Welcome to the Digital Marketing Inner Circle

This week, Denise Shrivelle has contributed a great interview with Zoe Scaman – Digital Strategist with The Population. I find it interesting in our industry that there seems to be people who have come from all skills and backgrounds such as the geeks morphed into entrepreneurs and/or corporates, long term advertising junkies who saw the digital light (dare I say like myself) and the new wave of great people like Zoe – whose early lives have been much more exposed and involved in online and technology perhaps leading to a more natural understanding of the possibilities. All of us are helping this industry evolve and hopefully prosper. I first came across Zoe’s blog – Quintessentially Digital – through a link on DigitaMinistry and was greatly impressed with her insights, enthusiasm and passion. In her profile she highlights the key areas to watch in the next 12 months – is anyone else hearing more and more about ‘augmented reality’? – Zoe shares some good examples – see Q5. She also gives us her views on how digital can better position itself in the broader industry – metrics is key – see Q8. You can see a link to Zoe’s highly interesting blog at the end of her profile – enjoy!

Name: Zoe Scaman

Works: The Population

Job Title: Digital Strategist

1. How, where and when did the digital industry find you?

I was 5 months into a Fashion & Arts degree at University in Surrey (UK) in 2003 when I realised I had no interest at all in Fashion and was pursuing entirely the wrong subject, so I took a sabbatical planning to return the next year.

Too earn myself a living until then, I answered an advertisement in my local paper for a ‘young, enthusiastic person wanted for a small start up company’. It turned out to be a search marketing agency and I was bitten by the digital bug.

The rest, as they say, is history!

2. What is your current role and what do you actually do?

My current role is as a Digital Strategist which means that on a day-to-day basis I spend my time thinking about new ways to connect brands with their customers through the digital space – which sounds a bit fluffy but it’s actually very interesting!

At the moment we (The Population) seem to have a ‘social media’ sticker on our foreheads, but social media is just a part of the equation when it comes to digital.

I cover everything from a Facebook fan page to a direct response campaign and even building a website if it’s deemed necessary…

3. Where do you see yourself in your future career?

Definitely still in the communications space but I couldn’t say whether that would still be purely digital or even agency side.

I tend to act a bit like a sponge, soaking up as much information, knowledge and experience as I can wherever I am.

My career path is certainly not set in stone and I tend to gravitate towards whatever area or type of work interests and motivates me the most at the time.

I started off in search marketing, moved into digital media planning and buying and now I’m working within strategy. I could really go anywhere!

4. Take a punt on the ‘next big thing’ in general media?

Metrics…..

It’s all about measurement and deepening our understanding across every media channel.

There are literally thousands upon thousands of analytics tools, web trends systems, brand dissection services, campaign evaluation solutions etc

We just need to sit down and spend some time getting our heads around it all…

5. What trends do you think the digital media industry will see in the next 12 months?

Open API & Connections between multiple platforms

There are two key benefits to open API solutions, which I think have been evident so far this year…

The first is probably best explained using Twitter as the example. Twitter’s open API has been the catalyst for it’s rapid growth due almost entirely to the developer built applications.

These apps have unlocked Twitters massive potential with amazing tools such as a little mobile application which acts as an SMS timer that allows you to set a reminder over SMS to call your mum, to more elaborate visual recreations of Twitter like twittervision.com, which shows an animated map of the world and what everyone is doing around the world.

As a result of expanding the uses, possibilities and appeal of Twitter, the API now receives 10x the traffic that the website itself does.

As more companies start to realise that open systems lead to a more creativity, more reach and ultimately more of a competitive advantage, it’s obvious that this trend will grow and grow (just this week Tesco in the UK announced they are opening their website API to third party developers).

The second benefit is the ability to allow open connections between multiple websites such as Google’s Open Social or Open ID. Eventually we should have one single digital identity that allows us to connect with any website without having to log-out and login each time.

