KonzeptioNerd

MedienMittwoch revisited

Last week’s MedienMittwoch Ist das Internet eine Marketing-Seuche was a compact little (1 hour) event with a verbalized and (rare treat!) controversial panel. After a bit of position-fixing, the main topics were:

a) the need for classic and new media agencies to buy in(to) complementary know-how

Integration and convergence has been a large topic for advertisers since they started using the internet as a vehicle for their messages. And many interactive agencies have spun off from advertising agencies (or software companies). Spinning off left the guys from “classics” to their initial domain, while we see more or more original new media agiences without formal marketing backgrounds. Meanwhile, advertising agencies have begun to pull interactive back in while interactive agencies are investing in marketing expertise.

Prominent example on the stage was Laurent Bourdin, previously of Euro RSCG and Springer & Jacoby, now SinnerSchrader.

I expect that with the advertising shift, we’ll see a further differentiation within the interactive industry: agencies specializing in online branding, those who are experts at shaping large information spaces, interaction and transaction specialists and so forth.

and b) whether or not “classic” advertising media are superseded by the internet as new “Leitmedium”

Are classic advertising media getting displaced by the internet? Florian Ruckert (IP Deutschland) and Hansjörg Zimmermann (Das Goldene Vlies) don’t think so. What with brand-wikisation, says Ruckert, esp. TV will be more important than ever as a beacon, the only way to really lead a brand when everyone is looking toward this uncontrolled cesspool of information.

Frank Vahldiek, Head of Customer Marketing live! & access, Vodafone goes a step or three further and takes a stand for mobile - which his peers on stage could not quite second. Indeed, mobile data services are still being used primarily by business subscribers whose bills get paid by their companies (or so I gathered from a recent presentation by MindMatics, mobile service providers to the European Song Contest).

In addition, the mobile phone is still little more than a limited reception device. We’re a couple of years from a significant mobile data penetration and another, say, five from mobile coming into its own as a genre-shaping medium.

User Generated Panel Discussion (Not)

Only the User Generated Podiumsdiskussion Volker Schütz had promised in the beginning did not quite take off. The event closed after just two or three questions from the floor. But that might as well have been an effect of the surroundings: I was surprised that the about-to-close stalls of marketingservices 2007 with their colorful displays did not drain more participants. To the contrary, it seemed as if more and more visitors from the fair stopped by the panel while the exhibitors gathered up their materials. It was probably the after-fair party, starting at 6 pm, that cut short the discussion.

Missed the point?

Markus Seim of Anders und Seim Neue Medien Aktiengesellschaft and Robert Basic of Basic Thinking deplore that the discussion missed the point of the event’s title. We never found out whether the internet really is a marketing disease. Funny, however, how interpretations can differ: I read Martin Recke’s comments in Fischmarkt
as “a disease that attacks brands”. My interpretation was more like “a disease caused (created, invented) by marketing”. Be that as it may, it looks like there’s a second use potential in this title. Just wait for the next digital MedienMittwoch.

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