Back before the first bubble burst, media techies adopted Bruce Springsteen as a kind of mirror-icon. Whatever Bruce was, they weren't - emotional, at home on the streets, hyper-sensitive. "We gotta get out while we're young/'Cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run" hardly seemed to be a unifying theme from a generation that viewed the future through the prism of a keyboard and computer screen, but the Boss ruled. In back corridors of start-ups, you could hear the digits bounce between business managers: "15"; "23"; "47!"" - each one a boast of the number of concerts attended.

In the mud of another economic collapse, it seemed only appropriate to the industry that Geoff Ramsey, eMarketer ceo/co-founder, would bounce to the stage with Bruce playing in the background and the lyrics to "The Rising" displayed on screens stage left and right:

"Come on up for the rising/Come on up, lay your hands in mine."

"Bruce Springsteen wrote this song in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001 as a message of survival and hope," Ramsey told a Tuesday morning audience at the 2008 ad:tech New York audience. "But we can apply this same message of hope and determination to our situation right now…as we face the challenge of our current economy."

Allowing that "in this environment some will succumb to fear, paralysis, in-action and, ultimately, fatalism" and that "most market sectors will be impacted in some way by the economic downturn…. there are strategies and actions you can take - to not only survive the storm, but come out the other side in a better position versus your competitors."

eMarketer is a New York-based information aggregator that analyzes information from over 3,000 sources to create market research and trend analysis on Internet, e-business, online marketing, media and emerging technologies. The company's products include analyst reports, daily research articles and a global database of e-business and online marketing statistics.

Consumer needs will continue to give the economy a pulse, Ramsey offered. And to stay informed about the smartest ways to spend their limited funds, advertising will continue to play a role providing information - "what to buy, where to buy it, and yes, where the best prices can be found…. if consumers are still consuming, marketers will still need to market. But how they do that will likely change."

Before the current economic crunch, eMarketer analyzed a number of forecasts for total U.S. media spending. Many predicted reduced spending, particularly in 2009. And, in fact, TNS Media Intelligence reported a decline of 1.6% in measured media spending for the first half of 2008.

Furthermore, Ramsey pointed out, a number of sources reported that the current fallout already had resulted in marketing-budget reductions. MarketingProfs' October 2008 estimate was that 31 percent of all marketers had reduced their marking spend. Figures from Epsilon (Summer '08: 65 percent) and Marketing Sherpa (September '08: 70 percent) were more than twice as high.

"Is there any growth out there?" Ramsey asked, and then answered, "You bet, and you can guess where it is…. Just like well targeted ad messages, you are in the right place, at the right time, during this tough economic climate."

eMarketer's August 2008 estimate for online spending called for a 17 percent increase in online spending, "based on recent headlines, we all may need to trim our forecasts just a little further, but we're talking just nips and tucks, not a chainsaw. Several indicators point to the resiliency of online ad spending."

Three of those indicators: The Interactive Advertising Bureau's report of 15.2 percent growth in the first half of 2008; Microsoft's 15 percent in the third quarter of 2008; and Google's U.S. revenue increase of 22 percent for that same period.

Looking ahead to 2009, Ramsey said that most researchers foresee a slight decline in the online-revenue growth rate, but still strong spending. While some companies remained wildly enthusiastic about the potential of the digital spend (LiveRail - September '08: 19.4 percent; Collins Stewart - October '08: 18 percent), there were others who were far less optimistic (Wachovia - October '08: 10 percent; ThinkPanmure - October '08: 3 percent).

Eliminating the bulls and the bears, eMarketer's beta-research middle-ground prediction was a 14.5 percent growth rate.

"The most recent studies," Ramsey continued, "taken within the past month or two, show that between 30% and 60% of marketers expect to increase their online ad spending, despite - or perhaps because of - the deteriorating economy." To support that prediction, he cited a McKinsey & Co. report that said more than 70 percent of global marketing executives still believe online will determine how major campaigns are planned and executed. And he drove the point home with a June 2008 estimate from The Economist that 55 percent of global marketing execs plan to cut spending on traditional media in order to fund increased online efforts.

The panel session on "Redefining Creative in the Digital Age" considered the implications of the move from analog advertising ("dominated by superstar creative directors and other mad men, [when] the big brand idea and message were created, crafted and pushed out to the masses via predictably reliable media channels") to a new era when "digital transforms all media and gives the consumer unprecedented amounts of choice and control."

On the morning after the U.S. Presidential election, all marketing conversations at the 2008 ad:tech New York gathering seemed to begin with a discussion of the Obama victory. "This is the biggest idea America has had in decades," declared Woolmington, the founding partner of Naked Worldwide. "Communicating the idea of change as a substantive idea is a phenomenally big idea.

"Political campaigns will never be the same," he continued. With its text messaging, its "dynamic in-game placements for younger demographics," for its promotion of early voting, for its Twitter updates, and for its use of video subscriptions and viral placements on YouTube, "Barack Obama broke new surfaces in marketing…. It wasn't about slogans. It was about a way of being."

