Chris Lovell, Group CEO

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

The main crux of the article was that retailers should think twice about investing more advertisiing in search in the run up to Christmas as other channels like Display had a better chance of affecting consumer intent and driving revenues.

Whilst we see our online display channel continuing to grow across GS clients, we still see search out-performing all other communication channels in all sectors, including retail. As we saw with the latest Bellwether report, the survey has shown that search continues to drive greater returns for advertisers in the UK as budgets are continually being increased across paid search.

Nielsen’s quite rightly point out the top 50 search terms generally are brand terms but I fear they are only looking at one side of the story. A lot search practitioners will point out the typical consumer journey ends when the user clicks through and converts via a brand term but there are other areas that need careful consideration. The branding impact of search, the impact that generic and product terms have on a campaign and how revenues are being attributed. In the article there was no inferred connection between users who were exposed to a search ad, who then came back directly to the site, which in fact could have been the case but I didn’t see any data to argue that point.

The most accurate way to analyse this, and as the majority of the comments on AdAge pointed out, is to move away from the ‘last-click’ model which distorts the view of how a campaign is performing.

As part of our campaign innovations we have been working on attribution testing with our clients over the last 6 months and the results have been very interesting. With the information to hand we are now able to test and apply various weightings in spend to our client campaigns. We are now looking at the online mix from a more holistic point of view, and by optimising campaigns based around this model, ROI is continuing to grow even in a deflated marketplace.

The point is I think retailers should take the Nielsen’s data with a pinch of salt as the article is one-sided. Our view at Golley Slater is that all media complement each other if used in the right way . Retailers know that search works, as does display but there is a danger in under-weighting or over-weighting the contribution of each medium to the sale without understanding how they work together.

Mark Fagan
Digital Media Director

As I looked around both conference halls, I saw hundred of faces. Faces of people representing PR agencies, digital agencies, media agencies, public sector organisations, independent companies … the list goes on and on. And the same look was on all of our faces. We were all waiting for the answer.

People are still looking for answers when it comes to digital. People are looking for the definitive answer for how digital will work for them. And it doesn’t exist. Technology and innovation is moving so fast that just when you think you are getting close, something new arrives on the scene and throws a proverbial spanner in the works. But whilst there are no right answers, the people who are having success are those who have taken a risk and have got involved with digital media so when new innovations happen, they are better placed to incorporate them in their comms strategy. Take my favourite speaker at Hello Digital, Heather Gorringe . She is the creator of Wiggly Wigglers and her story was one laced with success in connecting to her audience via social media and developing customer service by added value services such as podcasts. Her approach was so fresh, so enthusiastic and so refreshing in the current climate and she truly embodied the analogy of Cinderella and Dick Whittington that Jon Grisby, Channel 4 Director of Future Media and Technology, offered earlier in the day. It went something like this; those who wait for their digital fairy godmothers to turn up to change their life will be waiting a long time. Those, however, who practice, try, fail, try again and again and finally succeed, the Dick Whittingtons of the world, like Heather Gorringe, will succeed … and they are!

So with that in mind, I look around these crowded conference halls, with frantic typing and scribbling and I wonder how many people are at the event just in case the fairy godmother turns up as a key note speaker. We all need to take a leap into the unknown. No think tank, no conference, no seminar is going to give the definitive answers we are all waiting for … it has been almost 15 years since digital media took off and if we haven’t got the answers now, we aren’t going to.

So less talking people, and more action please!

Now that the announcement has been made, it’s time to get down to basics and introduce who we are and explain why we’ve decided to take the plunge into the great blogging unknown.

Firstly, we are Golley Slater North East. We are a Public Relations agency based in Newcastle city centre and we strive daily to provide our clients with fantastic, measurable results. We are one of the 11 regional offices within the Golley Slater Group and together we offer the complete marketing mix as a full service agency from PR and marketing, to digital, contact management and advertising.

What more could you ask for?

Now, on to why we have started this ongoing journey into the digital depths of cyberspace.

What we aim to do is simple: we will be sharing with you what we are all about and what we are doing from our beloved base, Toon Towers and across the UK with our diverse portfolio of clients. Our intention is to inspire you by sharing our knowledge on trends in communications and issues, talking about lessons we have learned and insights that we gather within the Public Relations sector.

Now that we have introduced ourselves, don’t forget to watch this cyperspace for more updates soon!

It gives me meaningful, leftfield and well researched information about what is happening in the world. A true alternative to an auto-selected, most popular, tag cloud driven aggregation of the blogoshpere. Whilst long form copy may not be the most successful online and doesn’t lend itself to my ‘pond skating’ affliction of skim reading everything as fast as possible.

There are times when you need depth, quality and context and Wired it has to be said does this with aplomb.

Recommended…
www.wired.co.uk

John Kinder
MD Digital