• by Masha Geller , June 16, 2003

The Ad:Tech conference opened Monday morning in San Francisco to a sold-out audience with a power panel moderated by show chair Susan Bratton, who guided the interactive session through the some of the best and worst interactive marketing strategies for 2003.

The discussion involved traditional marketers who are just starting to add interactive to their media mix and what role the Internet plays in building their brands.

"It's everyone's responsibility to drive and build the brand," said Michael Dunn, CEO of Prophet and author of "Building the Brand Driven Business," explaining that marketers should think of inserting the brand into the strategic dialog of the company in a "holistic approach to brand building." The customer is interacting with the company and the brand in many ways and every touch point is a brand-building moment, he said.

Todd Forsythe, VP of Global Marketing at the Oracle Corporation, said his company's primary objective online is to "get in front of the customer who's looking or info online." With the help of their agency Beyond Interactive/Grey Direct, the company has been able to take ad serving data and marry it to the customer database and figure out which ads generate the best results. "The key is not just seeing the metrics, but connecting them to the back end."

Forsythe said that Oracle has actually readjusted the media mix and the messaging based on these results, which is what makes interactive so unique.

Brad Santeler, Associate Director of interactive Services at Kimberly Clark, said that his company uses interactive media to support its offline efforts and that building community is much more efficient on the Internet and it's the best medium to turn customers in the evangelists for the company's brands. But such programs require a lot of a tweaking, he said.

Anthony Rodio, Director of Brand and communications at MSN, said, "the whole plan has to work together."

The second panel discussion of the day was led by Rich Landry, CEO of richmedium, who guided panelists from eBay, Yahoo! and CNET. The topic centered on the race between tool vendors and the publishers to create concepts that incent marketers to spend more of their budgets online. The panelists agreed that following the dot-com euphoria, the Interactive sector has finally come to a point where there are real marketers offering real solutions.

David Riemer, VP of Marketing Solutions at Yahoo! said that it's a question of standardization vs. innovation. "We have to make both happen," he said.

Barry Briggs, Chief Operating Officer of CNET Networks, said that while the industry is no longer talking about whether the Internet is a viable medium. The Interactive industry is at a point where marketers have to defend and support every dollar spent online, he said. And the media planner community, whose concerns are centered on productivity more than anything else, has been severely underserved by the publishers, which is beginning to change, according to Briggs.

The conference continues through Wednesday.