This Director, Web Services finds the ability to gather data to be the web's greatest strength.

Kevin Doohan is a marketing professional with a proven ability to reach customers and call them to action. Doohan has nine years of internet specific marketing experience at leading companies including Cendant Corporation, Homestore.com, Digital Insight and ConAgra Foods. Doohan is currently employed as Director, Web Services on the Corporate Marketing Services team at ConAgra Foods. In this role, he develops and manages internet strategy for corporate- and consumer-facing websites, manages the marketing community on the company’s portal, and directs targeted marketing efforts to the company’s consumer database.

iMedia: How has the media mix changed for you over the last few years? Is online still "an afterthought" or are campaigns, for the most part, conceived of in an integrated fashion from the get go? Or are you somewhere in between?

Doohan: Online is becoming more integrated as time goes on. I joined the team in January 2005 to increase focus on our online efforts and to counsel our leading brands and the corporation on how to best integrate online into our marketing mix.

iMedia: What was your most successful online or integrated campaign recently and what made it successful? 

Doohan: Our most successful campaign was one where we marketed consistently, over time, to a group of customers who subscribed to branded newsletters. Early results and analysis indicate that consumer purchasing behavior did change after they subscribed to and received the product newsletters. What made the promotion successful was the creation and distribution of relevant content, consistently over time, to consumers who had expressed an interest in receiving it.

iMedia: What is the greatest benefit of online advertising? The ability to measure? Precisely target? Gather data? Something else? 

Doohan: All of these benefits are important but the most immediate benefit of online advertising is the ability to gather data. Learning about what our customers say they want and what they do is critically important to our marketing effort. We can inexpensively and quickly gather information from our online customers.

iMedia: What still frustrates you most about online advertising? What can be done to improve the situation?

Doohan: I'm still sometimes frustrated by the lack of focus on ROI in terms of selling product. Image and awareness changes are fantastic but they need to be tied to sales of more product at higher prices to truly grow the business.

iMedia: Are you doing any behavioral targeting? If yes, please describe.

Doohan: We do some targeting of newsletter and promotional content to users based on their responses to registration and/or survey questions. We are not currently buying any ads or displaying dynamic content to web users based on their surfing behaviors.

iMedia: Are you being affected by any consumer-generated marketing (CGM) -- blogs, user groups, etc.? Are you using any blogs or other social networking tools to market?

Doohan: We're not currently using blogs. We follow some on occasion because bloggers are passionate about their topics and often represent the feelings of groups of passionate users. We have to consider the source carefully and confirm hypotheses with other sources when making assumptions based on blog comments.

iMedia: Have you found agencies to be able to handle your changing interactive/integrated needs? What could still be better?

Doohan: We're happy with our agencies to date. Challenges are traditional agency challenges: project management, billing, staff turnover, et cetera.

iMedia: Have you done much with wireless, iTV or other emerging mediums?

Doohan: No

iMedia: It's the beginning of a new year. What do you hope to accomplish this year?

Doohan: We will continue to refine our ability to measure ROI of online spends based on incremental product sales generated. We will also improve and better integrate our web presence as a whole across our strong stable of brands and our corporate sites.

iMedia: What are you reading these days, other than iMediaConnection.com, of course?

Doohan: Last book read: The First 90 Days, Michael Watkins. Current read: The End of Marketing As We Know It, Sergio Zyman. Next up: Purple Cow, Seth Godin.