Joining the digital entrepreneur (Woolmington) and the journalist (Greenwood, deputy editor of London's Contagious magazine) were a media manager (Andy Berndt, managing director Creative Lab, Google), a digital-agency creative director (Nick Law, North America evp/chief creative officer, R/GA) and a senior marketing officer from one of the world's most persuasive brands (Stefan Olander, Nike global director of brand connections).

Where will the next big idea come from? The opinions from the digital age are mixed:

The View from Google

As managing director of the Google Creative Lab, Andy Berndt leads the marketing team's creative efforts, and inspires brand advertisers to innovate with Google's products and services. Previously, he served as co-president Ogilvy/New York and oversaw advertising, direct, digital, and other marketing capabilities.

• Berndt's most favorite piece of current advertising? While allowing, "Obama blocks out the sun," Berndt went old-media on the morning assembly with the selection of a Tylenol magazine ad as a great big idea: "The gist of the ad was, 'Here's how to make type bigger so you can stop squinting. And, if you stop squinting, you'll get fewer headaches." The medium might have been old-school, but Berndt saluted the new touch of consumer-advocacy implicit in the message. "I was transported to the moment the agency tried to sell the ad through and the reaction: 'But… if we prevent headaches, we'll sell less Tylenol and our sales will go down.'"
  
  
• Agencies [who share assignments on an account] have to fight the instinct to hoard information. They have to learn to collaborate, to have an all-boats-rise point of view. But it will take a huge effort; it's not the way things have worked in the past."
  
  
• "I like to follow the Reasonable Person Principle-the likelihood that someone else in a room might have a better idea that you."
  
  
• "We need to create the frictionless distribution of common sense and bravery. If something seems common-sensical, we should try it. We don't have to worry about an overhead of $50 the way that we used to."
  
  
• "People who best learn how to use the tools of creativity will be at the leading edge of our industry. But you also need to learn to accelerate. The tools don't stay the same for a decade."
  
  
• It's okay to tell amazing stories, but what else are you doing…. Advertising doesn't work if it only burnishes or decorates the solution and doesn't solve the problem.
  
  
• "The ability to organize can add scale at very low cost. We need to have the ability to say, 'Here are my customers: What are the five most important things we can do to address their lives?' "
  
  
• "There's magic to connectivity."
  
  
• "[Interactivity] involves a tradeoff on branding: As consumers have access to more information, at some point they will turn off and revert to brands. Those who embrace both sides will do well."
  

The Digital-Agency Creative Perspective

Nick Law oversees R/GA's creative vision, working in collaboration across all disciplines with creative teams of designers, copywriters and interactive designers. He began his career in design/corporate identity and moved to advertising, where he has worked with both traditional and digital agencies.

• The big idea used to be about the message, about feeling good about a brand. Now, it's about how a brand behaves. How to do you take virtual worlds and mesh them with the physical world. Nike Plus does that. Wii does that. But they're spread across industries that are not traditionally thought of as advertising."
  
  
• "Agencies and clients need to create partnerships and come up with a digital platform from which they can message. Without the platform, there's not much to talk about."
  
  
• "Creative thinking has broadened so much that there's no one template to follow. And that's good, because we need to address a broad range of appetites."
  
  
• "There's been a broadening in the big tent of creativity. We need to learn how to connect the dots."
  
  
• "What role does creative play within marketing services?  We have a hydra of creativity, a collection of aptitudes, systems, and sensitivities.  There are cultural differences between storytellers, designers, and technologists. The key is that these groups speak with each other in a coherent way. The problem is that there are additive and subtractive ways about thinking about big ideas. The traditional agency person will tell you, "We need a distillation of the problem communicated in a simple way that will make you smirk." The technologist will respond to the same challenge  by saying, 'Turn it into a system that will make my life simple.'"
  
  
• "There's a cultural arrogance of the story teller. But the storyteller needs to be part of the team. Advertising needs something to talk about."
  
  
• "The bedrock is data. We can create things of scale, test whether they're successful or not. But we have such unlimited access to content and data that it often may be more than we can consume. That's why Google's mission 'to organize the world' is so important."
  
  
• "Data has to decide whether something's just interesting or whether it's actually relevant."
  
  
• "The downturn in the economy gives us a great opportunity to focus, to get rid of fat, to become more efficient communicators. Whimsical advertising - material that entertains but does not strike a nerve - is not enough in these times."
  
  
• "We need to prove a great idea by making it live. We need to do it. Then change it. Than do it and change it. It's an iterative process."
  

Nike's Just-Do-It Lens

Stefan Olander, Nike's global director of brand connections, says he looks at brands as "enablers - it's not just what we say, but what we do." As a case in point, he cites Nike's Human Race on August 1, 2008: "We gave our consumers the ability to take action. Wherever you were, you were in the race with Nike Plus. 'Just do it' meant what you saw and what you did." By offering participants a chance to support one of three charities through their participation, Olander added, "People not only ran. They voted with their feet."

• "The big idea used to start with an ad, and then you'd build layers of interactivity around it. Now, the big idea is to solve the problem - to make life easier for consumers. But you may have to tell me how to do it."
  
