In a Multiplatform World, Brands Must Be Present, Relevant

Multiplatform marketing is about saturating the consumer’s world with the brand’s message.

As noted by GM’s Jaime de Valle, the old advertising adage "Fish where the fish are" has been flipped 180 degrees. Consumers are now the fishers, casting hooks to find the products, services, and brands they need, when and where they need them.

It is the marketer’s prerogative to swim where consumers are fishing, to be present and relevant at every touch point and tipping point in the decision-making process.

This is where the multiplatform approach becomes necessary.

In a world replete with marketing messages, the most competitive brands must use traditional media to place themselves before consumers before the decision becomes a priority. They must be present and relevant when research begins online. They must provide channels for response, interaction, and dialogue through nascent but omnipresent platforms such as mobile and social media. And they must send a consistent, persuasive message all the way to the point of sale.

Ok, I really only chose to cover the multiplatform sessions because I knew there’d be some talk of mobile, my one true love.

And talk there was. Carnival’s Jordan Corredera (with Susan Kidwell of Avenue A | Razorfish) and GM opened up the conversation Wednesday afternoon, echoing the industry-wide sentiment that mobile testing (WAP sites, search, etc.) is important but that the U.S. is too far behind other territories and right now is not the time for venturing beyond SMS text marketing. The good thing is, they’re testing.

Carnival’s case study on their Avenue A | Razorfish-created Funship Island campaign highlighted the mobile downloads they offered, including wallpaper and ringtones. GM’s mobile concentration seemed to revolve more around search.

Mobile, because of its everywhere-all-the-time nature, is the best medium for achieving the goal of any multiplatform campaign, as stated by de Valle: Being everywhere, all the time, at every tipping point for consumers in the decision-making process. Increasingly, he said, that process is being conducted almost entirely online, particularly for the automotive vertical.

Mobile aside, Carnival’s highly (read: insanely, borderline overwhelmingly) interactive microsite allowed users to virtually romp around an SL-like cruise ship. Their goal was to dispel common myths held to be true by cruise skeptics. Highly lauded by the digital ad community and cruise enthusiast community alike, the site was a hit.

Not only did they achieve critical success; by tracking user behavior on the site, they were able to optimize their other marketing channels. For example, they found that the section at which users spent the greatest amount of time was the stateroom page. As a result, they beefed up their coverage of stateroom features/benefits on the main Carnival page.

Most impressively, Carnival displayed a deep understanding of their brand ambassadors and partners using existing online communities. They used their advocates on cruise-related social nets to promote the new microsite, and they created a special subsection for travel agents to make sharing the Carnival Fun Ship experience easier.

They clearly understood that these days, consumers begin and end their buying decision on the Internet.

GM’s Andreas Huettner made that statement very clearly when he said that consumers are buying cars online.

He clarified that by the time consumers walk into a dealership, they, inmost cases, already know the exact make and model of the car they want, the price they want to pay, the kind of financing they expect and probably even the kind of warranty and insurance coverage they want. All the decisions have been preordained through hours of intense online work; they truly come to dealers to sign the papers and pick up the keys.

And although Internet is topping every other purchase-influencing medium, including word-of-mouth, the growth of mobile usage outstrips the growth of Internet usage. Hence, multiplatform advertisers need to very quickly figure out how to increase their presence and relevance in that medium.

A couple hours after the Carnival/GM awesomeness, Latin American portal Terra took the stage to talk about their approach to online marketing of music. Their presentation left me tweeting, "Where is the English-language version of Terra Musica?!?"

With artist sites constructed with building blocks of videos, blog feeds, UCG, photos, and every imaginable kind of social-media-friendly content acting as portals to more content and interactivity than was previously imaginable, one pities the technologically impoverished musicians stuck with MySpace Music.

Realizing that the best distribution is wide distribution, the folks at Terra have made most of the widgets portable across most social networks. They’ve also allowed for a great deal of user interaction and even submission to artists’ content.

And they understand that the best part of a content-rich site is incredible SEO, which is very likely where the user experience and direct artist-consumer interaction begin.

All these factors are what forward-thinking U.S. musicians have been struggling to define and realize. All in all, if there’s one thing I wanted to take away from ad:tech Miami and the world of Hispanic and Latin American marketing, it was to find one standout use of technology that marketers were getting right and from which the rest of us could learn and benefit.

Terra Musica may or may not get it entirely right, but it gives us some amazing clues as to the direction we should take for using rich, social media to market music directly to consumers.

Jolie O’Dell blogs, vlogs, tweets, and runs RAMPAGE, a new media ad agency.  Jolie covered ad:tech Miami and you can read all of her conference posts on the ad:tech blog.