From Crazy Frogs to Digital Disruption

We’re really pleased to welcome a new .rising leader to the fold this week. Jodie Hopperton is Managing Director of the Institute of Promotional Marketing, or IPM, a leading organisation offering representation, training and support to marketers across the industry.

In her inaugural feature, Jodie reflects on the impact that technological innovations have had on marketing practices in recent decades, from the dawn of digital to today’s brave new world of iBeacons and wearable technology.

 

From Crazy Frogs to Digital Disruption

I’m sitting in my office looking at the line-up for a conference I’m chairing next week, on Digital Disruption: The Union of Marketing and Technology, where I get to ask some of the leading heads of digital and marketing of leading brands, including Samsung, Westfield, Ogilvy, Blippar, Google and more, their views on what the practical uses of wearables, iBeacons and MarTech are for marketers.

As I look at the schedule, my eyes glance upwards to the front page of The Mirror that hangs on my office wall.

Dated 26 May 2006 – the day I left the UK – there sits the Crazy Frog, with my face superimposed (it’s not the best look I’ve had). Remember the Crazy Frog? At the time it was huge. Now it it’s not just dated, it’s expired.

The front page in question was, of course, a leaving present mocked up by the team I worked with at Trinity Mirror, not the actual Daily Mirror front page. This now sits on the wall of my new office at The IPM. It reminds me how much things have changed in the eight years I’ve been away.

Back in 2006 we were excited to get data from SMS campaigns, which mainly consisted of competitions in-paper. Not only could we offer incentives for readers and generate revenue for the business, but we could start seeing reader data: consumers would text in immediately allowing us to see which pages are most read at what time of day. It was revolutionary.

That seems like aeons ago. SMS? Okay, we may still use it, but it has been far surpassed by other applications such as iMessage, What’sApp and Viber, which cost the consumer less, and do more. Not only do we know when people are messaging, but also where they are, which direction they are facing, how fast they are moving and much more – I don’t know whether to be overjoyed or petrified.

When I left the UK, Facebook was in its infancy and not known in Europe. ‘Social Media’ had barely been coined as a term, far from being central to marketing campaigns. Blogs were surfacing and consumers could become publishers through relatively new web publishing tools. Social media allowed these consumers-cum-publishers to bypass mainstream media to connect with multiple audiences – some of which have now risen from nowhere to become influencers and celebrities.

The industry that I have had the pleasure of working in over the last eight years – media – has been upended by the advent of the smartphone. When the internet became widespread back in the 1990s many publishers missed a trick and by the early 2000s, had lost massive market share in classifieds. We learnt our lesson. When the smartphone came along we were ready to seize this new opportunity. When the iPad was unveiled, one publisher made sure that they got in on the action and, lo and behold, a developed version of the New York Times was shown at the launch.

Now people can connect to pretty much anything, anywhere, at any time. Instantly. We are seeing many of the media brands we know so well receive more traffic on mobile that they do through any other medium. My phone is within reach of me at all times. It has my contacts, my apps, my data; my life. It’s personal. That gives us, as marketers, a huge opportunity.

Now I am excited about being back in the UK and back in this sector. But mostly I am excited to see what comes next. Wearables gives us another chance to innovate and interact in ways we hadn’t imagined possible before.

What will we do with that? Who will emerge as leaders in the field and get most creative?

Next week I’ll get to find out the answer to some of these questions, learn from industry leaders and find out what’s on the horizon. Join me there.

.rising readers can receive a 10% discount on attending the Digital Disruption conference on 24^th September using the promocode “dotrising” at The Union of Marketing and Technology.