  
• "Sometimes, it seems like great creativity comes in inverse proportion to the size of the budget. Some of the smallest resources result in some of the greatest ideas."
  
  
• "Brands have responsibilities they never had before."
  
  
• "Digital offers an amazing opportunity to use all the power of brand to service someone."
  
  
• "Entertainment will never go away. It's just applied differently today."
  
  
• "We're not reinventing advertising, but we are reapplying existing technologies to solve problems."
  
  
• "To coordinate the contributions of various agency resources, "You need to be very specific about what each partner can contribute. It's not a stand off of 'mine is better than yours'. It's an orchestration that can become very powerful. Nike is proof of that."
  
  
• "Digital connects to the physical, offering a whole social layer. It proves you still can be entertaining and be what you were in the first place."
  
  
• "The intersection of the digital and physical is the future. It's how people live their lives."
  
  
• "It's not digital. It's life."
  
  
• "With data, you need to be sharp to understand if you're truly adding value. Traditional marketing is going to be harder and harder, simply because there's not one single message."
  
  
• "Power ultimately is in the hands of the consumer."

The Journalist's Desk

Contagious magazine started four years ago in London with a mission of exploring the shifting relationship between brands and consumers and to make sense of the fragmenting media landscape. "Contagious exists to simplify,' the publication's web site reads. "It's an early-warning system for those attempting to stay ahead of all this change."

The magazine publishes on a quarterly basis, with a supplemental DVD providing a searchable digital database. As deputy editor, Jessica Greenwood has a window on the global world of digital marketing.

• "There's tremendous difference from one country to the next in their understanding of digital. In Sweden, for instance, everyone knows how it works.
  
  
• "Digital advertising offers the opportunity to extend the story beyond the product itself. It's like a passionate affair instead of a one-night stand."
  
  
• "Dole bananas carry a sticker that tells you where and when that banana was picked and whether it came from a fair-trade nation. If a banana can go digital, there's no excuse for anyone else."
  

For Paul Woolmington, founding partner, Naked, a discussion of creative in the digital age begins with four trends. To set up a panel discussion of "The Big Idea 3.0 - Redefining Creative in the Digital Age"," at the Ad:Tech New York November 2008 conference, Woolmington and Jessica Greenwood, deputy editor of London's Contagious magazine, jumped right into the list:

1. Brands as Entertainers

"In the old days," Woolmington said, "brands supported big media. Today, clever brands have disintermediated big media and seized control. They're becoming portals."

Case in point: Uniqlo, the Japanese casual-clothing marketer that, Woolmington said, has become "an online global entertainment vehicle that captures the world's Uniqlo experience."  Witnesses to that captivity are 180 million views in 214 countries. So complete is the brand experience that Uniqlo rewards its most loyal viewers with both a sleep mode and an alarm clock.

Cadbury's "big idea" of a gorilla "captured the brand's joy and generosity," Woolmington added, with "the downside of catapulting Phil Collins career." The effort brought 15 million YouTube views, created more than 350 imitators as the effort went viral, and generated a 600-percent increase to the brand's web site.

The most digitally informed example of the brands-as-entertainment trend, the Naked founder said, was the merger of technology and creativity that resulted in Google's treatment of Radiohead. "This most audacious brand of musicians worked with designers and researchers - tech-geek mathematician artists - who focused on recreating the human system.

Or, as described by Google's techno-creative brief: "Geometric Informatics scanning systems produce structured light to capture 3D images at close proximity, while a Velodyne Lidar system that uses multiple lasers is used to capture large environments such as landscapes. In this video, 64 lasers rotating and shooting in a 360 degree radius 900 times per minute produced all the exterior scenes."

Watch the video at code.google

To complete the digital experience, Google provided open-source technology that allows the data to be remixed for imitators to provide mash-ups of the original work. The program continues to refresh the Radiohead brand experience, such as on this dedicated YouTube group.

2. Brands as Mavericks

"Brands do have to behave differently," said Contagious' Greenwood. And that difference might manifest itself in ways that have nothing to do with traditional marketing. For instance:

• Nespresso is a series of coffee bars across Europe that have become so popular that "people queue to get into them," according to Greenwood. The magnet: "a piece of hardware transferred into a lifestyle brand."
  
  
• Halo 3 is a hardcore video game that doesn't market itself as a hardcore video game but, instead, "creates a backstory of human struggle" to engage its audience, such as in this trailer:

• Method is a needs-driven product line when two San Francisco roommates - "one a chemical engineer, the other an adman" - decided they needed to thoroughly clean their apartment. The use of chemicals and disinfectants left them so ill that they decided to pool their talents and create a new line of more consumer-friendly products. "They're now taking on Procter & Gamble and Unilever," Greenwood observed. "They have 5,000 brand advocates who are spreading their message of "progressive domestic products that smell good, look nice, and are good for the environment."
  
  
• Banksy is an English graffiti artist who, claimed Greenwood, is "one of the most subversive persons in the whole world."  A prototypical example of his work would be an oversized drawing of a rat with the caption "Let them eat crack" that appeared when the financial markets started to crash. Through such work, said Greenwood, "Banksy managed to remain subversive" and fly beneath the radar, even though he does work for such global brands as Nike and Diesel. "Nobody knows he does it," Greenwood offered. "He does it on the side."

