In these fast-paced, technology-driven times, every organization recognizes the need to innovate its marketing -- to take advantage of new technologies and media to reach customers in new ways. It's a complex dance -- identifying new technologies, tailoring the right message for the right audience, putting together a creative message that matches the medium and the marketplace, and making sure the program was effective.

Traditional advertising offers a passive branding experience. It tells consumers what they can expect, but doesn't allow them to try or experience a brand immediately. This passive versus active experience is why branding and the development of experiences must be thought about differently in the digital space. Instantaneous immersion is the nature of digital media.

The digital world is a new delivery system for a brand and it has turned branding upside down. A digital brand is most effective through relevance of the consumer need, efficiency of the consumer's time, and ultimately, comprehension of a consumer's response. A digital interface must display and offer the user what they want at the time they want it. Consumers require an immediate interaction stemming from a real need. This puts digital brands in an extremely vulnerable position. A digital brand must be active!

As it evolves, digital media marketing is placing less emphasis on click-generating banner advertising, and more on the types of branded experiences that can be created using digital media. The ultimate goal of digital branded experience marketing is to create a more holistic experience for customers. If you only think about digital communication as a way to bring the customer to a transaction threshold, you generally stay “product and feature” oriented in our communication. However, if you evolve your thinking to include well-rounded brand experiences, you can use the digital media to create branded sensory experiences, cognitive experiences or personal identity experiences incorporating a range of feelings and emotions.

Digital media is the perfect environment for creating branded experiences for consumers. With voice, sound, rich visuals and even scent technology emerging, how could it not be?

Digital Media Marketing must be consistent with the brand’s value proposition, positioning, personality and visual look and feel. Whereas most popular brands still exist largely outside of the digital space, synergy of digital efforts with traditional efforts is also key.

Customers and prospects will need to be able to interact with the brand in a way that transcends traditional advertising and communication. In the digital space, interactivity can give the customer more control than ever over what they see, read and hear.

Each interaction must offer them something of added value … something worth spending their time on. Interactivity can take the form of dialogue, information input, information requests and creative expression, just to name a few.

Digital Media Marketing (DMM) is simply the newest buzzword to describe the benefits to your company that flow from interactively communicating with your customers across a broad spectrum of digitally-enabled technologies, including the Internet, email, interactive TV, handheld devices, and optical disc media such as DVDs and CD-ROMS.

By letting go of forcing a one-way communication with the consumer and creating a two-way experience with them, digital brands, however, must be cognizant that the digital experience extends into the real personal and emotional world of the consumer. Interactive communications touch people personally and evoke emotions.

In order to create a positive brand immersion for the consumer, be it searching for a recipe, purchasing dog food or playing a game, digital brand revolutionaries must listen to the consumer when developing strategies, content structure, navigation and applications. When developing interactive strategies we must understand the consumer's needs. Addressing these needs must take precedence over telling the consumer about the company or the brand. Let them experience the brand.

There has been much talk over the last six months urging marketers that they must see digital technology as the "active ingredient" in the overall marketing mix - one that serves to hold together and improve the effectiveness of the other channels in that mix. According to Jim Nail, a Senior Analyst with Forrester Research, "The real opportunity isn't in weighing which medium is better or is more efficient, or which has a higher ROI than another, individually - but instead, in optimizing the total mix." He adds that "with the advent of digital technology, integrated marketing must do two additional things: it must provide virtual experiences of the brand, and media planning must consciously think about how to use the different media to move consumers through the awareness/consideration/preference/purchase process. Simply pushing more of the same messages across more media just overloads consumers. The new model of integrated marketing gives consumers a message [in a traditional media channel] that invites or lures them to interact with the brand, then gives them an experience which brings that benefit to life, and leads them to develop a longer-term relationship with the brand.

It's quite easy to agree that companies should increasingly incorporate cross-channel marketing into their media mix - but not just because it's a way to optimize limited budgets. The fact is, as more and more people multitask, their daily diet of media changes, and the best ways to reach them are across channels. So just as the target audience might be going online and watching TV at the same time, multi-media marketing becomes an effective way to capture their fractured attention at each step of the way," says David Hallerman, a Senior Marketing Analyst at eMarketer, a leading independent source for statistics, trend data and original analysis on emerging technologies.

