Social Media is definitely a big deal, twitter is growing at a staggering 1382% in the UK According to Neilsen, Facebook is not far behind. This incredible growth is forcing clients to re-evaluate their entire communications mix.
Brands are exploring new ways to position themselves as conversational and adapt to this growth as well as exploiting the emergence of newer platforms such as in game advertising, product placement and mobile. Mobile is also growing exponentially with the increasing use of smartphones. Smartphones such as the I-phone are set to outstrip standard phones by 2011/12.
The only sector of marketing in the UK that has not gone into reverse in terms of spend has been digital, all other sectors have suffered to one degree or more. It’s clear that marketer’s consider digital to be an essential part of the marketing spend. Numerous brands are now thinking more carefully about how they develop their creative assets to work best in alternative video platforms such as mobile, podcasts and YouTube and less likely to jump straight into TV production without these elements being considered up-front.
The big story this year is the up-coming general election and how each political party conducts itself with digital and social media. The digital marketers here have really been wowed by the Obama campaign’s use of digital and in particular social networking to connect with voters. Everyone seems to be watching how the main political parties will conduct themselves. We are seeing a serious take up of smart phones and clients are very interested in what can be done through apps. Clients are seeing the benefits of mobile; they still rightly want to make sure it’s having a positive impact on both brand measures and sales.
John Kinder, Digital Managing Director
February 25th, 2010
