News that the Direct Marketing Association has decided to launch a Search Council points to digital's propensity for 'marketing mash-up'. Search is blurring into direct, PR is morphing into social media and social media is meshing into search.
This is because digital channels are starting to merge and integrate. Search engines, for example, are introducing social media results into their listings. Meanwhile, in a converse move, pay per click advertising (PPC) is beginning to appear on social networks such as LinkedIn and Facebook.
As an ever-evolving landscape, digital is a Petri dish of innovation. These days, real marketing creativity comes from seeing an integrated campaign properly blend and exploit digital platforms to come alive across a variety of channels.
In 2011, mobile ads accounted for a global spend of $1.6 billion. The rapid rise in popularity and effectiveness of mobile ads signifies yet further convergence in digital channels because marketers are now obliged to consider how mobile users can access social media and search engine optimisation (SEO) campaigns through their smartphones. Such an approach involves expertise that runs across traditionally separated disciplines: mobile, search and social media. The more knowledge a marketer has of the broader digital landscape, the better.
A recent example of this level of digital crossover is highlighted by the award winning video search engine optimisation (SEO) integration campaign by iProspect for Guinness (Diageo). The campaign's success came from merging previously separated disconnected disciplines: television advertising, search engine optimisation and social media.
Examples of this type of 'discipline blur' are manifold in online marketing as new technology allows consumers and marketers to use multiple devices to access the same piece of content. Video platforms, search engines, social networks are now accessed through devices as varied as desktop computers or tablets, all with differing levels of engagement.
Digital marketing success requires multi-disciplinary crossover, but this principle doesn't just apply to expertise, it also applies to budgets. Budgets are often segmented into little bundles so they can be neatly portioned off to separate marketing departments or specialist agencies. But this silo mentality discourages fluidity – the very thing that sparks creative integration.
Despite this need for 'joined-up thinking' between specialisms and budgets, a recent report published by the Society of Digital Agencies (SoDA) found that 28% of marketers and brands surveyed said they would be looking to diversify agency partnerships and select agencies based on their areas of expertise rather than looking at an integrated agency to manage their external digital output. Meanwhile, only 19% of client marketers surveyed said they would look to consolidate their agency partnerships.
Digital has revitalised the art of marketing by creating so many new possibilities. It could be argued that, far from reaching a post-modernist stalemate, marketing has never been so innovative. But this electrifying renaissance of marketing innovation can only achieve its true potential if traditional structures are dismantled to enable a flow between marketing's manifold channels: social media marketing, SEO, paid search, display advertising and above-the-line.
Ben Romberg is social media director at Tug
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