Among other ideas shared, this Director of Digital Media advocates for full-screen advertising to eliminate the clutter by serving one ad to one consumer at one time..

Joseph Jaffe is Director of Digital Media at OMD USA, where he works on projects for clients that include Kmart, ABSOLUT Vodka, Embassy Suites, Samsonite and Cunard. Jaffe brings with him an eclectic mix of both client and agency experience, on both the traditional and interactive sides of the business. He has worked for Ogilvy and D'Arcy in New York, as well as most recently, running the New York office of a South African-based interactive agency. Jaffe talked to iMedia Connection to give his views on the direction of the interactive marketing industry and suggestions for its improvement.

Meet Joseph at the iMedia Summit in New Mexico next week.

iMedia Connection: What's one of the most successful campaigns you've executed recently, and what made it successful?

Jaffe: ABSOLUT certainly springs to mind as one of the most successful campaigns we've ever executed. Their story is a great one - they waited until the timing was right to make their move online; until they were comfortable with the set of creative tools that would help them express their brand online. The first piece of communications was done exclusively for the trade-a one-day only execution that went out on various new media Web sites. It was a 468x60 static gif banner. All you could see was part of the base of the bottle, together with partially obscured "ABSOLUT LIMITATION." In a credible way that only ABSOLUT could, they commented on the restrictions and challenges posed through the gold-standard at the time of creative units-the banner. But it went a lot further. Instead of just commenting on the problem, it offered a solution-creativity.

How do we know it worked? It had a click-through rate three times the industry average. That's our way of sitting back and observing how creativity works, particularly considering that there was never an intention (or call to action) to get people to click. This underscores our belief that click-throughs mean nothing with an online piece of communication. This was all about allowing the intrigue to do its stuff in a finely targeted message to the trade.

The real lion's share of the campaign came through the CNET IMU/"big box" type units, as well as Superstitials. We created what we refer to as involving advertising, the new and next wave of interactivity. ABSOLUT represents the Avant-garde; the unique; the cutting-edge, so we needed to do something that hadn't been done before. ABSOLUT firmly established itself through its ownership of the back pages of leading print media. Through online, we were able to bring the print ads to life. Utilizing and leveraging the print guiding principles and assets, we invited users to become part of the communication by completing it. Only by interacting with the creative, could the headline (the famous two-word climax) be revealed.

In ABSOLUT Investigation, the user's mouse becomes a magnifying glass that zooms in on the bottle. The headline is uncovered at the base of the bottle. In ABSOLUT Protection, when the user's mouse hovers across the creative, a set of infrared lasers spring to life, protecting the bottle. Each time the user clicks on a beam, an alarm indicator registers the "intrusion." When the threshold is reached, steal gates drop down and completely swallow up the bottle. ABSOLUT Protection informs the user that this is no regular bottle of Vodka.

iMedia Connection: What measurements did you use to deem it a success?

Jaffe: ABSOLUT measures the impact and effectiveness of all communications through an integrated brand tracking study. We've also been aggressive in measuring and qualifying the nature and extent of interactivity. I'm not able to share some of our initial findings, but I can tell you we're seeing interactivity rates well into the double-digits. We're looking at interactivity rates at levels where click-through rates used to be, and we're pretty proud of that. Through both brand-tracking research and interactivity tracking, we've been able to validate the role of interactive, in terms of it taking its rightful place in the larger media mix.

Clients today are expecting agency partners to be so much more accountable, and it's up to us to make sure this doesn't get translated into short-term conversions only. We don't sell bottles of ABSOLUT online, but if we see key brand metrics being positively influenced, we can usually correlate this back into a relationship with an effect on sales.

iMedia Connection: What sort of new models can we expect in the future?

Jaffe: I'd like to start by making the distinction between intrusive, disruptive and distracting. All advertising by definition is intrusive, but the idea of disruptive or distracting is not ideal. I believe in the rationale of placing an ad in a specific context or at a defined event sequence. When there is a large ad embedded in an article, that's somewhat distracting. An execution running before or between articles, however, makes so much more sense.

In terms of arguing which models, I'm a huge proponent of full-screen advertising, based on the simple premise of one ad to one consumer at one time, eliminating the clutter. In this sense we can compare apples to apples - whether we're comparing to a full-page print ad, a radio or TV commercial. It doesn't always have to be full screen, but it does have to follow the idea of one message to one consumer at one time.

Consumers will either pay with their time or with their money for value. In this light, there's the incentive model: a kind of a hybrid premium-subscription and advertising-supported approach. When you buy a magazine, you pay for that magazine and there's advertising in it. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. The incentive model works along these lines: The content today is being brought to you - or subsidized - by advertiser XYZ. That content then becomes endorsed or sponsored by said advertiser. This is communicated to - and understood by - the consumer. There are some companies that are coming out with these kinds of products. I think we're going to see a lot more of these types of models.

