Advertising Agencies yet to cross Digital Divide-From Malaysia

September 28th, 2008 in Online Marketing- International

Ad agencies are still are not structured to handle the online media realities of today. And it got me thinking, which is not necessarily a good thing.

Walk into an ad agency today, and in the middle of the meeting, tell them you want to brainstorm about new media possibilities. Chances are, your hosts will back pedal and give non committal personal viewpoints while betraying a lack of intellectual grounding on how it could work for your brand.

With online activity and advertising being so prevalent in the marketplace, it will come as a shock to you that most advertising agencies in Malaysia are not geared to handle interactive assignments for marketers.

While some ad agencies pay lip service to it, with some token staff in place, most actually seek out interactive agencies to handle this task.

Hence the proliferation of boutique interactive shops now staking their claim to fame by how confusing their techie prima donnas can make online marketing sound.

Some international advertising networks have interactive sister companies to undertake such assignments, while some have taken forever to set up in Malaysia. The immortal mantra ‘Show me the Money’ still remains a pre-requisite.

But, to be fair, there are various reasons for this.

Foremost, there’s a void in management’s comprehension that such a service should be part of their total product offerings in the first place. Old school ‘mass media’ mindsets ride roughshod over new thinking in these endeavours. Plus the widely-held perception that techies know best hampers real marketing communications thinking to root itself in this space.

So it’s a question of where the money is, the painful learning curve, and an alarming deficiency amongst marketers to realise the value of online.

This is sad, because interactive marketing lends itself to the same principles of advertising, as we know it, except that the playing field is different. To adapt, our framework needs to be modified. Seasoned pros can add much depth to online advertising, if only they cared enough to share and move the ball down the line.

Looking regionally, growth in Asian media continues to be powered by India in broadcast and print, and by China in online, out-of-home and broadcast. In the UK for example, half of the top 10 ad agencies are digital shops, raking in incomes that will shame the socks off traditional ad agencies.

Digital is not another medium, it’s a way of life. From a creative perspective, most marketers (and to be fair, a lot of agencies) still treat digital as a medium to be ‘consumed’ - “We need to extend the look and feel of our TV into online”. Well, sad to say, for a lot of the online audience, they may never interact with TV. Ask a typical 20-year old how they spend their time, and increasingly through Bit Torrent, YouTube and so on, the web is becoming the dominant form of their self expression and self awareness.

Embracing digital communication thinking into the advertising agenda upsets the age-old food chain to reap big returns from big media players.

Online media is still an afterthought amongst many advertisers, even though recent examples have been encouraging.

The Malaysian Tourism Promotion Board, the country’s eight ranked advertiser in terms of advertising spend, being a case in point.

Tourism Minister Datuk Seri Azalina said last Monday that Internet TV had a wider global audience and was less costly, compared to conventional advertising.

“In times of cyber communications, it is the media preferred by consumers,” she reiterated, adding that some 40 million viewers were expected to visit Tourism Malaysia’s news Web TV site initially.

“We expect 10 million more visitors next year, over last year’s 29 million arrivals,” she announced, trumpeting a rare vote of confidence for online marketing by a big-ticket client.

The impact of online media, as witnessed by the Permatang Pauh by-election was a surprise to those who depended on the mainstream media and the government’s publicity machine for news and information.

The fact that blogs, social networks and the like are fast becoming critical channels of engagement is scaring most agency folk. They are in unfamiliar territory, and the prospect of not monetising their efforts on the scale they are used to makes them sceptical about walking down that road.

But advertisers are paying attention to the traffic on popular Malaysian Blogsites these days, as apparent with the phenomenal growth of Blog Media specialist Nuffnang this year.

Fact is, there is no turning back.

While some ad agencies and even marketers choose to remain disconnected to the online phenomenon, its inevitability will be their Armageddon.

Unless they prefer to opt for a crash course during an impending full blown recession!

adoimagazine.com