3. Bands as schizophrenics

"Call it two-track branding," offered Woolmington . "Brands can mean many things to different people" and, through imaginative digital executions, brands can serve various constituencies:

• Wieden + Kennedy's "Coke Happiness Factory" is so entertaining that it "kind of makes you forget that you're watching an ad," Woolmington said. And, "20 years ago, that's all it would have been-a very creative piece of advertising. But Coke and W+K have repurposed the work into a six-minute film for those who can't get enough. And at the brand's Atlanta headquarters, there's a 20-minute version that includes actual voices of real Coca-Cola people.
  
  
• Nike Football takes the idea of a shoe and explodes it into a community, rendering the brand a service provider in the process. Its "Playmaker" digital offering gives local team organizers the tools they need to get a game together. And it does so through the directorial talents of Guy Ritchie.

Warner Brothers very quietly seeded a web site that it hoped to evolve over a period of two weeks. The concept was simple: Start with a "I Believe in Harvey Dent" teaser and let site visitors help morph the image - pixel by pixel - into the Heath Ledger Two-Face character. The program, according to Woolmington, worked all too well: From the time the site went up until the digital transformation had been completed was less than 24 hours. 

4. Brands as Benefactor

The marketing message is that a brand can do something useful or entertaining. Widgets are prime examples, such as a UPS widget that facilitates package tracking and Johnny Walker Digital PA widget that directs men to bars, special events, and parties (and, added Greenwood, "probably set the cause of feminism back 40 years").

More dramatically (and more expansively), Converse celebrated its 100th birthday with a digital party that featured Pharrell Williams. The video (not to mention a how-we-shot-the-video) will live on digitally well beyond the anniversary. Nokia's Nokia ViNe, meanwhile, is an elaborate digital diary that allows users to post the calls they make, the music they hear, the photos they take-and share they information with friends and family to relive, search, and share.

From a performance perspective - another key consumer attribute - Nike's Flywire provides benefits of cost and utility that "transcend actual marketing."  Speedo was able to overcome its legacy of "overweight men in wearing mini-suits on the Cote d'Azur" with its Fastskin - a product that was almost as much a star as the athletes who wore them.

And Google ("a 1,000-pound gorilla that acts like a ballerina," according to Woolmington") keeps providing consumer utility with a line of new projects that have included, most recently, the Android phone, the Chrome browser, and "The Vote Hour," a digitized public-service effort among CEOs across America to encourage their employees to step away from their desks and vote.

Drew Ianni, ad:tech advisory board chairman/programming, started off the Wednesday sessions with a technology-friendly introduction to Shelly Lazarus: "Ogilvy was the first major agency to believe in - and take an interest in - digital and integrating new kinds of advertising into programs for their clients."

But the chairman/ceo of Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide had something else in mind: "As I stand before you, my daughter is in labor," Lazarus revealed.  But that wasn't her punchline. She continued, "Remember how people used to save the front page of their daily newspaper to celebrate a child's birth? Well, I'm so happy. The front page of today's Times is a great page."

The single word OBAMA - all caps, centered and splashed across the top of page 1 - will be the keeper for the Lazarus family. And, as luck would have it, the story beneath the banner was the first of a series of digital narratives that would ground the Ogilvy head's ad:tech presentation.

Digital comes of political age: the Obama campaign

"Team Obama brought their brand to life in ways that no candidate has ever done before," Lazarus declared. "They brought them directly to the people. He won and the world has changed forever."

"If you are uncomfortable with change and ambiguity," she cautioned the ad:tech gathering, "this is not your time. If you need to test something five times before you try a sixth, this is not your time. But, if you love to make it up as you go along, if you welcome the happy collision of advertising and technology, if you're really creative, if you want to try new tools, if you're looking to listen in on new conversations and respond instantly, your time has come.

"When I started in this business, direct-mail people used to say, 'Just try to imagine what is would be like if you could actually talk to a consumer or a prospect to find out if they really were interested. We don't have to imagine any more."

As brand builders and marketers, she continued, "We can conclude that the Obama team knew how to use the tools that are now available to us all." In fact, she added, it was fair to conclude that the candidate's "digital-ness" had helped drive his victorious campaign.

Indeed, the ultimate success of the new-media political effort "affords marketers with a way to use new opportunities for interactivity with their target audiences. Obama was in constant dialogue with his base without the interference of the established press. He took his messages directly to his missionaries.

"And here's a question," she continued. "He ran his campaign this way. Will he govern in the same way? Last night, around 11 p.m., I received a real-time email from Obama. 'I'm about to head to Grant Park to talk to everyone gathered there,' he wrote, 'but I wanted to write to you first. We just made history. We have a lot of work to do to get our country back on track, and I'll be in touch soon about what comes next.'"