According to Hallerman, "Companies market cross-channel today, but just as with permission email two years ago, the practice is not yet mainstream. The caveat in shaping a cross-media campaign is to take the best advantage of each medium, not just repurposing TV commercials, say, to run on Internet screens. Ultimately, marketers are best serving themselves when they find a way to make the digital media portion of their cross-channel efforts work in some interactive way to win the hearts and minds of their customers. For example, Mercedes-Benz has a series of online ads that lets the user 'uncover' various features of a specific make and model, look at the car from various angles, and so on. While this ad looks similar to the static magazine ads from the same campaign, the interactive element makes it more memorable and draws in the customer even more."

Optical Media's Role in the Digital Media Marketing Mix

There has been much talk over the last six months urging marketers to begin to see digital media, not as a standalone channel, but as the "active ingredient" in the overall marketing mix - one that serves to hold together and improve the effectiveness of the other channels in that mix.computers, how much time they spend online, and how they access the Internet are all still prime factors According to Rudy Grahn, Senior Analyst with Jupiter Research, "With the Internet, how many people buy that will influence how much activity takes place on a given website, and thereby impact advertising effectiveness."

According to a recent research report by Insight Media, 28% of marketing professionals view rich media (e.g., CD-ROMs, DVDs) as the next marketing frontier. This was 10% higher than their second choice streaming media.

"Taking off faster than a rocket, the use of optical media in the digital media marketing mix is the hottest marketing tool ever seen. It’s the next marketing wave, and unlike the internet alone, this marketing medium is based on tremendous real-world sales results.”

Digital Media Marketing involves video, CD-ROM and DVD (often in conjunction with the Internet) to market products or services. Up until now most of this information has been kept secret. Companies have had such incredible success with this method of marketing (response rates up to 64%) that they’ve kept their mouths shut for fear that their competitors would discover its windfall profits. But that’s all changing as we pull aside the curtain and reveal the real information you need to know to make this work for you.

Brands today face many challenges unique to the digital space. Poor functionality and competitive clutter abound. A great digital brand experience can increase brand value several-fold, while a bad experience can have a significant negative impact. As digital media gains more and more respect as a brand-leveraging medium, marketers who deliver experiences that are true to the brand, personal, interactive and relevant will find them to be more effective, resulting in a competitive advantage; those who don’t will be left in the cold.

Imagine your content branded and delivered on a fully interactive, multimedia enhanced CD or DVD ROM.

Bring your marketing messages to life in ways that no printed materials can - for about the same cost as print brochures.

Virtually all of your sales and marketing tools can benefit from the convenience flexibility, and sizzle of CDROM technology. Explore our CD Business demo’s to see some examples.

Most people can't bring themselves to throw away a CD sight unseen. CD-ROM is a powerful medium, and it's still somewhat novel in the business world, which means your message will rise above the deluge of mailers, brochures, and catalogs. That's one of the biggest advantages of marketing your products and services on CD-ROM technology; here are some others:

• Are compact, making it both easy and inexpensive to distribute large amounts of information

• Support a wide range of communication media - video, sound, animation - that let you engage your viewer

• Can run on any computer with a CD-ROM drive; no additional software is needed

• Are less costly to produce and duplicate than many traditional marketing tools

• Can be revised and customized easily and quickly Will differentiate you from your competitors, helping your message get noticed - and remembered.

CD-ROM technology lets you engage your customers and your sales force, focus their attention, and show your products in action. Your CD-ROM presentation can be as simple or sophisticated as you want it to be, with voice narration, video, 3D animation, music, and special effects. You can even take viewers on virtual reality tours that let them "wander around" your facility or view your products from any angle. You determine the scope of your CD-ROM presentation.

Simple CD-ROM projects may begin with your existing marketing materials, such as catalogs, brochures, annual reports, PowerPoint presentations, photos, and videos. Even your corporate Web site can be put on CD, complete with a hotlink to the live site. Working with leading creative agency that we can help you select, SMi will quickly compile the materials you provide, tie them together in a logical sequence, and add some sizzle to create an easy-to-use interactive CD-ROM presentation.

This approach is an excellent choice when time is short or you just don't need a more elaborate presentation. It's also a great, fast way to liven up your tradeshow booth and tie into the collateral you're distributing at the show.

Custom CD-ROM projects are the best choice when you have a specific marketing challenge, such as a new product launch or a corporate awareness campaign. While custom projects can still incorporate your existing marketing materials, they are designed "from scratch" and may involve shooting video, creating 3-D animation, building searchable databases - whatever audio and visual techniques will help to drive home your message. You may even choose to use an on-screen host (an actor or someone from your company) to guide viewers through your presentation.

