Online marketing has reached a pivotal point in its maturing as a medium, according to Yahoo’s Chief Sales Officer Wenda Harris Millard, due in large part to the household penetration of broadband access in the U.S.
“The best indicator we have that we’ve reached the tipping point in Internet [marketing] isn’t the revenue generated—but thank you very much—it is the creativity behind the [marketing] on the Internet,” she said last week.
Millard spoke at the Yahoo-sponsored Creative Works Summit held last Thursday in New York City. (Her thanks referred to Yahoo’s current health, close to a 52-week high of $35.24 per share in Monday trading.)
With broadband has come a flood of fresh ideas and approaches that use sound and images in uniquely interactive ways, she said.
Keynoter Brad Brinegar, CEO of ad agency McKinney, echoed Millard’s enthusiasm, and supported his sanguine optimism for online marketing by comparing current Internet broadband household penetration today to the status of television broadcasting in 1954.
“We’ve been watching the penetration rate of broadband, and it tells us how we can pace the creative renaissance of the Internet,” Brinegar said.
The Summit showcased four Internet-based advertising and promotion campaigns, presented by their agencies to an audience of over 200. Six industry experts were seated onstage to critique and comment on the AXE body spray launch (from Bartle Bogle Hegarty for Unilever); the Seinfeld-Superman series executed by Ogilvy and Digitas for American Express; the FujiFilm digital camera launch by Sharpe Partners; and the Mash-Up with David Bowie, executed for Audi by McKinney.
Of the four, the Audi campaign was the most promotional and integrated across print, broadcast and online. It featured an interactive component that let surfers create new tunes using standards from the Bowie play list (a technique known by DJs as “mash-ups.”). Viewers could also “compose” their ideal Audi online, then send an order to a local dealership for purchase. The winner of the best mash-up—chosen by Bowie himself—won a free Audi TT.
Polled at the end of the Summit program, the audience chose the Audi campaign as the best of those presented.
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