The Digital Journey: A Marketer's Most Important Quest - Michael Kassan

Let's raise a Bacardi & Coke to that great advertising mind, George Bernard Shaw.

It was Sir George who said "If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas."

If he lived today, Shaw wouldn't be wasting his time writing plays. He'd be a CMO. Because what he was talking about was true interactivity. Applied to a 21^st Century marketing environment, the quote brilliantly illustrates what may very well be the single most critical need for modern marketers: digital literacy.

I'm not talking about being up to speed on the subject. It's no longer merely the speed with which one learns that determines success in digital media; it's the specificity with which one learns it. And just as important in an integrated world is the extent to which client, consultant, agency and digital media collaborate on activating that learning.

Taking getting-to-know-you meetings with digital players, reading research reports, ping-ponging around in the trade press echo chamber, hiring specialists or listening to generic digital-media sales presentations have their uses, but they are insufficient. That's just swapping apples.

What's required now is an in-depth understanding not of all consumers' behavior but how your consumers or your client's consumers use new and emerging digital channels. Identifying precisely where the opportunities for your particular brand or account lie in the digital space, today and in the near future. That's digital literacy, and it is the difference maker.

Agencies do something like this on an ongoing basis for their clients, and as an agency veteran, I recognize how impactful this kind of knowledge quest can be when done well. We call our version the digital journey because we literally take clients on a road trip.

In the digital journey, the client's global leadership goes off the grid for a highly curated tour of digital companies—in Seattle, in Silicon Valley, wherever they need to go. Part education, part top-down strategic discussions, but all filtered through the perspective of that particular marketer. This specificity is the most important aspect of the digital journey.

At MediaLink, we did our first journey with Unilever last spring (the concept evolved out of discussions with the packaged-goods client on the topic of digital literacy) and with Coca-Cola last month concurrent with CES. And we have begun working on others.

Digital journeys are substantive explorations of what is relevant to that particular client. These are C-level to C-level meetings in which we ask the digital company to discuss its view on what's going on with the client in its space, how that client's specific consumers are using the channel, areas in which marketer, agency and the digital company could work together strategically, and so on.

A critical element in a successful digital journey is the collaboration of the client's agency partners in creating, planning and executing the trips, since the agencies ultimately help actualize whatever is learned.

This year, Deloitte reports, American corporations will buy 10 million tablet computers for their executives. Magna Global predicts mobile advertising will shoot up by 60%, online video will rise by almost 27%, digital display advertising will increase by 11.6% and paid search will increase 11.1%. And who knows what's coming around the corner tomorrow?

Clearly, there couldn't be a more opportune time to take the digital journey.

After all, you can never have enough apples.

Michael E. Kassan is Chairman and CEO of MediaLink, LLC, a leading Los Angeles and New York City-based advisory and business development firm that provides critical counsel and direction on issues of marketing, advertising, media, entertainment and digital technology. Michael can be reached at michael@medialinkllc.com

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