Digital is a winner

Peter

We were asked to take part in a Financial Services Forum debate on integrated marketing recently. Each discpline was represented - PR, DM, digital, sponsorship and advertising, with each being asked to out forward the case for why their discipline should receive an increasing share of clients budgets.

Yours truly was there to sell the case for digital.

A vote was cast at the start and then again at the close to measure the speakers abilities to influence the audience.

I'm pleased to say that digital saw a 200% increase in votes and came away as the winner with PR a close second.

I think the winning point, judging by conversations with guests after the event, was that digital was a platform from which to launch all your marketing activity and as a result the old definitions of what pr or dm is are being revised in light of the digital options open to clients. For example is a brand's facebook profile pr or advertising?

The follow up to that last point is that we still have silo's (budget and personnel) for each discpline that help reinforce the old way of thinking about marketing. It's not only time to re-think attittudes to what is marketing but also to consider how marketing teams are set up.

As financial services brands are heavy users of digital there's a real need to start looking internally at how you are set up and how that structure works in the brave new digital marketing world.