Web 3.0: Brand Strategy Must Drive Integrated Interactive Marketing

Web 2.0 was about finding, developing and embracing interactive technologies to engage customers, prospects and other constituencies. Web 3.0, says Clark Kokich of Razorfish, is about integrating these cool new toys to work together to achieve business results. 

While Michael Leis jokes about the nomenclature, Clark’s underlying thought is spot on; the holy grail of integrated digital marketing is to frame a vision of a fully realized multi-dimensional interactive relationship between a brand and its customer base and then implement that vision using the latest and greatest tools we can find to achieve predictable business results.

It’s a grand and very difficult to achieve grail. Why?

Four reasons. 1. Because it forces us to get past the “amazing” features of each new tool and focus on end-user benefits rather than first user bragging rights. 2. Because the tools are constantly evolving and we are unlikely to settle on a few at the risk of missing the next big thing. 3. Because it requires both agencies and clients to overcome organizational and attitudinal silos with their attendant politics of self-interest in service to a greater goal. 4. Because it requires marketers to balance measurable business effectiveness against probable marketing efficiencies which demand a combination of proven tactics and carefully considered experiments; risks that both agencies and clients are generally afraid of.

But there is a way forward, if marketers would adopt these four tactics:

Follow a Boss. Altitude is the only predictor of successful marketing integration. Somebody at the top of the organization (possibly a

CMO

) has to be the boss, make decisions, broker arguments, set the direction and establish the party line. It’s a stick-your-neck-out posture that requires vision, guts and political savvy. Too many post-modern, post-industrialist MBA-trained managers publicly shrink from the very notion of a boss, but without it, the natural politics of bureaucracies will overwhelm and undermine any effort.

Build Consensus Goals. The most effective marketers have a vision that sets a goal which then determines a logical series of priorities that drive creative, channel and spending decisions. This is that big strategy piece that everyone talks about and aspires to but few actually accomplish. A broad but quantifiable goal gives context to all the varied tactics and lays out hypotheses for finding synergy within an organization and its marketing partners which can be mapped out as tactics and executed in a coordinated and thoughtful way through a set of channels. The game is won on the choice of strategy not on the choice of channels.

Harness the Mule Team. Nothing great ever gets done unless everyone is in-harness and pulling in the same direction. This requires the greatest application of energy and force and is most affected by staffing choices and vendor selection. Nobody sets out to create a dysfunctional operation, but too many of us end up with one because we don’t have the discipline or the appetite to harness, direct and motivate our team in a single direction.  

Picture & Measure an

End

State

. Too many marketing efforts attack immediate pain points or address immediate problem areas. Not enough start with an understanding of what the brand needs and wants in terms of its relationship with clients and their identification with the brand that drives adoption and purchase of its products or services. Brands need to set awareness, preference, attitudinal, purchase, loyalty and interactive goals, and then deploy marketing programs to engage customers to achieve the stated objectives. Then measurements of business effectiveness and internal efficiencies can be used to genuinely steer the ship.       

Comments

[Michael Leis]

Hi Danny,

You'll find no surprises here: I disagree as fundamentally with your post as with Clark's interview.

For your central point, you lay down this 46-word sentence:
"...the holy grail of integrated digital marketing is to frame a vision of a fully realized multi-dimensional interactive relationship between a brand and its customer base and then implement that vision using the latest and greatest tools we can find to achieve predictable business results."

What in the world does this mean? What is evolved or strategic in thinking that marketers need to address multiple channels of communication and measure it? New toys? Latest and greatest tools?

Then you do this double-support-structure based on a holy grail that you haven't clearly communicated yet.

First, you lay down four reasons why the holy grail is difficult to achieve. I guess that's why you frame that argument within a myth based on the unachievable.

Now you've shifted your thesis away from the premise of interactive marketing strategy and towards some vague reasons why the reader shouldn't follow the new toys and latest and greatest tools?

Your second set of support statements, under the bolded subheads, pivots further from either of what I think may be your first two main ideas to focus on corporate politics.

Following your boss, building consensus goals, harnessing the mule team, and picturing / measuring an end state. Are we still talking about interactive strategy? This section alone might be a good article about working effectively in a bureaucracy. It has little to do with the future of interactive marketing strategy.

It's simple: How does our audience communicate with other people using technology? Learn what those technologies are, and determine if the brand can be of help in that context: psychologically, sociologically and technically.

You and Clark can continue to enjoy the short-term revenue peaks and valleys of jargon-riddled obfuscation. Benchmark your display ads. Sharpen your acronyms. And please, above all else, do not chide my remarks without convincing support based upon the same premise.