Sundar Ganapathy

In recent years, marketing efforts have been focused on new media. The interest is so great that “viral marketing” has become almost cliché within the marketing and advertising industries. However, the interest in new media is not a fad and is not going to go away anytime soon. New media is enabling consumers to engage directly with advertising campaigns and brands in a way never before possible. The power of new media only grows as cell phones and other devices begin to carry full web browsing capabilities. This presents marketers with tremendous upside potential and tremendous risk. It is because of the fickle nature of new media consumption that it is best leveraged as a launching pad for advertising campaigns.

New media serves as a test market of sorts where memes and fads far outlive successful ads. If a brand’s viral ad becomes a phenomenon that lasts longer than a month, it is a winner, as long as it not only engages viewers but raises the brand’s top of mind. A successful online ad concept can then be converted to a traditional media campaign. Of course, crafting a good online campaign is much more difficult given the self selected viewership. The comments and responses of self selected viewership, though biased, often can provide valuable insight into a campaigns success or failure. While some believe “content is king,” often the best ads have little content to offer, but are engaging and memorable enough to increase top of mind or drive website viewership.

On the other hand, if the campaign is not great, chances are it will not get viewership, thus protecting brand equity but wasting marketing budget. Luckily, production and distribution of an online campaign is often far cheaper than TV and print campaigns, which provides marketers more creative flexibility and potential for experimentation. While measuring return on investment in new media was difficult in the past, new tools have been developed to track response both inside and outside of the “blogosphere.” Such tools, combined with traditional rapid response market research, often provide a clear measure of a campaigns efficacy.
Creative flexibility is another benefit of new media as it enables advertisers to mix a variety of forms of communications with interactivity. The decentralized distribution and self selected viewership inherent in new media frees brands from barriers imposed by television network politics and government censorship while mitigating the risk of offending people outside the target segments. However, sometimes active viewers can threaten a campaign as was the case with Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign which has been spun by viewers to appear inauthentic.

The active nature of new media consumers can be a significant threat to some brands, especially if the campaign is not monitored and the PR response is poorly handled. Some brands, on the other hand, can thrive in this environment. Dynamic brands such as Apple often do well in new media because of their capability to reinvent themselves often. On the other hand, brands that have a powerful and unwavering messaging concept are often able to leverage new media as a means to develop loyalty and enable evangelists help promote the brand. This has been the case with the Ron Paul 2008 presidential campaign which was able to raise over $5 million dollars in one day and over $9 million to date this quarter, almost completely through grassroots online marketing efforts. This success has been the result of “brand” evangelists who see Paul as the only principled and authentic candidate and resonate with his unwavering messaging concept surrounding freedom, non-intervention, and personal responsibility.

New media is not a cliché and is not a passing fad. It will ultimately take the place of many of the channels that are now considered traditional media, especially television. This is a relatively new communications environment that marketers and advertisers are just beginning to truly understand. At present, new media presents a great way to launch a campaign by mitigating risk and providing a test environment. Additionally, it can be leveraged to great effect with dynamic and principled brands to create an active community of brand evangelists. In the future, “new media” will become “the media” as the top down approach of media consumption is flattened and decentralized. Marketers on the lookout for the “next big thing” would do well by taking another look at the untapped potential of interactive and collaborative media.