How to campaign across all platforms
By Lucia Davis
Article Highlights:
All media is social, but not all social is media
Understanding the consumer and the role the brand plays is the start of the planning process — not the platform
The iPad changes how we consume digital content, even if the content is identical to what you’d consume on a laptop

Amanda Richman, executive VP and managing director of digital at MediaVest, knows digital: Not only does she lead the company’s 180-person digital team, but digital has also doubled under her leadership. Scheduled to speak at ad:tech New York in November, she recently offered iMedia Connection a preview of what lies ahead — both for the conference and for digital overall.

iMedia Connection: Every time we add a new screen, does the ad campaign immediately become more complex? What are the logistics necessary to stay current on all these platforms?

Amanda Richman is executive VP and managing director of digital at MediaVest. Amanda Richman: Developing campaigns for multiple platforms requires new approaches and a new discipline around understanding consumer behavior and need states. While that adds more dimensions to planning and activation, it also brings clarity to the purpose of each execution and what experience it must deliver. By focusing the client, media, and creative agency around defining the purpose of each campaign element, the message, and format best communicated, we might actually create great experiences — not just advertisements.

iMedia: You’ve changed the way MediaVest approaches social media marketing. What lies ahead?

Richman: All media is social, but all social is not media. As we move to a paid/owned/earned model, social marketing becomes more than social media. It requires that we build our listening skills and practice, invest in platforms and tools that enable that, and rethink processes to put data and community feedback at the front-end of development — not as a post-buy analysis.

We’ve shifted the conversation from “what’s our social strategy” to “what conversation should we be a part of,” and “how can communities participate in this campaign?” Social marketing has expanded beyond a siloed effort to, in essence, socialize all media and marketing. Social media is a layer to all media and marketing — not a placement or a campaign.

Get connected. Want to gain more insight into the future of digital marketing? Attend ad:tech New York, Nov. 3-4. Learn more.
iMedia: When approaching a campaign, how do you determine the mix (e.g., will the ads be strictly on television and social media, or on iPads as well)?

Richman: Understanding the consumer and the role the brand plays is the start of the planning process — not the platform. Once we know her needs and relationship to the brand, we can begin to consider what services and content the brand can deliver to her, and then focus on what platforms do that best, in what sequence. Past performance validates those choices — and new opportunities push us to reconsider and invest in new approaches.

iMedia: Where do you come down when it comes to ad networks, ad exchanges, and DSPs? Can you use these to manage multi-screen campaigns?

Richman: As the digital business scales, ad networks, exchanges, and DSPs are part of the equation. They help us find and deliver audiences efficiently — and can be tools used in building the base of a multi-screen campaign. However, they aren’t the only tool in the box; their role is usually complemented by contextual advertising — and experiences built around content or applications — that might leverage the audience data for relevance.

This past year, the dialogue has largely focused on the world of ad exchanges, DSPs, and the power of data to fuel a vast array of targeting capabilities — and many of the rich conversations have been with our data partners, not creative partners. The industry has focused so much on the science of targeting — on cookies, not consumers. We need to go beyond understanding not just their measurable actions as a series of cookie trails, but on the activity and their mindset at that time.

As video exchanges grow, and as that model eventually migrates to television and mobile advertising, the ability to segment and sequence content based on audience behaviors could be a tremendous opportunity. But we can’t lose sight of the message that’s being delivered through these new platforms — or we’ve lost sight of half the equation.

There is a little messaging art to the science, which requires more dialogue, as well as data
iMedia: Which mobile devices and gadgets are you playing with these days?

Richman: Everyone is enamored with the iPad, and for good reason. It changes how we consume digital content, shifting the experience and interaction to entertain me vs. inform me, even if the content is, in essence, the same as you’d consume on a laptop. I’m very interested in seeing Research In Motion’s PlayBook release as well, in addition to the innovation from Samsung and Hewlett Packard that will continue to push the industry forward.

iMedia: Digital doubled under your leadership at MediaVest. How did you make the case for this growth, and did it come at the expense of traditional?

Richman: Our digital growth has been fueled by a model of integration, which allows us to be more flexible and nimble in shifting dollars and mixes — and on a directive from the top to embrace a digital mindset and focus on innovation. Both integration and innovation complement our work in traditional channel — it’s not about replacing, but making all channels work harder through digital activation and measurement. But primarily, it’s the audience and their rapid adoption of all things digital that’s fueled the change — from search sophistication to video consumption to mobile applications; they are ahead of marketers and agencies in their speed to change. We test and learn in a controlled manner — they’re learning and moving on in real-time.

iMedia: What is the most successful approach to the iPad you’ve seen so far?

Richman: We’re still in the early days of the iPad, with lots of great experimentation going on with over a dozen programs for clients like Coca-Cola and UBS. From print publishers adding more images and video that bring more life to their brand, to digital publishers rethinking navigation and content structure, to newspapers publishing a new daily experience, everyone is pushing into this space, learning, and evolving.

Our approach has been to start by understanding the consumer, before we weigh in on what will be the best content experience. Just following the launch of iPad, we developed the iPanel — a panel of iPad users that we’re gaining insights from in real-time, from purchase through initial exploration and deeper interaction with the device and its content. This approach will help us filter through the choices in the marketplace and focus on finding successful approaches for specific audiences, vs. en masse.

iMedia: You’ll be speaking at ad:tech New York in November. What can the audience expect to hear from you?

Richman: The panel I’ll be moderating is focused on the three-screen experience — so more importantly, I’m looking forward to hearing from the panelists how they’re approaching this space, planning their marketing approaches, and measuring them to understand what’s working and what to evolve. We hope to uncover some best practices, lessons learned, and ways to rethink how we measure success across all screens, as we move to a more integrated model. But you won’t hear a formula — the silver bullet. Every marketer will develop their own three-screen approach based on their brand’s relationship to the customer, the content and assets, and the services they provide, and the way those can best be expressed. So hopefully the takeaway is to move forward — experiment and innovate — and don’t wait for the rulebook — you have to write your own.

Lucia Davis is associate editor at iMedia Connection