My favorite prediction is the concept of advertising-on-demand. If you think about television, there are a certain number of ads you're going to be exposed to whether you like it or not (that is assuming you're sticking to one channel and don't own a PVR.) But eventually, consumers will be able to indicate or volunteer something relevant about them or their particular life stage, and in return, they will only be exposed to relevant pieces of communications associated with that selection. For example: when looking to buy a car they will be met with only automotive advertising. Then, once they've purchased the car, they would essentially switch off any advertising that might give them anything from cognitive dissonance to an instant cure for insomnia. And in three to four years, they'll get some kind of reminder to see if they're in the market for a car again. Consumers will actually self-select advertising based on specific objectives, lifestyle or occasion-specific events. Technology will form the nucleus of this approach.

iMedia Connection: Why is it better for a traditional marketer to go with an interactive agency than to advertise-direct with a publishers OR take the entire workload in-house?

Jaffe: Ultimately, there are many clients who are doing just that. They're taking the work in-house, and/or going directly to publishers. My concern is that when the agency is cut out, the result is often times campaigns or initiatives that are off-brand and off-strategy. Agencies are keepers of the brand. When they're left out of the loop, a vital part of the process is undermined and even skipped. Programs that don't seamlessly integrate back into the full spectrum of communication nodes lead to brand disconnect, confusion and apathy. In addition, agencies need the revenue right now. If agencies win, publishers win. When publishers cut out the agency, the agent is being starved and that's going to lead to tremendous bottlenecks down the road.

In terms of clients bringing the service in-house, a small department of four ex-agency people might crank out the full workload quota on deadline, but it's being produced in a vacuum. Agencies draw on resources of scale, in terms of sharing in best practices. It almost comes down to sticking to what you're good at, and in so doing, allowing the branding and communication experts to do their jobs.

iMedia Connection: What remains the industry's biggest stumbling block?

Jaffe: Time. Time is our worst enemy and best friend. We need to distance ourselves from the whole dot-com period, with its slew of strategy-less executions and campaigns. We got too big too fast, and we came falling back to earth even quicker - royally battered and bruised. The more time that elapses, the better the industry will be. However right now, time is a stumbling block because we're running out of time. We're in a holding pattern, and many key players are running out of gas.

On the positive side, I also believe we'll see industry shifters helping us return to a position of rational equilibrium. We've already witnessed interactive people returning to their traditional roots. In addition, people like us will depart from the agency business to the client or publisher side. These types of migrations invariably will help spread and disseminate the industry knowledge and diversity. Getting back to the theme of time, let's not forget about today's college students who will become tomorrow's entry-level marketing assistants and managers, the next day's marketing directors and ultimately, the day after that's CMO or CEO. These are kids who grew up only knowing life with the Internet. When this day comes, it's not going to be, why Interactive? It's going to be, why broadcast?

iMedia Connection: Is there enough branding research to satisfy clients? If not, what needs to be done?

Jaffe: There's tons of research out there. But it's up to us as an industry to evangelize that research and sell it to our clients. It's also up to us to continue to conduct our own research. We're not using fictitious brands any more, we're using real brands. We need to make sure the virtues of these research reports are fully extolled by the clients. Take the MSN-Dove Nutrium Bar Cross-Media Study for example. I want to see the Unilever's of the world (i.e. the host brand) preaching the virtues of these studies; I want to see clients being part of the road show.

I also want to see the mainstream press correctly reporting on these studies and their implications.

iMedia Connection: What are your clients reservations about spending more money for interactive media?

Jaffe: I think it's always going to depend on the particular client, industry and specific objectives. We're more than happy with the work we're doing on behalf of some of our clients, largely against younger more Web-savvy audiences. In such cases, we're looking at interactive's share of spend exponentially greater than that of industry averages. However, instead of letting the onus fall on the shoulders of our clients, I think it's up to us to continue to position, merchandise and package the Web's potential against those audience segments that aren't - on paper - a bull's eye fit against the perceived profile of the heavy Internet user.

iMedia Connection: How can agencies help clients overcome industry stumbling blocks?

Jaffe: You've got to buy into this industry from all sides of the equation. It has to come from both client and agency. It has to come from the CEO down, rather than fighting battles and working your way up from the bottom. We can do this with off-site meetings, and by dedicating 100% of this time to online or interactive digital. Media is usually the final five minutes of the conversation. Online is usually the final five seconds of the media component. We have to sell our value proposition in a 10-second elevator pitch, but at the same time, if we're constantly reduced to one slide or three bullet points, we'll always be a side-note or caveat.

iMedia Connection: How can agencies encourage their clients to keep up with the reported increase in consumer online media consumption?

Jaffe: Talk is cheap. Go out there and make it happen. And make sure that when you do it, you do it well; make sure it's integrated and make damn sure you measure it properly. Don't go out with a working media budget of $50,000 and expect miracles to happen. We owe it to ourselves, as well as the brands we represent, to make sure we're properly incorporating interactive into our clients' communication plans. The indicators and momentum are so profound and strong, that it should be an obligation to give it our all and give it a fair shot at success. At least this way, we can say we tried our best.