"It was all part of the best CRM campaign that's ever been run," Lazarus said. "The Obama campaign had a state-of-the-art web site. Pages on social-media sites. Twitter to track the candidate from one moment to the next. They had their own 'Race to the White House' game, Xbox games, iPhone applications, free ringtones. More than 12 million downloads of a 'Yes We Can' You Tube video brought emotion and momentum to the campaign. Four million donors and volunteers got daily email updates.  They used every trick in the marketers' book, right down to their own 'Front Row to History' that offered winners a trip to Chicago to watch the returns. It was just like Publisher's Clearing House.

"Their motto seemed to be, 'If you think it, you can do it.' They really were masters of CRM."

Lenovo: going direct

Talking directly to consumers - and bypassing the intermediating mainstream media in the process - was  a primary component of a largely digital "coming-coming out" program Ogilvy put together for Lenovo, the Chinese computer company that acquired IBM's PC Division in 2005.

The place was the 2008 Beijing Olympics. And the place was all over the world. "We asked ourselves, 'How can we use 21st-Century technology to make the Olympics come to life? How can we allow consumers to really feel the Olympics from the inside? And what would happen if we gave 100 Olympic athletes from all over the world laptops and video cameras and asked them to talk about their experiences online?"

The answer was 1.6 million unique visitors to a "Voices of the Olympic Games" web site that featured both written blogs from the participants as well as video diaries. "It was an unfiltered scoop, straight from the athletes," Lazarus recalled. "We reached 256 countries and 27 different sports."

The digital exercise continued with cellphone widgets that offered a link to the Voices site as well as up-to-the-minute results, photographs, records, and background stories. Lazarus called it "the largest social-media market campaign at the largest sporting event in the world… And it gave people a chance to feel Lenovo, to become familiar with the brand."

Perhaps the ultimate compliment came when the International Olympic Committee tried to stop the campaign, charging that Ogilvy and Lenovo were "stealing the content that they had sold exclusively to media outlets," Lazarus said. "What they didn't seem to understand was the true democratization of content. Once it starts, you cannot stop it."

Shreddies: from one to many

Momentum, in fact, was a powerful driver in an Ogilvy/Toronto campaign that started with an intern in the creative department and ended up as a viral video with 800,000 views ("a lot for Canada," said Lazarus.)

Shreddies was a 67-year-old cereal that needed a brand refresher. "You've all heard it before and, in fact, you all can probably write the brief," Lazarus told the ad:tech audience. "We needed to do something interesting. And we had to do it in a fresh, unique way."

Enter a summer intern who was handed the assignment of taking a look at the box copy. And who, in fact, failed in that assignment by taking the assignment a step further by rotating the even-sided breakfast on its end - converting a square into a diamond.

"It became an immediate hit," Lazarus continued. The agency's creative team immediately recognized an idea bigger than box copy and ran with it. Diamond Shreddies were launched in much the same way that the agency would introduce a new product.

The agency posted a viral video of a supposed focus-group session (in fact, the moderator was a sponsor) while billboards echoed the idea of "Diamond Shreddies." The brand's president posted his own video addressing the controversy between the traditional square-shaped product and the upstart diamonds.

"Can you have more fun?" Lazarus asked. "It captured the imagination of the whole country. There were newspaper reviews of Diamond Shreddies. 81 Facebook groups popped up. The company got hundreds of letters, some of them asking how it managed to come up with such great new ideas. Someone actually wrote to complain that his box of Diamond Shreddies only contained 50 percent of the new design."

Supported by a word-of-mouth frenzy, sales for the brand jumped 20 percent in a matter of weeks. "A 67-year-old brand seemed an unlikely candidate for a viral campaign," Lazarus continued. "But this seemed to strike a chord. Or maybe a funny bone."

Digital tools brought to bear by a traditional agency resulted in a major marketing innovation for a brand that had held little consumer interest for decades. And, what about that unhappy customer who griped that he only got half his fair share of Diamond Shreddies? From the Ogilvy new-product development team, yet another launch: The Combo Pack.

Capri Sun: refreshing a refreshment brand

"It's what you can do with an idea that's different," Lazarus said. Yet another original idea centered around much the same challenge of breathing new life into a tired product. Capri Sun is a beverage with very different packaging - not a bottle, not a jar, but a 200 ml. foil/plastic pouch. The tropical-themed refreshment was popular in the '80s, Lazarus explained, but "had not done much since then."

It's original consumers had long since moved onto coffee, and there was a target audience of six-to-11-year-old children who were being underserved - a "buzzworthy and respectable group," Lazarus called them.

To start kids talking - and, more specifically, spreading the word about Capri Sun - Ogilvy created a series of 30-second spots with identical set-ups but different ends. "They were sort of irreverent commercials that showed what happened when children didn't respect the pouch. They had an element of suspense. And they invited parody.

To start kids talking - and, more specifically, spreading the word about Capri Sun - Ogilvy created a series of 30-second spots with identical set-ups but different ends. "They were sort of irreverent commercials that showed what happened when children didn't respect the pouch. They had an element of suspense. And they invited parody.

"Six-to-11-year-old boys love playing games," Lazarus reported. And, because Web 2.0 is as familiar to this demographic as tap water, they fulfilled their viral promise with a series of imitative spots:

The agency, in kind, returned the fire with video games and a "Rayman Raving Rabbids" Wii game planned for launch in time for the Christmas 2008 season.

