Where Digital Marketing Reigns Supreme

aadigitalThis week, I attended the Ad Age Digital Conference, which this year moved from its former home in the Metropolitan Pavilion to Pier 36 on South Street aka “Basketball City.” Judging from the packed auditorium, and number of exhibitors, I’d say the Ad Age team, including @aerocles, should be very satisfied with its work on this.

More significantly, the two-day gathering managed to attract a good many thought leaders who are driving the digital marketing revolution — from big CPG and media brands to the analytics and marketing services companies that fuel how many of today’s products and services come to market. I had a chance to capture some video with several of the presenters, as well as with Abbey Klaassen, Ad Age editor.


Pete Blackshaw
Global Head, Digital & Social Media, Nestlé

“Message quality still matters…The brand narrative still matters. What happens in the social world, is that if you get that right, you get disproportionally rewarded. If you get it wrong, you get disproportionally punished or outed. There’s a real cost to getting it wrong….It’s a world of debits and credits.”

“Whoever came up with the [antagonistic] word ‘war room’ should be escorted from the room.”

“Facebook or Twitter or Instagram? A: It’s not either or. We need to play in all these areas.”

Also, from Nestlé’s Mark Brodeur: “1.7B consumer impressions from the Google/KitKat partnership. No $$$ changed hands.”


Debra Aho Williamson
Principal Analyst, social media, eMarketer

Real-time marketing aka “opportunistic marketing,” “always-on marketing,” “marketing in the moment,” “news-jacking”…. “What it boils down to is reaching the right person at the right time with the right message. Real-time marketing is really the ability to [finally] do that…Real-time marketing is much bigger than social media. We’re going to see it on your phone, as you’re driving in your car…”

“There’s no consensus on what real-time marketing is”

“The American Marketing Association says that 63% marketers using RTM. Few are doing it well”

Citing 360i’s Bryan Wiener: “It’s not just real-time marketing, it’s marketing in a real-time world.”


Scott Galloway
Clinical Professor of Marketing, NYU Stern, Founder & CEO at L2

“We think digital IQ is a forward-looking indicator of revenue growth, and ultimately shareholder value…When we look at the digital IQ of a company as registered by 850 data points, and we take that number and correlate it to their shareholder performance, we see a correlation.”

“Instagram is bypassing Pinterest, which “is declining in value and will be sold.”

“The next big platform is already here. It’s @WeChatApp (China).” Native mobile apps are most powerful.

“Facebook is renting eyeballs, similar to AOL and Amazon. Facebook acknowledging that its social marketing platform is BS.”

“Burberry, a pioneer on Facebook, is now shifting [marketing] dollars to CRM” (e.g., Salesforce)


Abbey Klaassen
Associate Publisher of Editorial & Audience for Advertising Age

On getting covered in Ad Age: “…They [ad tech firms] all pitch you and when they describe exactly what they do, it always sounds exactly the same.” Our strengths: “We reach the marketers, the agencies, the media companies, and now we reach the digital ad tech folks.”

Other Notable Quotables:

lynnVLynn Vojvodich, CMO, Salesforce

“B-to-B is all about CRM. B-to-C is all about customer experience.”

“It’s time as marketers we take on top-line growth.” Cites Cisco’s @BlairChristy as the “new CMO.”

A recent Salesforce/Deloitte study found that: “a quarter of CMOs now have a customer service role.”

Jim BankoffJim Bankoff, CEO, Vox Media Inc.

“Slide shows and listicles represent “a race to the bottom and are unsustainable.”

Our vision for Vox Media is “sustainable” unlike “Mark Zuckerberg or Larry Page’s flavor of the month” when they “tweek their algorithms.”

Digital marketers should “avoid platform dependency,,,and over-reliance on video platform, search…”

“We stay away from the commoditization of advertising. It’s all about brand storytelling.”

The Intel brand campaign that ran on The Verge produced the same level of click-throughs as editorial.

Vox Media’s secret sauce: “hacker culture meets journalism…we think like a platform company”

Batali-LearmonthAnd finally, there was this photo featuring Ad Age’s Michael Learmonth chewing the fat with big-branded restaurateur/chef Mario Batali (in all his sartorial splendor).

(All photos and video taken by Peter Himler with a Canon PowerShot SX40 HS)

2 comments

  1. this is a whole bunch of knowledge. Many social media marketers will be benefited from it, I do get a lot of learning from your post. Now I know how to approach on my social media profiles also the time to post it. Thanks

  2. Internet marketing is how marketing meets the web along with other types of new media, for example mobile phones as well as game titles. Learn internet marketing from certified digital online marketer strategies, an expert certification program created for businessmen and entrepreneurs. Digital has shaken in the marketing trade. Currently entrepreneurs end up carrying out the work they do outdoors their comfort zone.

Comments are closed.