Most brands want clever, fresh approaches to messaging, but the cost of innovation can scare away even the most adventurous. Here's how to change that.

It's hard to come up with great cutting-edge ads for emerging platforms, but it's easy compared to getting the money to pay for them.

Managers of marketing budgets want concrete numbers and clear concepts before spending their money, especially with a looming recession and budgets across the country under increasing scrutiny. But that's no excuse to avoid experimenting with emerging media channels that can super-charge a marketing campaign.

First, what's an emerging channel? According to Mediaedge:cia (MEC) Senior Partner, Director of Emerging Communications Mike Bologna the definition is simple: "An emerging channel is any media platform, channel that has not fully matured," he told an iMedia Breakthrough Summit crowd in a special presentation co-delivered with Atlas Director of Emerging Communications John Chandler-Pepelnjak.  
 
Summit attendees were gathered in Rancho Mirage, Calif., to discuss all things emerging in the media and marketing space. Emerging channels include mobile, gaming and video-on-demand. While identifying emerging channels is (relatively) simple, deploying communication through these untested fields is tough.

The big challenge of course is money. Marketers like to spend money on proven channels they can easily measure. But emerging channels are neither proven nor easily measured. Before significant revenue starts to flow, Bologna said, it won't be a leap, but a "step in the right direction." For example, redeploying traditional metrics to emerging channels, while not a perfect solution, is a good one.

"If we can apply the same metrics to online video as traditional TV… then that will go a long way," Bologna said.

In the case where traditional metrics simply don't apply, keep the more exotic metrics as simple as possible. According to Bologna, the metrics don't have to be consistent, but they need to make sense.

With measurement issues sorted out, there's still the difficult budget question.

"The cost of creating an ad for an emerging channel can exceed the media cost by a factor of two-to-four," Bologna said. And forget about cutting creative costs to make the equation work. "That's the price you'll have to pay to really make it worth a CPM that can cost five times the cost of television."

Not only that but Bologna strongly recommends a long-term investment in emerging channels in order to let a message sink in. "We shouldn't be using the emerging media space for one-offs," he said. "It's a waste of time."

Faced with these challenges, MEC has found ways to painlessly integrate emerging channels into a plan. 

First, do your market research and figure out what the possibilities are. "For each brand, we get a sense of what each client can get from this space," Bologna said. "What have they already done? What have competitors done?"  

Second, be practical in your planning and thoroughly explain the finished plan. Simply put, "If what we're proposing is better than something that already exists, clients will spend," Bologna said. In other words, spending hesitation doesn't always have to do with how the money is spent. But why?  Does the client understand the advantages?

"Client's are not afraid of spending money; they just don't want to go back feeling silly," Bologna said.

When it comes to delivering a plan to clients, avoid targeting individuals or individual departments.

"Don't target any single person, or group within an organization," Bologna said. "Speak to people on all sides of the business to get buy in." In other words, you shouldn't be trying to sell just digital people but traditionals as well.

If all else fails, demonstrate savings in traditional channels, then suggest applying them to emerging ones. "If we can't carve out a specific budget for emerging, we suggest reinvesting savings from a traditional medium," Bologna said. For example, if you can save costs in television or magazine spending but maintain the same client objectives, apply those savings on the cutting edge.

A final recommendation from Bologna: Be your biggest critic. Emerging channels are not always right for every client or brand. 

"We look more for reasons not to do emerging channels than to do them," Bologna said. If you can think of a reason to cut spending on an experimental channel, you can expect your client will be thinking the same thing. 

Mario Sgambelluri  is associate publisher, iMedia Communications, Inc. Read full bio.