Lazarus' bottom line to the campaign was the same she used to describe the Obama effort: "If you think it, you can do it."

Louis Vuitton: digitizing luxury

Digital media, of course, are not just a bunch of stunts and tricks that can revive fading products - a case Lazarus made with new Ogilvy/Paris work for Louis Vuitton. "Ten years ago, we would have come up with the most gorgeous print ads you've ever seen," the Ogilvy chairman/ceo noted. And, so they did with the most recent execution for the brand, with lush, engaging, evocative Annie Liebowitz photographs of Catherine Deneuve, Keith Richards, Mikhail Gorbachev, Andre Agassi/Steffi Graf, and this one -  two-filmaking Copploas-in-one-image: Francis Ford and Sofia:

In each case, Louis Vuitton products - featured ever-so-elegantly - somehow eased their transit as, said Lazarus, "we offered a deeper exploration of their personal journeys."

But unlike the print programs of just a decade ago, Ogilvy built the new campaign to last, to reinforce, and to build the brand even more powerfully. Gorbachev takes YouTubers on a visit of Moscow. Deneuve does Paris. And Keith Richards goes inside his London in a series of nine videos, including this trailer:

"Each of the Louis Vuitton people take us to places they love," Lazarus said. Keith Richards' love for Shepherd's Pie may not play to an association with one of the world's great luxury brands, but, Lazarus explained, "You experience life the way celebrities find it." Consumers who come to the Louis Vuitton site spend an average of 16 minutes viewing different video executions.

"The brand turns to experience," she added. "And that translates to public-relations impressions and blog impressions" that never could have been part of a pure-print campaign in the 1990s. "And we're driving double-digit growth in shop visits and growth."

While Lazarus recognized "it's impossible to know what will happen in the face of an economic downturn," the campaign will continue, with the next subject 78-year-old Sean Connery featured over the copyline, "There are journeys that turn into legends."

Telling the IMB story

The idea of online "mini-mentaries" providing support for more traditional media is at play in a new Ogilvy effort for IBM. "IBM solves some of the world's toughest, most significant problems. And that's not something that's told easily in 30 seconds," Lazarus said. "Digital media is not constrained by pre-determined commercial lengths."

The IBM series includes work in support of the New York Police Department, pandemics, mapping DNA, and "Hollywood Comes to Galway," the tale of one-to-one entrepreneurial intelligence  told on a global stage:

IBM's business of innovation now plays out on iTunes, in podcasts, and on YouTube. Some 23 million people have come to the IBM web site to hear the tales. "In the context of what you usually find on the web site of a technology company, it's refreshing," Lazarus said. "We're using story-telling in its most wonderful form."

Ogilvy, Lazarus continued, was the agency that was intuitive enough to use Craig's List (cost $0.00) when the client asked the agency to produce a series of newspaper and radio ads to support an anniversary ticket give-away of 45,000 free passes. The ticket supply was exhausted in just 45 minutes and the cost? $0.00. Almost as cost-efficient was a Hellman's mayonnaise "real food" consumer-centric series that appeared on Yahoo Food. "The program more than doubled sales coast to coast," Lazarus claimed, "and offered Unilever the highest ROI [250%] in its history."

And, of course, Ogilvy most likely will be globally famous forever for the $50,000 "Evolution" video it shot for Dove. 

To date, more than 500 million viewers have witnessed the aging sequence that was inspired by a workshop for 12-year-old Canadian girls and became the first Cannes double-winner for film and interactive video.

"When he shot it, the creative director used his girlfriend," Lazarus said. "He told her, 'No one's going to see it. It's just going on the Internet.'

"They're not together anymore."

"There already are new traditions for interactive media," proclaimed Randall Rothenberg, president/ceo of the Interactive Advertising Bureau to a sell-out Tuesday morning keynote-panel audience at the ad:tech New York fall 2008 conference.

"There's a new kind of consumption of short-term media. It's not just that people are watching Saturday Night Live online. It's not that they're watching the 'Weekend Update' segment online. In fact, they're watching one bit of one section of one program online. It's a new way of thinking of media units, of advertising units.

 
IAB boss Randall Rothenberg introduces
the keynote panel
(picture: Michael Rubottom)

"Consumption patterns clearly are affecting use," Rothenberg added in a state-of-the-business introduction he has chaired at the New York and San Francisco ad:tech gatherings. Directing conversation from a panel that included Tina Sharkey, chairman/global president, BabyCenter LLC; Rob Norman, ceo, Group M Interaction; David Morris, chief client officer, CBS Interactive; and Rob Master, North American media director, Unilever U.S.

To shape the discussion, the IAB head identified a number of critical points of inflection for the interactive industry, articulating changes in:

• Practice: the correlation of above- and below-the-line services "into a virtual circle and the on-going introduction of consumer-generated media
  
  
• Challenges: legislative concerns not only at federal level but also in New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts that would place digital media "under a regulatory umbrella"
  
  
• Economic constraints: even for a sector buoyed by healthy performance predictions in the next few years)
  
  
• Concerns: managing highly customized advertising programs in a scale-based-awareness environment and managing the "R" word - remnant advertising handed off to online networks.