Custom projects allow you unlimited creativity in addressing your marketing challenge. Yet, based on the choices you make, you still have plenty of flexibility and control over the scope and cost of your CD.

Sales Collateral On CD
When you capture images of your printed materials on CD, they look just as good on screen as they do on paper, maintaining their layout, formatting, and other document integrity. But now you can zoom in and out on photographs and drawings, search the text by keyword, and print part or the entire document whenever necessary. CD-ROM can hold thousands of pages, making it easy to carry and distribute large amounts of information.

Video on CD
Your Fastrak CD can incorporate video, which is digitized so that it can be viewed on any computer screen -- without the need for a VCR. In addition, the video can be broken into segments so you can jump to a precise location or topic without fast forwarding and rewinding. A CD-ROM can hold almost two hours of video.

Photo Libraries
All types of photographs can be scanned and archived on CD-ROM, with the ability to browse thumbnails and search by category. This is ideal for distributing product photos to your regional offices or distributors for use in their local marketing efforts.

PowerPoint Presentations
We can convert your PowerPoint presentations to a format that allows them to be run on any computer - whether or not PowerPoint is installed on that machine. Images, backgrounds, and animations remain intact.

You’re Company Web Site
You can even put entire web sites on CD-ROM for fast display without an Internet connection (great for trade shows and client meetings)

Customized CD-ROM projects are designed to solve specific marketing challenges. They typically involve more programming and require more time to create. However, they are extremely powerful tools that excel in the following applications:

• Interactive computer-based training (CBT)

• Integrated searchable databases

• Human resource tools (employee orientation kits)

• Corporate sales training

• Business presentations and trade show exhibits

• Conference kits

• Memorable supplements to printed annual reports

• Software and document distribution

Why is DVD such a powerful marketing medium?
Traditionally, a print-based direct mail campaign that yielded a two percent response rate was considered a success. But, with a growing onslaught of promotional mailings, in recent years the average direct mail response rate has plummeted to an even tinier fraction — approximately one tenth of a percent. That is, for every thousand pieces you send, you get an average of a single response. Surely there are more effective ways to reach your target audience!

Innovative companies have begun to explore digital media marketing — using digital media to deliver marketing messages. A simple example of digital media marketing is videotaping a sales presentation and mailing it to a highly targeted list. Such tactics can generate response rates as high as 60 percent. In fact, he cites several well-known companies that attribute their success to making digital media the main ingredient in their marketing mix.

Even more powerful than videotape, however, is an emerging digital media star: DVD. DVD offers most of the very best attributes of print, videotape, audiotape, and the web.

What makes DVD such a powerful marketing tool?

• Accommodates a wide variety of content in the highest quality available.

• Combine movies, sound, music, photographs, animation, graphics, games, and more on a single DVD.

• And since making a DVD is an all-digital process, technical quality is maintained from beginning to end.

How might I use DVD in my marketing mix?
Here are a few examples of simple but creative uses of DVD for marketing.

DVD brochure.
Imagine you’re a florist wanting to market floral arrangements for special occasions. You could go the traditional route: hire a photographer to shoot a variety of bouquets for a printed brochure. But printing high-quality color is expensive, especially in the relatively small quantities you need.

Instead, why not create a DVD with still photographs or QuickTime movies of people giving and receiving flowers — a mother holding a Mother’s Day arrangement, a bride tossing her bridal bouquet, an elderly woman accepting a dozen roses from her husband on their 50th wedding anniversary? Viewed on screen in vivid color, these images, whether moving or still, will speak powerfully to your customers. Add a menu with buttons so that your customers can browse bouquets for different seasons and occasions.

DVD sales tool.
Imagine you’re the product marketing manager for a new game that teaches children responsible attitudes toward money. Your challenge? This game is so unique, no newspaper ad or 30-second TV spot could do it justice. Instead, you build a DVD in four parts: a movie of the company president outlining the game’s benefits, a movie of children deeply absorbed in the game, parents’ testimonials about what their children have learned, and a web link, which, if the DVD is played in a computer, displays a web page with an order form. Your DVD combines in one compact, easily distributed form, all the most powerful evidence you can muster for why someone should buy this game — and you’ve made it easy for them to buy right from their desktop.

DVD Sales Presentation.
In the past you have traveled from office to office doing your in person sales presentations to potential clients, now with the magic of digital media played from a DVD your product's presentation becomes an info-commercial. Which can be played to large groups or sent to many potential clients thus cutting your costs drastically.