In this iMedia's Brand Summit roundtable discussion, marketers discuss the challenges and opportunities presented by emerging media platforms.

During iMedia's Brand Summit discussion group exercise on Monday, September 11, several groups of publishers, suppliers and brand executives tackled the issues surrounding the use of emerging media as a marketing platform.

iMedia sat in on one such group, consisting of moderator Jordan Berman, executive director, media innovations, Cingular Wireless; Bill Daley, manager, online marketing, Universal's Orlando Resort; Carole Louie, senior manager of media planning, Clorox; Andrew Knopf, VP, sales, World Wrestling Entertainment; Chris Houtzer, director of new media, games, RealNetworks; Brian Lesser, director of product marketing, 24-7 Media; Michael Rosen, SVP, advertising sales and marketing, WeatherBug and Dominique McAree, senior director, WildTangent.

Three main challenges for implementing emerging media, which the group loosely defined as anything out of the more traditional web, email marketing environment -- including video, mobile, in-game marketing, podcasting and other platforms -- were:

• The general lack of technical knowledge and capability of current traditional and even interactive agencies
• The challenge of finding or producing the right creative for the right platform
• The need for a strong, unique value proposition for the brand to effectively position itself within the environment that creative is placed. 

Executives at the table agreed that many agencies operate with less than state-of-the-art technology within their own businesses, which means many aren't able to experience the very emerging media platforms they're being asked to create marketing campaigns for. There is a learning curve that still needs to be climbed by many external and internal agencies before they can effectively manage a brand's proper contextual placement within emerging platforms like iTV or broadband video.

Past that issue, the development of creative (and who owns that process) and who's capable of producing unique, new creative in the proper specs for emerging media are still issues both the client and their agency must grapple with. The cost of producing creative can sometimes be a barrier that results in brands repurposing existing creative as a simpler, quicker approach to testing new platforms.

Finally the brand's exposure and position in these emerging media environments has to be carefully approached, ensuring that its presence within that environment presents contextual relevancy and value to the user, or it will suffer a loss of credibility and impact.

Solutions to these issues are still emerging, but the group agreed that:

• Agency leaders must embrace their shop's involvement in these emerging platforms and invest in the technical tools and know how if they hope to succeed. It was noted that a number of agencies have developed media labs to help their personnel and their clients gain first-hand exposure to a variety of emerging media platforms and current best practices, as well as offer the opportunity to experiment with ideas for new marketing approaches.
• Agencies and their clients have to eschew the easy response to use existing creative within emerging media platforms, and publishers creating new properties on these platforms likewise have to avoid repurposing content for the same reasons; for instance, it's not enough to go mobile just for mobile's sake, these executives agreed. That means all parties have to work out where and how this content and creative will come from, and who holds the responsibility for that. So many of these basic issues of creative and operational development are still being explored by most marketers and their agencies.
• Finally, marketers have to start with the consumer first. How is it that they use the various new media platforms, and how can your brand have a meaningful presence within that environment? Users are not going to these platforms just for the sheer novelty, these executives agreed; they're looking for a unique extension of the information or entertainment they find on other media platforms, and the content and marketing messages on these platforms has to meet those standards. Marketing messages on user-generated content sites like MySpace, as an example, risk diluting the appeal of those sites to the consumers they're trying to reach unless they're effectively integrated into the style, tone and attitude that site seeks to deliver to its audience.

The brands at the table agreed that their involvement in emerging platforms will continue to ratchet up as they add to their learning curve. Broadband video, adver-gaming and mobile are most definitely targets for development in 2007. For now, the approval for campaigns on these emerging platforms hinges first on the "big idea" behind the campaign, the kind of unique creative they can effectively produce and whether or not that emerging media platform indeed will deliver the intended audience.

Kurt Indvik is general manager of iMedia Communications. Read full bio.

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