It was a pleasure to see that even the greatest gurus of the Asian
Internet marketing industry do not know where the market is heading.
Apart from not being able to quantify the reach of online marketing,
there was a lot of talk about the ROI being more important in new
models, but a lack of how this can be quantified.
This is what I personally missed in all the presentations and panel
discussions.
Generally, it makes me feel better to know that even the 'experts' do
not know what the best solution is.
However, what can we tell customers is a good way to market on the
Internet?
The guerilla marketing tactics mentioned by Mr Joseph Sweeney of the
Gartner Group are also interesting.
Is street marketing really that effective, or was it another tactic?
Since the Technology Marketing seminar, in both Lan Kwai Fong and
Causeway Bay, there have been increased street marketing activities for
new websites, which Mr Sweeney deemed effective, or not?
The essence of this article, though, focuses on the statement made by Mr
Gerald Alleva of AIM Asia, who gave a nice metaphoric view of what
happened to television versus what is happening on the Internet
today.
To re-cap, television used to be a novelty and everyone would watch
everything, even commercials, when television was new.
This may have even been revived with colour television, whereas today
people use the commercial break to wash their hands or zap through
channels - apart from Super Bowl commercials.
This evolution seems to have surpassed us on the Internet already.
Studies as those undertaken by MBInteractive.com last August, show that
"approximately only 0.5 per cent of users nowadays actually click on
banner ads (down from two per cent a year ago), 55 per cent of users
claim they do not interact with a banner ad (and) only four per cent
claim to have spent more than 30 seconds looking at banner ad
information.
If banners are so effective or rather un-effective, it seems within a
matter of six years we managed to reach a stage on the Internet that TV
needed several decades to reach.
The consumer on the Internet is managing to accelerate his cognitive
behaviour at the same pace as technology advances and information flow
becomes more abundant.
The next stage in the TV and film industry was strategic product
placement.
This is what I missed in all presentations of the technology marketing
seminar, whilst Euro RSCG's Ms Ruth Stubbs almost hit this point by
having her customer use smaller banners without company information in
them.
However, they are still in banner shape and found where users expect a
banner to be.
This makes them a banner again, even though, they try to attract in a
different fashion.
What is the use, if we already know that people block out and do not
interact with banners?
Yes, there are also, as pointed out by Mr Richard Robinson of
Renren.com, hyperlinks in texts.
In our view they already have a similar effect as banner ads and
therefore are widely ignored by readers, who block out such blue and
underlined text.
The new model should therefore be subliminal, without distorting the
layout of the website.
This is a model that can be easily applied by companies on their own
websites, having the information built into the site design.
In Hong Kong, we only know of one site to date that features this.
It is the website of Arts of Asia magazine (www.artsofasianet.com).
What they have done is integrate images into the site, which cannot be
identified as advertising or banners.
Once these images of featured products/vendors are clicked, the user is
lead to the advertisers website or information, whilst still being
retained in the original site through the menu bar.
This type of product placement marketing cannot be detected as an
advertisement and gives the 'surfer' information he is really interested
in.
I am looking forward to next year's seminar and hopefully gaining
insights on how ROI and reach can be quantified.
Until then, I hope to see more creativity on the design side 'beyond the
banner' to use the power of creativity for effective marketing on the
'Net.
* i4u2 design is a member of the Virtual Logistics Holding group of
companies.
