On to the Didge Round Table discussion, from Day 3 (I think).
Anyway, various luminaries from the world of US Didge were walking us through this exciting new media opportunity, when an interesting question came from the floor. The basic gist was 'Are banners dead, given all the exciting, whizzy new stuff that you can do?'
Many of the answers were equivocal, at best. But one really stood out from the Microsoft representative on the panel.
His answer was different. The challenge, as he saw it, was how to leverage the scale of the medium, as well as capitalising on the more often discussed qulaities of 'stickiness' or 'interaction'.
'We're a reach medium', he pointed out.
In this respect, banners aren't dead. Or least the function and purpose of banners isn't dead, though the format may change. They're about directing consumers. Leading them to new stuff.
This is something we've talked about before in relation to 'transmedia planning' - the idea that you can just leave stuff out there and let communities form around it. It's a beguiling theory, but very difficult to achieve in practice. Faris has some great examples, but I'd suggest it's hugely difficult to get to work for bigger brands. Nike probably do it best, yet for all the 23 million views of Ronaldinho on YouTube, there was a pretty significant traditional spend to establish the campaign and drive people there in the first place.
When we talk about, for example, sponsorship, we tend to divide investment into 'rights' and 'activation', based on the logic that there's very little point sponsoring something if no one knows that you have. The same logic needs to be applied here.
Building 'the best kept secret on the internet' may be fun, but I'll guarantee it doesn't meet the brief.
-- Toby
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