Advances in technology offer incredible new opportunities for the digital marketeer, vibrant and exciting new frontiers frequently appear on the horizon, as a result our attention is often captured and heads are turned by success stories of our competitors and peers.

Social media, apps, responsive design, video etc. all offer amazing opportunities to anyone in marketing… and therein lies the problem... simply doing social, doing video, doing responsive offers no guarantee of success and unfortunately the vast majority of campaigns are destined to fail.

Digital marketing makes it very easy to be reactionary, so the belief is if it works for someone else, it should work for you, and sadly that is rarely the case.

Old school... it’s the future

The fundamentals of digital marketing remain exactly the same as traditional offline marketing, for a campaign to be successful it has to be engaging and it has to stimulate emotion amongst your audience.

Who would have envisaged that printing a name onto a bottle of Coke would be the most successful marketing campaign of 2013?

The success of this campaign wasn’t the result of TV, press, social or digital, its success was the result of stimulating emotion and engagement, and as a result it became impossible to pick up a bottle of coke without looking at the name on the label.

Its genius is simplicity, the campaign didn’t rely on media or social channels for success, yet the campaign went viral. Throughout the summer images of Coke bottles dominated Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, press and TV, emotionally connecting people with the brand - creating interest and renewed loyalty.

The Coke campaign is a textbook example of understanding a brand and more importantly a brand understanding its audience.

So as we endeavour to bring marketing to new platforms, remember this… the platforms we use to engage our audience may change, but the marketing fundamentals of engaging them remains exactly the same.

 

By Justin Taylor, Managing Director of Graphitas.

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