Digital marketing can enable brands to deliver measurable campaigns even without conversion metrics, industry experts said June 20 at the Direct Marketing Association’s “All for One Summit.”
“In the digital world, you can deliver a creative message, a brand message, a message that invokes relationships, and generate reasonably direct results,” said Paul McClay, director of strategy and media at interactive agency Definition 6. “That [intersection] is really where [direct and brand marketing] come together. We don’t have to dumb down the medium and make it less engaging, less compelling, less fun for the audience, because we have direct goals.”
Gabriel Weiss, manager of interactive marketing at Mitsubishi Electric, a Definition 6 client, said his company, which does not sell directly to consumers, used a national TV campaign to target contractors who independently sell the company’s units. Mitsubishi Electric tagged direct mail brochures with QR codes to deliver supplemental information, including interactive, rich-media display ads that could be customized to a consumer’s location. The b-to-b company also used its YouTube channel to curate consumer testimonials to educate contractors about customer needs.
“We can’t directly sell to the consumer, but we can provide the tools and needs for these contractors to answer any questions or objections and make the sale in the home,” said Weiss. “Then we can track this by seeing which testimonials are getting the most views, what tags are getting the most clicks from our literature, and adjusting from that standpoint on all the assets that we have.”
The integrated effort resulted in a three-fold increase in the division’s marketing budget, said Weiss.
The Coca-Cola Co., also a Definition 6 client, used online channels such as Facebook and YouTube to measure the performance and broaden the reach of its offline “Where Will Happiness Strike Next?” campaign. The effort’s creative featured a selection of videos documenting a customized vending machine doling out free Coca-Cola and products such as pizza and surfboards around the world.
“It was a strategy to bring to life our Coca-Cola interactive strategy and express to our marketers around the world the power of social media,” said AJ Brustein, senior global brand manager at Coca-Cola. He said the company only promoted the videos with one status update each to the company’s Facebook page and Twitter feed, but they have generated about 3.5 million views since launching in late 2009.
