. And McVitie's Penguin is running a joint campaign with the World Wildlife Fund entitled "Sponsor the Penguins". So, competitions, pledges and games are just some of the tools to keep consumers coming back for more.

Advertisers benefit when an online campaign is done well because the activity can generate massive brand awareness and bring about greater engagement than offline tactics. Online campaigns can also have a data collection function, giving the brand greater insight into who its consumers are, and leaving open the possibility of contacting them for follow-up marketing in the future.

Rachelle Headland, business development director at Blossom Hill's agency Pulse, says data collection needs to be handled sensitively. She argues that consumers need "a very good reason to hand over personal information and they're not going to do that if they don't get something in return".

Importantly, brands need to realise the difference between dialogue with consumers and monologue. McGrory says online campaigns that embrace the former, effectively work as focus groups. "One of the things we picked up on was the debate on bottled versus tap water, and that is feeding into product development," she explains.

Headland points out that most FMCG brands do not give consumers a meaningful reason to repeatedly visit their websites. She cites as an exception nappies brand Pampers, which posts parenting information on its site. "Purely saying 'come to my site and find out about the brand and product information' is not going to cut it," she adds.

Meanwhile, social networking sites have become a key platform for many campaigns, and McGrory claims this is true regardless of the target audience's age. "People think social media are only for teenagers, but the work we've done for Co-op has been taken up primarily by the 30 to 35 age group, and has even reached 65-year-olds," says McGrory.

Thomas points out that Bounty's online forums started off as an adjunct to the group's printed guides, but have become a business in their own right, with more than 2.5 million members registered on its website and over a million visits a month. He says a 29-year-old first-time mother has probably been using social networks for years, so they represent a commercial opportunity for the group's advertisers. "People congregate around issues and interests, not around brands," he says.

Mobile could be the next frontier, according to Headland. "Mobile portals are where the internet was six or maybe even 10 years ago," she says. "More and more people are using mobile phones to access the internet."

All the more reason to make sure a campaign takes web marketing seriously.

CASE STUDY: LITTLE CHEF AND HESTON BLUMENTHAL

Little Chef and Heston Blumenthal are not normally names one would associate together. But the innovative chef is creating a menu for the roadside restaurant chain's 50th anniversary, and digital marketing agency Hyperlaunch has created a viral game as part of the campaign.

Throughout May, Little Chef toured 11 UK cities in a VW camper van, inviting consumers to share, via an interactive recording booth, their memories of its restaurants and what they would like to bring back from the past 50 years. Some responses are featured on a campaign microsite, www.littlechef.co.uk/bringback. Hyperlaunch's viral game aims to create brand awareness and widen the appeal of the brand. The retro game, reminiscent of Pac-Man, is hosted on the microsite and features an animated Little Chef character plus food items from the menu.