With digital, brands can become more than just advertisers; they can become partners in the consumer experience. Razorfish's chairman outlines an approach for achieving this ideal.

Advertising is simple: Take a brand, find the target market, and apply a message that will make consumers look at the brand in a new light and remember it the next time they run to the store.

Easy, right? Well, not really, according to Clark Kokich, chairman of interactive agency Razorfish. When it comes to digital, things should differ from the process mentioned above.

"The strategy in digital looks a lot like it always looked: [Digital] gets lumped into the advertising part of the brand, and I don't think that's good enough," said Kokich, speaking at the iMedia Brand Summit in Coronado, Calif.

Digital offers brands an unprecedented ability to address multiple concerns. After all, Kokich said, the internet is a marketing channel, a customer service channel, and even a storefront. As brands recognize this, they are starting to construct more complicated and original campaigns.  The bigger the impact, the greater the demand. There's one catch, though.

"You're seeing companies doing things that have a big impact in the market, and other companies are saying 'Let's do more stuff like that,'" Kokich said. "The problem is, there's no process for doing 'that,' and there's no history."

The problem with digital is that it still follows the linear development process that traditional campaigns follow, where a campaign travels a straight line from research to strategy to creative to media, then on to the client.

For digital success, that process needs to be torn down and rebuilt. It needs to be less about what you can say that will alter consumer perception, and more about using digital to alter the way consumers experience the brand, according to Kokich. To do that, he offered five tips:

1. Use research to find unmet consumer needs
This is a basic tenant of marketing and branding. As brands look to develop new products, they examine what the consumer needs. In his presentation, Kokich provided three examples of how Nike, Fiat, and Best Buy have all launched digital initiatives that function as platforms, rather than messaging. Through these platforms, the brands became partners in the consumer experience, and that's key.

"Your goal is find out 'what does the consumer need that they're not getting?''' Kokich said. "When you find three needs, ask, 'Can I use digital to fill one of those needs?'"

2. Look at business problems, not just advertising problems
Again, this point refers to the multiple facets the internet provides. At least one out of every three broad-based strategic initiatives can be solved through digital, Kokich said, and you can incorporate these business problems into the digital campaign.

3. Build a culture of collaboration
Kokich's process is completely non-linear. Digital campaigns obviously require more people in the process, including the technology developers and analytics experts. But they should also include more client involvement. After all, ideas can and should come from anyone involved in the process.

Kokich explained that when he started in advertising, he couldn't wait to have a corner office and serve as a mentor to younger members of an agency when problems arose by giving them ideas or pointing to a precedent. With this non-linear process, things are far different.

"I thought I could say, 'Oh, this is what we did back in '82, try it this way,'" he said. "And it's nothing like that. I have no f**king clue, and neither do you."

4. Big ideas still matter, but they look different
A mobile campaign is not a big idea, according to Kokich. Rather, it's a small part of a bigger idea. In the example he shared from Nike, the shoemaker built an online platform that encouraged runners to join "The Human Race," a 10-kilometer run that happened on a specific day in countries around the world. That campaign was a big idea, and a mobile application was just a small part of it.

5. Silos kill digital strategy
Although the internet functions as a directory, store, and customer relationship tool, those aspects of branding are all separate for clients, and that stifles digital creativity. Kokich explained how Razorfish once pitched a company on an idea that he personally was excited about, and the company's CMO was on board as well. But once other departments were looped into the idea, it died on the vine.

"It could have been a lousy idea, but it doesn't matter," Kokich said. "The silos will kill digital strategy. At most companies, the only person who could buy an idea like that is the CEO, and that's not going to happen most of the time."

Rich Cherecwich is associate editor of iMedia Connection.

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