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Marsden mardy over new media

Posted in Marketing, Branwell Johnson, Latest reporters' blogs September 26th, 2008 by Branwell Johnson

Is Andrew Marsden, president of the Marketing Society, stripping away the emperor’s new clothes or venting some sour grapes with his attack on agency’s focus on “new media”?

Marsden, who won’t like being described as a “veteran marketer” but fits the bill, having worked at Britvic for many years, made his comments the annual Marketing Forum on the Aurora. In his speech Marsden criticised agencies for dressing up fairly old online marketing strategies, such as branded websites, as the latest sharp thinking and argued that new media companies might be overvalued and under delivering.

It sounds like heresy in this era of Facebook apps and Youtube postings but the argument about how much monetary value these online initiatives bring to a marketing campaign is still a valid point. Marsden also claims that by 2013 the majority of ad spend will still be via traditional media – guess we’ll have to wait five years to find out.

It was only back in April that it was demonstrated branded apps on Facebook were failing to take off , with Woolworths Catapault game only finding five daily active users, for instance. On the other hand Coca-Cola saw 7,000 installations taken up of its application.

There are no hard and fast rules about what will seize the imagination of digital denizens but I reckon having a clear idea of what you want to achieve in the first place must be paramount. If it’s talkabability and marinating a maturing brand’s “edginess” I’d look no further than this rather naughty vital from Diesel celebrating its 30th birthday.

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