• by September 20, 2004

'WHAT IS MEDIA, ANYWAY?' -- When David Cohen posed that question to an auditorium full of ad execs Monday morning he, of course, meant it in a good way. Certainly, Cohen, who heads up interactive and integrated media operations for Universal McCann, was not conceding any ignorance on the topic. Instead, he was trying to make the point that classic definitions of what constitutes a medium are quickly losing their distinctions as all forms of media blur into a new digital ooze. At least, that was our takeaway when Cohen shared examples of interactive media projects Universal has been developing for consumer healthcare client Johnson & Johnson. One of those projects, he said, was a first-of-its-kind simultaneous sponsorship of a network TV program across "three screens:" the television set, the Internet-enabled computer screen and those of wireless devices that all featured content from a special prime-time episode of ABC's "The View."

Cohen said the approach has since been replicated with other projects involving Discovery Channel, TLC and other ABC shows, and that he experiences have left him searching for a new definitions of not just interactive media but of media overall. "Really, the question is what is media in 2004," Cohen challenged the advertising assemblage gathered during the opening general session of the opening day of Interactive Advertising World during the opening day of Advertising Week in New York.

Cohen was not alone. Digital diva Sarah Fay said that when her ad shop, Carat Interactive, begins developing campaigns and strategies for its clients, they often start with the same premise: "They're tending to say, 'What do you mean by interactive?'"

Whatever they call it, Fay said more clients are buying into it, going so far as to call 2004 a "watershed year" for interactive media plans. "This has been the year of the clients getting it." And those clients apparently are as far-flung pharma giant Pfizer, athletic apparel marketer Adidas and even farm belt brand icon John Deere. Adidas, which launched its first major interactive ad effort this year, was so pleased with the results, she said the company's president has already ordered up a "double-digit" increase for 2005, leading us to the conclusion that "Impossible" isn't exactly nothing. That's the Adidas ad campaign, of course: "Impossible Is Nothing." You know, the one featuring Muhammad Ali and his daughter sparring in those cleverly concocted TV spots. As it turns out, the knockout wasn't the TV part of the campaign, but the "video home page" units Carat Interactive placed across the Web that enabled users to replay the virtual bout on demand.

That element in particular surprised the management team at Adidas, which was used to seeing the impact of TV ads, but had never witnessed the immediacy of broadband video. "Never before in their lives did they have this kind of accountability," shared Fay, offering a cross-media comparison from the "Impossible" campaign that seemed to illustrate her point. Comparing the online video ads to a Muhammad Ali poster inserted into a special edition of Sports Illustrated magazine. "How many people put the poster on the wall," questioned Fay, noting, "We got 2.5 million downloads of the spot."

But the most surprising interactive media observation made by anyone during the conference session came not from the agency insiders, but from a client who, at first cited the Sarbanes Oxley financial disclosure act as reason why he probably could not elaborate on his company's interactive advertising plans. Asked what his company defines interactive media, that executive, John Stichweh, section manager - interactive marketing manager, Global Beauty Business Unit, Procter & Gamble Co., said it included everything from online to "SMS" to "carrier pigeons." And that made us realize the answer to David Cohen's original question: "What is media." Apparently, it's everything.