ArticlesThe Landscape of Digital Marketing: An Interview with Sarah Fay
Powered: For our readers, give us a quick synopsis of your background and what you currently are doing in the advertising world. Sarah Fay: I head up the U.S. Division of Isobar, which is a global network of best of breed digital marketing services and consists of five companies. One is CaratFusion, which is a full-service digital marketing agency with the largest online media budget in the country. They focus on online advertising campaigns, traffic-driving efforts and the creation of micro sites. They also have a CRM division, a search engine marketing division and an affiliate marketing division, so they are very well rounded and integrated in their approach and connect up to Carat, which has traditional media. Freestyle Interactive is also full-service digital advertising, but very focused on sports and youth brands. We have a search engine marketing company called iProspect that works for big brands like Travelocity, Marriott and Wal-Mart. They are very specialized in search strategy — both paid and organic — but heavily geared toward organic. Molecular is an internet consultancy that helps companies build their web strategy and execute on transactional websites. Ammo Marketing rounds out our network and focuses on word-of-mouth marketing. These are customized campaigns that recruit the right kind of influencers to carry the message from person to person about various brands and products. Powered: The ANA just released their study of top marketing professionals and what is interesting is that accountability has now fallen to No. 2 behind integrated communications as the top challenges facing marketer's today. What is your take on this shift? Sarah Fay: I think that integration is still an important element of programs and it has a lot to do to with delivering the accountability and the numbers. I don't think the two are necessarily separated from each other, but people are starting to realize that they can show results on a short-term as well as long-term basis against their programs and that's starting to be demanded by CEOs and CFOs. It's taking precedence, and integrated marketing may very well be an important way to get there, but the accountability goals of a program are coming forward because that's what's being asked for and quite honestly, the average tenure of a CMO these days is something like 18 months. So, these guys have to show fast results when they take the reins. They need some quick wins. And accountability is the way to get there. Powered: It seems that marketers are struggling to tap into Web 2.0. Where do you see the challenges and what strategies are best put in place when leveraging Web 2.0 across your marketing strategy? Sarah Fay: I think that marketing dynamics are shifting dramatically and it used to be that the brands who told the best stories to their consumers and customers were the brands that would succeed. Today I think that it is very hard to get a message through if you're just talking to an audience and if you consider it to be just an audience. We are starting to need to be so relevant and talk to consumers more on a one-to-one basis. At Isobar, we feel strongly that the brands that win will be those whose consumers tell the best stories to each other. To do this, we have to find platforms and ways to talk through the consumer to each other or to engage them more deeply, so there's more of an experience that's created. Part of what Powered is really good at is creating a value proposition to the consumer. We've talked about the gratitude effect that the Powered solution creates and that is a much deeper touch to the consumer. There are no more guarantees of creating a program with high reach and a decent frequency that will get through. There is no guarantee of impact with a program like that, so we are really big proponents of using campaign integration to create higher impact. I think the way marketers have started to use digital is at its most rudimentary form. Marketers are doing offline programs and online programs, and the two may be synergistic or reflective of each other just to create more recognition for people who might have seen both of them. I call that the kind of campaign, "Do you want fries with that?" We are doing a traditional campaign and how about a little bit of digital to add a little impact. Powered: What other integration points work best when planning a digital-centric campaign? Sarah Fay: We are constantly looking for more ways to better understand the media mix, so for instance, how can we benchmark search activity that comes from a TV program? Or, how can we leverage online advertising and search to make sure that we're spending the budgets in the right way. We have tools that help us to tweak that and make sure that we're not overspending in search. There's always the temptation to do that because the click responses are so good, but actually if you're balancing search and other forms of online marketing, you get a higher overall effect. You mentioned social networking and we're really working hard to understand the true value of social networking-type programs within the overall mix of online and offline programs. It's sort of like the B-to-C and then the C-to-C effect. The social networking platforms tend to amplify into extending the media for us and add an element of credibility and authenticity to the message. Powered: Do you find that companies focused on B-to-C are trying to tap into existing social networks, like MySpace or Face Book, or do you find them wanting to create their own type of sponsored social network site built around their brand and/or community of loyal followers, or both? Sarah Fay: I think it is a bit of both. I think it's crazy to go off and try to create your own social network. There's so much activity and there's so much leverage in loyalty that already exists in other places that it only makes sense to take advantage of those communities that already exist, but to implant yourself there in some way. And then extend that into customized areas – or elements of the program that we can use as jumping off points. Powered: You mentioned earlier that it's becoming more imperative to be more relevant with one-to-one communications. Where do you see direct marketing fitting into all of this? Sarah Fay: The concepts of direct marketing are now being applied to everything, and brand marketing is being infused into direct marketing. The two worlds are colliding. There was a book that was written called Brand is from Mars, Direct is from Venus and it is about the difference between the two worlds. If you think back, you were either a brand marketer or a direct marketer. And there was really a disdain for the other side that existed on both sides. Today, both disciplines have to live together and they have to appreciate the measures and the methods that are inherent in both marketing methods. If you overdo it in a direct marketing program — tighten the screws too tightly on a program — you can veer off in a direction that's not good for the brand. An example of that would be Radio Shack and the freestanding inserts that they used to send out with postage-stamp-sized promotions on the various products that they were selling. They would know to the dollar what they would sell on those things and the more things they could pile in, the more sales they would generate, but it was really killing the brand over time. So they actually took measures to move away from that type of advertising. Powered: Consumers are in control of everything — they can skip TV ads with Tivo, they can block ads online, they delete email messages. Do you think marketing organizations will ever gain control back from the consumer? Sarah Fay: I think that we might look at control in a different way. We might look at ourselves more as influencers versus a steward of a brand. We do well to involve our customers in the brand message and to listen to them and to involve them and let them hear each other. In general, I think that's a good idea, because it fosters a level of trust and authenticity. That appears to be what's really driving brand loyalty — or one of the key elements that's driving brand loyalty. There are still ways that you can control the brand or you can at least pull the right levers to put forward positive feelings about the brand. It involves a different set of skills than before. An example would be the Doritos campaign. They really threw it out there. They said, go create a 30-second spot for Doritos and we'll play the winning one and they allowed people to go wild. They provided a brand toolbox and they gave some guidelines, but they obviously received a variety of materials developed, probably about 1,000 responses. We did something for Adidas that is along those lines, but different. We said, come and get involved with the brand and create an advertisement with Adidas, but we actually created an ad-building kit. So we did control all the brand elements. This way our needs were satisfied, and the end result was beautiful. Consumers would post their advertisement in their MySpace areas, but it had their fingerprints on it — typically a picture of themselves in it. We had 22,000 consumers participate and get excited about doing it and posting it in their areas, but the brand elements looked very much like we envisioned it at the beginning. We were able to control it such that it looked the same every time, except for a couple of elements that the consumer chose. |
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In her role as President of Isobar U.S., Sarah Fay manages the growth and integration strategy for the digital and one-to-one agency services that fall within Isobar U.S.
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