Today's consumers expect more from their marketing messaging. The CEO of Aegis Media North America gives her advice on how to deliver the goods, both strategically and creatively.
The economic downturn may mean general belt tightening is underway across the advertising industry, but Sarah Fay, CEO of Aegis Media North America, says there are still opportunities on the web and in mobile that promise effective and efficient results. Taking advantage of them, however, will require agencies to be on their creative toes as consumers learn to expect more from web and mobile messaging.
A noticeable downturn in retail traffic on the web and a retraction of advertisers' budgets means marketers have to be more strategic, Fay says. Rather than making big page buys, ad platforms like vertical search can stretch budgets and offer good returns if incorporated into a larger media campaign. "Search engine marketing hasn't stopped to take a breath," Fay says. And the numbers agree. Niche search engines have shown remarkable growth over the last year, according to recent HitWise metrics cited on Forbes.com. At the same time, however, the popularity of generalized search on Google has increased to more than 70 percent of global searches.
Nevertheless, says Fay, "Search is a big watermelon to squeeze juice out of." In fact, Fay has put money on it, quite literally. In September, Aegis's search optimization arm, iProspect, acquired luxury and travel search engine Range Online Media.
Fay says search advertising may not be the focus of a marketing campaign, but it is an important part of an "overarching media structure." Such a structure, as Fay envisions it, includes creatively engaging users through social networking, education or issues associated with the brand. "It's gone beyond DR tactics and just measurability," she says.
As an example, Fay cites Nikon's branding effort, which was engineered by Aegis's interactive agency Molecular. "A deep dive in the photo-enthusiast category told us people are more interested in the kind of pictures they can take and what's the camera they can buy that will take them," she says. "So instead of pictures of cameras, we showed them pictures of pictures." The Nikon site incorporates social networking by inviting consumers to view each other's photos on Flickr. If a user admires a photo, he or she can click on the photo to find out who took it and what camera they used. Quick links also connect the user to a local Nikon dealer or Nikon's online mall. The branding, Fay says, was subsumed within the users' common interest, yet the whole process took the consumer "one step closer to buying the product."