Innovation may happen in a technology lab, but pushing those developments forward will be the task of creative executives. Here's a glimpse into the future of digital marketing.

The digital future will belong to the brands that courageously cultivate cutting edge technology, leveraging those insights to find a new way forward. That was the message delivered by Alan Schulman, executive creative director of imc2, and Lori Schwartz, SVP and director at Interpublic Emerging Media Lab.

As two creative-centric executives, Schwartz and Schulman used their time at the iMedia Breakthrough Summit in Rancho Mirage, Calif. to push the boundaries of those in the room by showcasing campaigns on the cutting edge of digital.

Opening with a video filmed in New York's Union Square, Schulman observed that today's consumer has set a very high bar for digital media.

"The question for the brand marketer is how to use the very best of all the new things that are being created," Schulman said. "As marketers, we need to know what we should be deploying now, what we should be experimenting with, what technologies we should be monitoring and what we should ignore."

But where Schulman's questions may have been applicable to all marketers, the answers, he was quick to point out, are likely going to vary by brand.

Considering the case of a marketing campaign for an anti-depressant drug, Schulman touted an open source solution in the form of WeFeelFine.org. 

"WeFeelFine is an open source application that aggregates people's emotions," Schulman said. "We used the tool to find out what kinds of conversations and what words people were using around the topic of depression. We were then able to use that information to better understand how to be more open to sentiments that align with our brand's attributes."

Addressing the problem of bringing a more human touch to websites, Schwartz had a one word answer -- avatars.

While many marketers are quick to dismiss avatars as goofy guides found only in places like Second Life, Schwartz pointed out that the tool can be distinct from the platform.

Playing a video of a recent Cisco conference that used avatars to bring the speakers into the same digital space even though they were separated by thousand of miles, Schwartz challenged marketers in the room to think about how they would use that technology to personalize a user's experience on a branded website.

Picking up on the theme of personalization, Schulman pointed to the work done by M&M as an excellent example of how a brand can align its core values with the voices of its users.

With an application dubbed "Get Your Face On," M&M allowed users to personalize, customize and share the candy by uploading pictures to the company's website that would then be printed on individual M&Ms.

"An application like 'Get Your Face On' is key for M&M if it wants to keep its cultural currency high in the marketplace," Schulman said.

But if M&M's experiment in personalization was all about bringing the consumer into the brand's message, Verizon took its broadband campaign a step further by allowing users to script, produce and star in their own short science fiction movie.

"That Verizon application drove to the core of the brand by speaking to the company's broadband capabilities without being literal," Schulman said. "Some of these things may seem very pie in the sky, but the truth is that they are all very possible."

But rather than simply embracing all cutting edge technologies at once, Schulman and Schwartz urged the marketers in the room to listen to their users first.

"Use social networks as a place to hear what your customers have to say," Schulman said. "Listen for insight and then create for impact. Simply retreating to established methods of marketing is the lazy way out, and in down economic times it won't be enough."

According to both Schulman and Schwartz even the prospect of a looming economic downturn won't slow digital's growth because it is well suited to make quick wins for brands. But for marketers there's just one catch: They must know how to leverage all that digital has to offer.

Michael Estrin is associate editor at iMediaConnection. Read full bio.