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Jaime Gottlieb
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A south Florida native, Gottlieb is a Creative Writing graduate from Florida State University and was a freelance Arts and Entertainment feature writer before joining ADOTAS in 2004.

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The New Media Blend: Working Interactive Media into the Traditional Mix

Written on
Jan 18, 2006 
Author
Jaime Gottlieb  |
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The New Media Blend: Working Interactive Media into the Traditional Mix

For Seward, clearly it’s the strategy that comes first. Acting immediately on the hype of emerging media, to her mind, is rarely a smart move. “We don’t really go to clients and say ‘You need to do this because it’s new and you need to gain experience and it’s going to be hot and you’re going to want to know about it.’ We always go in with strategy,” she explains. “If the strategy is one that leads to a platform idea, we’re going to include some new channels and some old channels, whatever is the highest chance we have of engaging people. We don’t go in there with a new thing because it’s new and because you ought to get your toe in the water of the next new thing. We go in because it’s right for the strategy and this target audience and this particular marketing challenge that we’re facing.”

According to Jinenne Sutherland, Organic’s group media director, sometimes the problem of getting clients to convert has as much to do with the type of business they’re in as anything else. In Sutherland’s experience, there are a few specific types of clients that continue to hold back. “Pharmaceutical companies, banking companies and even anti-virus software companies are very nervous about some of the things you can’t control over the web,” she offers. “From a creative standpoint, a pharmaceutical company still has to have the disclaimers around the drugs and they’re very conservative companies. So when they’re doing creative and you’re looking at media placement, you need to make sure you accommodate for that. An anti-virus software company doesn’t want to be on anything that [could potentially] make it misconstrued as something that has to do with adware.”

Whatever field we may be talking about, there is also another set of reasons that has kept traditional advertisers from being quick to jump into new media—the fact that when any idea is too new, there isn’t always a way to advertise. “Our strategy, because it’s one of those ever-evolving things, is: who’s your target, what are they doing and how you need to get in front of them,” Sutherland says. “If you’re going after teens, you’re obviously going to be on Instant Messenger.” The problem: “IM wasn’t around years ago so that wasn’t an option for us. Then when it came out, some of the advertising options weren’t that great, but our goal is always to figure out who are we trying to get in front of, what are we doing, and where can our message resonate with them best. Any good media planner should be on top of that and be out looking at what’s the next thing and [figuring out] how [to] put an ad on it that’s going to engage my customer.”

Some agencies even have departments whose sole purpose is to not only keep abreast of new and emerging media, but to introduce and educate their clients about them so that when the time comes to put new media into the media mix, they’ll be ready. John Cate, Vice President/National Media Director for Carat Fusion, tells us that they promote new media and other vehicles to their clients in a couple of ways.

“First, we have an SVP, Cory Treffiletti, who is completely focused on this area and stays in contact with all of our clients on a national basis,” Cate explains. “Second, we have an experts program made up of individuals from our planning groups. They become a national resource for all of our planners, helping them to understand and implement emerging media programs.”

Taking a similar approach, Julia Jones, Senior Vice President, Director of Media Planning at Deutsch NY relates that, “At deutschMedia we have a team dedicated to new and emerging media. They are responsible for staying ahead of new media trends. This team is fully integrated with our core planning teams, and together we determine the best way to present each idea/opportunity to our clients.”

With teams like these accelerating the transition of traditional advertiser into all-inclusive advertiser, and with media planners hell-bent on finding a way to place ads on new media platforms, their efforts are bound to stand for something. And they already are. According to Fallon’s Seward, “I think the days of ‘I’m too afraid’ or ‘I’m going to let others test the water first’ are passing quickly, and now we’re in the era of ‘I’m behind, oh my gosh, I’ve got to get in.’ If people aren’t doing things, they’re starting to look over their shoulder and feel pretty exposed.”





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