From those starting points, here are some best-practice highlights and observations from the panel.

The keynote panel (from left):
Randall Rothenberg (IAB), Tina Sharkey (BabyCenter), Rob Norman (Group M Interaction), David Morris (CBS Interactive) and Rob Master (Unilever US)
(picture: Michael Rubottom)

A media owner's view (1)

Tina Sharkey, Chairman and Global President, BabyCenter LLC, has more than 20 years of experience in new media, ranging from the introduction of HDTV in 1986 to the forefront of Web 2.0 today. She joined BabyCenter, the Web's No. 1 global interactive parenting network in January 2007.  BabyCenter currently has a 78 percent reach in the U.S., with operations in 13 markets worldwide.

• "The Obama campaign now gives us another example - besides Dove - of great ways an advertiser can use the digital media space. Candidates are marketers, they're media planners. Obama did a tremendous job of activating the conversation through all forms of media. And he used media to control his message, as a creative means to engage a large audience."
  
  
• "Email consumption is higher, if not higher than ever before. It breaks through the clutter, goes directly to the consumer and gives them exactly what they want. This kind of customized media is on its way up. There's a barrage of information coming into a new channel: the in-box."
  
  
• "We need to keep government out of our business. We can regulate ourselves. There are some bad actors, but they'll be pushed out by the good folks. The interactive community needs to get engaged in this issue. We can be the leaders, the people in the conversation."
  
  
• "We're not sold out all the time and we do use ad networks. We can get tonnage - not insights - from networks. We can move products off shelves. But this really puts the spotlight on the publisher. My sales organization, my sales-development team, my creative organization have all been trained to partner with agencies and marketers and come up with solutions."
  
  
• "We need to use more than traditional direct-response metrics to measure our brands' success. We serve so many different forms - intent to buy, intent to sign up, intent to sample, word of mouth, viral media - that all are part of the mix. We need to look far beyond simple click-through rates when we talk about metrics."
  
  
• "Not all online videos are created equally. But online offers the possibility for engagement that marketers cannot get in a traditional sense."

A media agency's view

Rob Norman, global CEO, Group M Interaction, stated his career in what he has called the "perfect past" (mass production, mass retail) and has tracked to a "new world order" that demands personalization, speed, fragmentation, interaction, multi-channel distribution, and the occasional conflict.

• "In the media-mix model, there are three important considerations: One, geography - where people are, how we can find them. Two, technology and how it fits into all our lives. And, three, the value of integrity. The Obama campaign focused on geography, technology, and integration to great effect."
  
  
• "[Some of our clients] need to sell millions and millions of low-value, low-interest goods. That depends on huge reach with an audience that's often challenged by diminished attention. Our challenge is to draw more value out of digital channels."
  
  
• "High-minded regulation needs to identify the harm against which it is legislating. We have a pretty fine track record in this industry - unlike some other businesses a little further downtown. But there's also a practical question: Do you think it's a good idea for advertisers to track behavior and send you messages? The answer probably is no, because all the people in the value chain between consumers and product are not perfectly aligned. It may help the biggest brands sell more stuff, but it's of marginal utility: If this kind of behavior disappeared, it would not be a challenge to these major brands."
  
  
• "The biggest challenge of networks is the combination of divided attention and an immense amount of clutter in the marketplace. If it continues, it will be more and more expensive to reach consumers, to persuade them to do something different."
  
  
• "It is increasingly difficult to build a strong case for online advertising that does not have a content context."

A media owner's view (2)

David Morris, chief client officer, CBS Interactive, drives the revenue strategy for CBS Interactive, including the management of partner accounts and cross-platform advertising programs across the company. He joined CNET Networks in 2007 as svp/network sales before that organization's acquisition by CBS Corp. a year later. A veteran of Time Inc., Morris had been president/publisher of Entertainment Weekly and EW.com.

• "As a media professional, I am sorry the election is over, that it didn't last until at least the end of the year. We had unbelievable audiences driven by the elections. The [Katie] Couric/[Sarah] Palin interview gave us eight million streams. Only [the basketball tournament] March Madness beat it."
  
  
• "In a 24/7 world, not everything holds up well to scrutiny. What we learned in this election was to go to the Web, listen to voters, and fix it. Correct it, clarify it, or admit you're wrong. Brands make mistakes, too. Sometimes they use offensive copy or make a bad brand promise. Or they miss with the launch of a product. They then have three choices: They can ignore it and move it. They can go to their public-relations department and yell at them, 'You have a problem.' Or, you can listen to your fans and fix it. That, we've learned, can be a positive movement."
  
  
• "What's the best way to connect with consumers in an engaged environment? We're producing more media every day. There are 156 million Web sites, 70 million blogs. People visit 9.7 Web sites a day, 70 Web sites a month. On average, they visit 15 sites more than twice a month. And it's the best of times for marketers, with opportunities for one-on-one connections. You can't get to everything, but you can get to all kinds of fantastic content - long form, short form, streaming video."
  
