Last month in Orlando the ANA held it’s annual conference of CMO’s to showcase advertising and media trends. Top companies such as Procter & Gamble, Kellogg, Cisco and RIM presented their best marketing work from around the world. While this event is mostly intended for advertisers, many agency and media company executives attend as well. I typically attend the conference and this year the event was a dramatic change from the past.
Almost every CMO presentation had digital marketing at it’s core with social media as a key component. This is a significant contrast from last year when the presentations usually featured a strategy that led to an impactful, yet traditional, television commercial campaign. This year at the conference CMO’s were using the language of paid, earned and owned media and they attributed success in growing their business during a recession to this new media framework.
In less than one year the ANA event has moved from featuring television campaigns to touting digital platforms with influential social communities. It’s clear that top level marketers have fully embraced digital advertising and now many of these digital programs lead the entire marketing efforts.
At RBM we have focused on social media and the benefits of digital advertising for many years so this trend is old news for us. We pioneered ROI accountability with search performance marketing and we are leading the way in social marketing which is rapidly expanding into e-commerce.
It’s nice to see the rest of the marketing world catch up!