This can increase the fluidity of online ‘surfing’ and also aid greatly with information management from a consumer perspective (i.e. not having to fill-out credit card details each time you want to purchase something).

From an advertising perspective, Open Access also releases a myriad of possibilities when it comes to behavioral and preference targeting…

The end of flash and the rise search engine friendly platforms

I think ‘Flashturbation’ is frowned upon more and more these days especially with advertising budgets on the decline and the growing need for consumer feedback and commentary to be enabled on-site…

We’ve been using templates such as Wordpress for our clients when it comes to creating content hubs. It’s cheaper, easier and allows for more of an organic build up of interest and engagement rather than just dumping someone onto a flash microsite. Of course the other obvious advantage to doing this is that search engines can easily pick up a feed-based site…

Augmented Reality

I’m still slightly on the fence with this because I have a feeling it could still fall into the ‘gimmick’ bucket, however, I’ve seen some fantastic non-gimmicky uses of this technology recently.

The IBM Wimbledon application which allowed users to point their handsets to a court and then see real time match information overlaid on the screen, furthermore when users point their phone the at food courts they also got information about what’s on sale.

Then there’s the new ‘Nearest Tube’ iPhone application, which uses both your location information along with the iPhone’s compass and video camera to show you an augmented reality picture of where and in which directions around you the nearest London Tube Stations are.

These kinds of applications show the real capacity for augmented reality and the versatile practicalities it can lend itself to, above and beyond novel gaming and visual experiences.

Denise added – see a Youtube clip on IBM’s Wimbledon ‘Seer’ augmented reality application here – and the London Tube example here

6. Where do you see the digital industry in the next 5 years?

First things first, I don’t believe there will be a ‘digital’ industry in 5 years time…

I’m a firm believer that when we’ve all stopped squabbling over silly things like the death of TV, the decline of the printed book and how digital is set to vanquish all other media, convergence might just be on the cards.

It would be nice to think that we can cease to operate in our offline/online silos and start to work towards a platform agnostic solution which focuses less on channels and more on consumer understanding and experiences.

7. How do you see other media evolving in the next 5 years?

As above but with the added capabilities of technology…

The evolution should be towards digital formats rather than static and interaction rather than passivity.

E.G – Like Asia presently, we should see the rise of the digital outdoor format, which allows for dynamic content updates and interaction via touch or mobile triggers.

Fixed, unresponsive media placements are now fading into wallpaper as people’s exposure to them reaches limitless heights. Therefore the logical step is to provide value and entertainment through the ability to engage with the media rather than just look at it. TV made it’s first steep with the red button and there’s definitely still more room to move.

As technology evolves and prices start to lower, we should see these formats develop and expand.

8. What does the digital industry need to do to better position itself in the broader media landscape?

I think everyone will agree that we need to stop hiding behind our evangelistic speeches of changing consumer behaviours and start to deliver some real, measurable results.

The one thing that differentiates digital from traditional media channels is the lack of standardised metrics and the confused definitions of what constitutes campaign success.

The ambiguity of digital measurements can also be blamed for the divide we have all experienced between offline/online planners as we can’t benchmark it against TARPs, readership and R&F.

The addition of clearly distinguished and specified metrics for digital will go a long way to changing the perception of online from new and unreliable to cementing the importance and dependability of it as a channel. It will also help non-digital people to understand it, plan it and integrate it into their everyday client work.

9. Where do you get your industry information from?

I have an enormous blog roll, I think I follow around 100 blogs but it could be more. Every time I find a post I like I subscribe to the blog so my daily news/views intake is hugely varied.

I also love Twitter for links to great posts or articles. You can always rely on Twitter to uncover the latest trends or campaigns quickly and easily…

10. What industry groups or networks are you a part of?

Digital Ministry, a few on LinkedIn but that’s about it…

I do find certain networks to be a bit narcissistic so I steer clear of those.

You can see Zoe’s blog by going to Quintessentially Digital

Have any comments or feedback these interviews then please feel free to comment below.