Report: Top 10 driving forces of digital marketing in 2010

Speaking at the Hotwire hosted launch of 33 Digital’s new paper, Ten Driving Forces of Digital Marketing in 2010, managing director Drew Benvie today warned of how a culture of crisis has become ingrained on the back of the explosion in social media.  

Benvie highlights several drivers for this, including the rising influence of Generation Y, which now represents a fifth of the working population, the real-time reach of social media channels, and a general failure of brands to listen to, and engage with sections of the population who have tuned out of traditional media.

The 33 Digital paper argues that issues that were once spotted and managed, more often than not now end up as crises.  According to Benvie, brands are waking up to the fact that the more exposed digital environment means “crises are an eventuality rather than a possibility”. The 33 Digital paper cites how this ‘perfect digital storm’ is facilitating the escalation of  seemingly minor issues into full blown crises, with H&M’s clothing disposal scandal and Amazon’s ‘Amazonfail’ being recent examples of this trend.

The explosion of crises is just one of the ten digital trends identified in 33 Digital’s new report which Drew Benvie co-authored with Richard Baker, social media specialist and the founder of Virgin Trains’ progressive approach to the use of social media in customer service. The nine other inter-related digital trends identified are:

1.       Media ‘graze’: the growing demographic of consumers that have tuned out of traditional

2.       media and instead graze on their social graph – the output of the people and brands they follow online.

3.       Social TV: why social media content and TV content will merge to become one.

4.       Social spam: how explosion in social spam will create new obstacles for marketers looking to engage with influencers online.

5.       Goodbye status, hello check-in: the location revolution and the opportunities and threats this provides.

6.       Internal communications: the hidden potential within social networks to aid internal communications.

7.       Measurement and meaning: why deciphering meaning is more important than headline numbers when measuring and planning marketing strategy.

8.       The customer is always on: Richard Baker on why and how brands must engage with their customers through social media channels.

9.       Social search: 2010 will be the year social search really takes root.

10.    In-game PR: the opportunities and threats to brands by in-game PR.

“We are in an era where crises are an eventuality for the brand, not a distant possibility.  Social media has opened brands up to this, but many aren't equipped to listen or then navigate their way through the mess,” said Drew Benvie, managing director 33 Digital.  “There are several layers to the changes we are witnessing captured in our report, from the behaviour of individuals and their media consumption habits, through to new opportunities and threats to marketers and communicators as different digital challenges emerge and are adopted.  

“The increased prominence of crises is a perfect storm scenario where several of these trends come together and left unmanaged, manifest themselves in a major upturn in the number and frequency of crises communicators must manage.”

http://www.33-digital.com/

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