Selling interactive:

A study that helps your clients "think interactive"

  The just released Booze-Allen-Hamilton study entitled HD Marketing 2010: Sharpening the Conversation is a big picture look ahead at what marketing will look like in the future. It's an impressive study with VP level marketing people from Unilever, Anheuser-Busch, Ogilvy North America, Fox Interactive Media, Denuo featured in cameo interviews.

Much of the study relates to big accounts, big agencies, and big budgets, but there is a common theme that connects it all to every piece of media you sell, the shift from advertising that simply present messages to advertising that invites interaction.

What this think piece says is that by 2010 many ad campaigns that now exist in "present only" form will have shifted to interactive. If you have some web laggards, still waiting to place their first banner ad, this study could be a shrill cry that the future is coming.

Use it on a sales call.

First describe the idea that there is a movement afoot among advertisers to shift from display campaigns to interactive campaigns. Describe that currently these are ideas that are being embraced everywhere but you can share a document with them on how the large fortune 500 level marketers are coping with this challenge. Show them that even at the highest level, only 25% consider their organizations to be "digitally savvy", only 30% are using behavioral targeting to impact the allocation of the marketing mix, and so on down the line (see the above graphic).

The bottom line is that the transition from display advertising to interactive advertising is a work in progress and your current advertiser base should not feel intimidated if they are not far along in the process. But the other message is that the change is coming. For your web laggards this could again be a shocked of the study.

Read a review on he IAB website

Download a PDF for your next sales call

There is great synergy in selling print and web products together. We have a system where salespeople learn to expand online revenue while protecting the print base. 

 

So it is with media. An October released study from The Nielsen Company revealed that, World wide, the most trusted media is also the one most loosing ground with advertisers, newspapers.

"...while new platforms like the Internet are beginning to catch up with older media in terms of ad revenues, traditional advertising channels continue to retain the public's trust. Ads in newspapers rank second worldwide among all media categories, at 63 percent overall, while television, magazines and radio each ranked above 50 percent."

The study also contains fun information on which media are trusted most/least in different countries.

 

Use it on a sales call.

 

Often it is hard to shore up the "traditional media" part of an integrated media package. Start by asking your advertiser how important "trust" is in their selling process. Tell them that through an integrated package of traditional media and new media they get the best of both worlds: the functionality of the new media, and the credibility of traditional media. Then show them the study. 

 

Read about the study on the Nielsen website

Write up on the Agency Spy Blog