  
• "We have to be smart as an industry: We need to be upfront to our consumers - to the users of our sites - about how we're collecting information, what kind of information we're collecting, and exactly what we do with that information, what kind, and exactly what we do with information, as clear as possible. The FCC is not going to be concerned if an Internet user watches a camera review on CNET, then goes to CBS Sports, where he watches a Nikon ad. That's not a concern. But we need to self-regulate, to make sure that we do not cross consumer trust."
  
  
• "Consumers believe that lots of Web sites provide fantastic content "for free". It is not free. It is a consumer service and advertising pays for it.
  
  
• "As Internet advertising gets scale, there will be some transfer [in advertising dollars] from television." 
  
  
• "Advertising networks all say they're providing premium content. But who really says, 'We have some really bad stuff that we'd like you to buy?' The way we think of it is that we don't have remnant advertising. We have premium content and less-premium content. We monetize whatever we can."
  
  
• "We offer a diverse mix of buckets. And we need to do different things to pull in different marketers. It's like the advice you hear for financial markets. You want a mixed portfolio of offerings. For CBS Fantasy Football, for instance, we only sell three sponsorships a year. And we sell them year in and year out, with a line waiting to get in."
  
  
• "We need to scale video advertising across many sites. It's growing exponentially - 55 percent from last year to this year. And it will grow this year, next year, and the year after that. We need to develop an original strategy to handle original and professional content."
  
  
• "We've just launched a social-viewing room with Intel. It's a live meeting of 20 friends in the same place. They can all watch the same programming at the same time. They can throw tomatoes at the screen. They can then guess who did it. There are trivia games, with advertising running at the bottom of the screen. The future is exciting, when you think of what the social-viewing room might mean for sporting events."

An advertiser's view

Rob Master, North American Media Director, Unilever US, directs North American media strategy and implementation across all Unilever categories and brands (including Dove, Axe, Caress, Lever2000, and Suave). His credits include moving Unilever into the digital and branded entertainment space with such breakthrough campaigns as the Dove Webisodes and the Caress/Univision Telenovella.

• "Interactive media is not evolving. It has evolved. Media is not fragmenting. It has fragmented. The paradigm is not shifting. It has shifted."
  
  
• "We feel comfortable with numbers in the digital space. We follow consumers wherever they go. There's growth indicated for digital media, even in these tough economic times. And if the digital space expands, we'll be there. But if consumers get off the Internet and watch more television, we'll follow them there as well. It's all about the consumers and how they spend their time."
  
  
• "The evolution of content has been dramatic. Every brand - whether is a $3.99 jar of mayonnaise or a bottle of shampoo - has a story. We told those stories in 15 or 20 seconds. Digital space allows us longer, richer, deeper stories. And now we even have consumers telling stories on our behalf."
  
  
• "Content is critical. Ad networks do provide scale and allow us to go to market. As we go to market, our relationship with publishers becomes more important than ever. If we're to engage with consumers, a strong relationship with our publishers is critical. We need to know the context of where our messages are delivered." 
  
  
• "The story-telling is not about one program with 20 million viewers. We've had a change in our ability to get scale. We can find hundreds of millions of impressions on the Internet - a viable-scale medium that, in fact, is in competition with network television. Of course, TV always represents an opportunity for us to use sight, sound, and emotion to reach large groups of consumers. But how we use television is undergoing enormous change."
  
  
• "Evaluating metrics is the next frontier. We need to augment current models. You can't use the same metrics to measure that bottle of mayonnaise and a car. We need to look at more than click-throughs. The Internet has matured in the ways you can engage customers without any clicking through at all."

Ad:tech brings its digital-centric traveling conference show to New York this week with a slightly counter-intuitive touch: Key-noters Jonathan Klein (Tuesday)  and Shelly Lazarus (Wednesday) arrive from two lodestones of traditional media.

Last year, more than 10,000 digital marketers attended the New York ad:tech event. And, late yesterday, at least that many conferees seemed to be assembled in the lobby of the Hilton New York hotel, suggesting that crowd control and microphone management will be critical issues in a conference that promises to address the theme of "How Digital is Transforming All Media" -- running the gamut from such dinosaurs as 24/7 cable-news programming and multi-national advertising-agency holding companies to digital media.

The alternative-universe keynote program planning sharply returns to 21st-Century media on Tuesday morning, when Interactive Advertising Bureau President and CEO Randall Rothenberg, Interactive Advertising Bureau, follows Klein's opening address with an annual "State of the Industry" keynote roundtable.

The ad:tech sponsors also cited three other focal discussion points:

• The Future of Measurement: ComScore, Nielsen, Quantcast and Hitwise debate the state of the industry and the quest for universal metrics.
  
  
• The State of Online Video: Some project that online video advertising will reach $7.5 billion by 2012.  Executives from thePlatform and Starcom USA offer counsel on optimizing creative production, development, and resource allocation.
  
  
• The Exchange Marketplace: Vendor and agency representatives assess their power and value, ranging from the opinions of buyers and sellers to the state of inventory.