The Running Commentary

Cross Media campaigning the way of the future!!

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Cross media marketing opportunities and indeed campaigns are becoming the norm as far as discussions around the boardroom table are concerned. Usually the driver is trying to extend the “above the line marketing message” that has been carefully crafted by the marketing department.

If the Direct Marketing executives are at the table they are simply relegated to coming up with a campaign in support of this message.

My contention is that that this is not cross media campaigning, merely cross platform dissemination of a message. The true value in cross media campaign initiatives lies in the formulation of a campaign that is able to reach across the various platforms and media and still remains effective in terms of the variety of target audiences.

The requirements to be successful again lie in beginning with the end in mind, correctly identifying what it is you want to say, how this message is going to look in the various execution formats and what results you are expecting.

As far as results go, increased brand awareness is not a “result” when it comes to cross media campaigning. Results must be measurable because cross media campaigns allow for measurement of results from the moment they are executed. These measurements will be driven by the development of the campaign and the level of incentivisation the customer has in terms of interaction with your brand. No campaign will be effective without some call to action and no call to action can happen without some sort of incentive for the client to act.

These results will give shape to further iterations of the campaign allowing for subtle or even drastic changes in the message in order to achieve your stated objectives.

Organisations entering this space need to engage with companies that are able to take the message they intend to send out and prepare it for cross media execution. Having the correct tools is critical to measurement and refinement. Once you have selected your organisation to execute then you need to enable to execution. My experience is that the client often has a preconceived idea of how the campaign must be executed. I would caution that these preconceived ideas should be tabled but should not dominate.  Domination of one idea may simply lead to poor execution by some of the parties, this will lead to the failure of the campaign, and the message that this does not work for us.

The value add in terms of cross media campaigning comes in two ways:

1) Exposure, clearly this has to be mentioned as the message is disseminated across various platforms and media
2) Probably the most important value add is facilitating the interaction with your brand. Above the line rarely gives the opportunity for the customer to engage with your brand, whereas a cross media campaign will ALWAYS afford this opportunity to your client.

I will post more on this topic in the days and weeks to come.

boardroomCreativecross media campaignsMarketingmarketing messagevalueXMPie

Mike • September 2, 2008


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