For those of you interested in the dark arts of digital branding and the performance of our top Australian digital agencies. You might be interested in the results of a GetSticky survey of some of Australia’s top digital agencies that were previously ranked by a panel of judges in July’s issue of the B&T magazine.

They assessed each site by usability, creativity, employee appeal & client appeal. However, GetSticky’s digital forensic team lead by Craig ‘Media Hunter ‘Wilson assessed the same sites using GetSticky’s new Inbound Marketing analyst tool called Web ANLYZR.

The Web ANLYZR has been designed to assess sites from a marketing perspective reviewing its on-site search engine optimisation; off-site search engine optimisation; keyword search scores; depth of presence; social media & traffic conversion.

Having a nice creatively flash site is one thing, but if it cannot be found by your target audience and then convert, it is basically useless.

“Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you are doing, but nobody else does”Dr Steuart Henderson.

Compare our Web ANLYZR results against the B&T Magazines rankings at GetSticky.

Marketing guru and author Seth Godin recently wrote “Ignore the new gatekeeper at your peril.”

I think my local business chamber are just about to, by hosting an ‘Ask the Media’ seminar populated with only traditional mass media representative’s.

  old_tv 
  Originally uploaded by Gal Mor

No digital or social media representatives…only The Herald (paper), NBN Television (TV) and KO/NX FM (Radio).

Seth defined the old gatekeeper as big media channels such as TV and print newspapers, where poor old business people had to negotiate with columnists and bullying editors to get a mention and that was at long shot.

The new gatekeepers are a completely different animal…who was Seth talking about? The Blogger.

As an active member and supporter of the Hunter Business Chamber, I’d just like to inform them of a significant statistic:

“March 2008 marked one of the most significant turning points in the rapid evolution of Australia’s digital advertising industry. It was the month in which, for the first time, Australians began spending more time online than they did watching television”
AC Nielson

However, I do support the Hunter Business Chamber in its activities. So if you are in the area, please join me and some very old mass media gatekeepers for a laugh.

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  Summer Institute in Digital Media, Lisbon 
  Originally uploaded by riddle

Digital agency madness or…HOT!

According to the wonderful people at AC Nielson: “March 2008 marked one of the most significant turning points in the rapid evolution of Australia’s digital advertising industry. It was the month in which, for the first time, Australians began spending more time online they did watching television”

Today, Australians are spending around 13.7 hours a week surfing the web, compared with 13.3 hours watching TV.

You’d think everyman and his dog would be spring cleaning their advertising campaigns by adding sexy digital bling to give a smoother, revitalised and fresher-faced look?

In my experience, it’s fair to say many CEO’s and marketers believe digital agencies are exclusively to the rich and famous brands. How wrong they are!!!

They still think big is beautiful eagerly trying to connect with the largest amount of consumers at once by using traditional mass media channels like television, radio and print.

I’m not arguing for digital agencies over traditional advertising agencies or digital media over traditional media, I’m saying digital media should be added to the advertising mix.

Money talks and this year’s big spenders in digital media have conspicuously Sydney accents, perhaps fearful of being left behind, buying up our digital media goods in spectacular fashion.

Maybe the digital sceptics might be moved by market research coming out of the UK by Redshift Research, on behalf of Oxygen8 Communications.

Key findings:

• Digital media now accounts for almost 50% of daily media consumption and is the preferred medium for receiving marketing messages
• 41% of consumers chose the Internet as the medium they could not live without
• only 62% of TV is now watched in real-time
• 75% of the UK population rarely watch TV adverts when viewing recorded programmes

Looking at the US experience, modern use of digital media has opened up endless possibilities for both work and play, however in Australia, we have been cursed by the fundamental failure of business leaders, the media and advertising agencies to understand how to leverage the Internet.

My advice to any business owner, CEO or marketer (even competing advertising agencies) is give your brand a digital makeover before you get a ‘Liverpool Kiss’ from a hairy arsed competitor.

The digital evolution is not a change in technology…it’s a change in consumer and business behaviour!

Sexy and stylish isn’t strutting down the traditional media runway anymore, consumer behaviour has moved on. The discerning stylish brand will be wearing sexy digital bling this summer.

Are you wearing digital bling this summer? And don’t you hate the over use of the word – bling?

  The Coffee Cup Club 
  Originally uploaded by Miki, Queen of Planet Goodaboom

This week, I certainly had my share of excitement, but the pinnacle
had to be the social media gathering in Sydney, on Tuesday night.

A gathering of Australia’s blogging glitterarti to meet Joseph Jaffe
and welcome Julian Cole and Marketing Mag’s online editor, Scott
Drummond to New South Wales.

Sorry Victoria, it looks like Sydney is the
social media capital of Australia or is it Newcastle?

However, less about me and more on some bloody good blogging reads:

• Media Hunter, Craig Wilson covers our social media soiree
• Servant of Chaos, Gavin Heaton this week has reminded me that my blogroll is not dead. Thanks, Gavin I’m onto it.
• Adspace Pioneers, Julian Cole’s crusading social media blog gives some constructive criticism on a new viral campaign
• A Blog About Digital Media, Ben Shepherd looks at a few Olympic video frustrations
• Mathew Packer’s great Newcastle ranting blog on everything and everyone

Now back to drinking my coffee:)

  The Black code 
  Originally uploaded by """""""Ricasa25"""""""

Some smart dude once said that death and taxes used to be the only certainties in life.

Well, after receiving a plethora of invitations to digital focused marketing events across Australia, my fellow marketers can now add web designers masquerading as digital marketing experts as another certainty. Everywhere you look you’ll find them touting their website…sorry, I mean digital message.

From television to newspaper columns, radio to glossy magazines. You can’t even scan the blogoshere without accidentally coming across a reformed web designer blogger talking up their new digital or social marketing credentials.

Unfortunately this trend is especially prominent with Newcastle web designers and companies as well as quite a few in Sydney. 

It’s the modern day version of Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale "The Emperor’s New Clothes" where a CEO unwittingly hires web designers to develop his or her firm’s digital marketing strategy. What does he get? A website! Not even a website with content. An empty shell.

It’s like asking your local builder to build a retail business from scratch and ending up with four brick walls, located in outback Australian and nothing to sell.

Many a CEO have become disillusioned with the online dream, after being sold a useless website that just sits there doing nothing, earning nothing and speaking to no one.

And now they are jumping on the Web 2.0 and social networking bandwagon. As the digital and social media market grows, web designers are rushing to rebrand themselves as digital and social marketing experts. The only problem is they are still only selling empty templated websites.

All you have to do is write an article or give a presentation, drop a few buzzwords, mention web 2.0, social media and then, talk up the big success of companies like Youtube, Google and Facebook. And then, call yourself a digital marketing expert.

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Restroom illumination (1)
Originally uploaded by Ma-Eh

Yippee! The digital advertising age is here…

According to the people at Internet Advertising Bureau and PriceWaterhouseCoopers in their annual report of ad spending, Internet advertising revenue hit $21 Billion.

From my point of view, these figures will have a flow on affect with more and more Australia companies looking to dip their toes into the digital & social media world. I can’t wait!