More than a thousand advertisers, publishers, brand marketers and ad techies took a deep dive into digital advertising at the Ad Age Digital conference in New York this week.
In this convo, Stephanie Grayson and I discuss some of our key takeaways from the conference.
Grayson, a corporate communications pro whose works can be found online on places such as Advertising Week and Digital Journal, is an active presence in the New York social media community and beyond, tweeting about public relations, marketing, media, branding and advertising. We bump into each other frequently at industry conferences - sometimes the Statler and Waldorf of the events' Twitter streams.
Among topics we cover:
- Storytelling in marketing is, well, a big story. Brands need to create shareable narratives for their communities. What are some of the necessary hard skills brands need to tell their stories? Is this a new way of engaging brand communities or a variation on what marketers and advertisers have always done?
- Branded content is becoming more ubiquitous across channels. What are the consequences for brand marketing strategies to keep those online and on social channels from performing mental "Tivos" to tune out the ads? Will small brands be able to break through the noise?
- Grayson suggests we are in the "age of knowing." She posits that there no excuse for not knowing everything about your ad performance. "I don't know," is an increasingly unacceptable answer.
- Even some of the largest brands can forget that marketing and advertising are means, not ends unto themselves.
- Be sure the values you share with your customers are the values important to them, not just to your brand.
After you listen, let us know what you see as some of the hottest trends in digital advertising.
This convo is sponsored by:
Vitrue, an original Facebook Preferred Developer Consultant, is the leading social marketing platform facilitating relationships between brands and their fans across multiple social networks via its software-as-a-service solutions. Social marketers and agencies world-wide use Vitrue's Social Relationship Management (SRM) platform and its Publisher, Tabs, Shop and Analytics products.
Brandwatch is one of the world's leading social media monitoring and analysis tools, with offices in the UK, US, Germany and Brazil. Global brands and agencies use our tool to cut through the noise on the social web and find the conversation that matters, empowering decisions that improve their business.
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Neil Glassman is principal marketing strategist at WhizBangPowWow, where he delivers integrated social, digital and linear media solutions. Join his conversations on Twitter and Google +.