Opinion: A ‘Digital’ Guy

I spend a lot of my time on airplanes. Hours upon hours being herded into cylinders, subjected to security screenings, confronted with delays, scrunched up with strangers.

But it’s not all bad don’t get me wrong. Because spending so many hours in the air also gives me a lot of time to think.

And lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the word ‘digital’. And I have to say that I’m torn.

On the one hand, digital has given me a job and a career that I love.  Being a ‘digital guy’ I’m constantly learning, exploring and being challenged – by my own inquisitiveness and need to stay on top of the next big thing. But also increasingly by our clients. As I travel around Asia, the question I’m now hearing is no longer “why?” but “how?” How can I engage my consumers more? How can I change my media mix?  How can I improve my marketing and communications? And how can I transform my business? 

It’s music to my ears. These are the questions I’ve been waiting to hear for some time. And they’re increasingly coming from people with a ‘C’ in their job title, so I know there will be a real commitment as long as we can provide the answers and deliver results.

This commitment is perfectly summed up by P&G’s CEO Robert McDonald in McKinsey’s quarterly article ‘Inside P&G’s Digital Revolution’ (November 2011) 

McDonald talks about his mission to make the consumer goods giant the world’s most technologically enabled company. But the foundations of this mission come from the ‘old’ world. As a brand manager, Mr. McDonald would record the calls made to P&G’s customer service centre and listen to them on the way home from work. Why? To understand what his consumers felt about his brand and product.

Applying this same motivation today, P&G now rigorously scans the digital universe to keep its finger on the pulse of consumer sentiment. Mr. McDonald’s believes with digital technology it’s now possible to have a one-on-one relationship with every consumer in the world.

I believe every company should be doing the same.

And P&G’s story leads me to the reason why I’m torn about the word digital. I’m torn because the word can be divisive, implying that the old way of doing things is no longer relevant. It implies that us ‘digital guys’ know something the ‘old guys’ don’t. Ultimately, it implies that we have to throw out the old and bring in the new.

But the truth is we shouldn’t. 

What we need to do, I think, is to remind ourselves of the fundamentals – like a brand manager wanting to truly understand what his consumers are saying about his brand and product – and apply technology to help achieve that same goal – but better, faster and more effectively. 

The same principles should apply when it comes to thinking about media and how to achieve our client’s objectives. Clients often ask how we can help them move from traditional media to digital – the implication being that ‘old’ media is bad, and ‘new’ media is good.

I fundamentally believe that all media is valuable when used in the right way and in the right combination. In some cases, the best ‘banner’ is a TV commercial driving people to an online property. In others, the digital component should be used to make the TV ad work harder. 

The word ‘digital’ – for agencies and clients alike – can also create often-harmful silos where it becomes one group’s job to do digital and another’s job to do the ‘real stuff’.

Yes it’s true that virtually everything is now digital or can be digitised. But that doesn’t mean digital should replace what came before. Our job – all of us – is to take the promise and the opportunities that our digital world provides and go back to the fundamentals.