digital marketing might help save the planet

One of the most interesting things about digital, is that it has the potential to go beyond just advertising.



Sometimes the work goes to the point of actually making the product better, like Nike's recent Cannes winner for Nike+.

In a way, this is what advertising has always done - ads which made products cool beyond their physical attributes. Like a posh quarterly owners club magazine for a posh brand of car, or slick marketing that makes ordinary training shoes so desirable that you'd steal them.



But this new class of stuff - like the Nike+ application from RGA, is edging on stuff that should come straight out of product development rather than a hired marketing agency.

For an example, a product that I'd talked about before, webkinz (collectible stuffed animals with a unique code that brings them to life in an online world - think Beanie Babies plus Second Life) is another example of where digital add-ons can enhance the life of a product. While previously kids would buy more toy accessories at Woolworths, or simply tire of the stuffed toy, they can now interact with other toy users on the web, and even purchase digital accessories for their toy's avatar.


Image from Willow Tree


There are 2 points I'd like to make then:

1. That the line between advertising, digital stuff, marketing and product development, and even business plans, is very blurred right now.

It isn't a useful line, and certainly not a line which helps make products and communications creatively better. My feeling is that the agencies and companies that will do best are the ones who'll try to get stuck in as much as possible, and not the ones who sit around trying to decide what is and what isn't cricket.

When I say do best, I mean the ones who are remembered for redefining whole periods of marketing, like David Ogilvy, myabe Crispin Porter Bogusky and maybe Innocent. Everyone else is talking about this, so I won't go on too much.


2. I really think that digital marketing might help save the planet.

On Russell Davies blog, they're talking about un-product, or maximum idea, minimum (physical) stuff.

"So I'm wondering whether we can persuade people to consume more branded ideas and less branded stuff, in the same way we might sometimes be able to substitute connected technology for cars."

This is exactly what digital can do, and is the existing business model for huge online communities like Habbo Hotel and the Korean CyWorld. They make money from selling virtual clothes and furniture to people.

So this could be one way of making people consume less stuff - extending the purchase cycle so people buy your physical product less often, but you still make more money.

I have some more ways which aren't quite formulated in my head yet, which I'll post later. I can feel a list coming on!