• by Maya Abulashvili , January 19, 2015

In the current environment, as marketers increasingly throw their best efforts into digital techniques, fearing they will otherwise become obsolete, it is easy to overlook consumer insights. Tom Doctoroff, Asia CEO for J. Walter Thompson, argues that the insights gleaned from answering the question why and explaining the behavioral preferences that “lurk in the corner of people’s hearts" is critical. 

Such important information, he warns, "is not easily uncovered by data.” 

In his book "Twitter is Not a Strategy," Doctoroff explains how integrating the traditional and digital branding is the best strategy for brands. He offered his take on changing media to Media Daily News.

Digital age, he contends, is enabling consumers to be much more empowered in terms of how they engage with manufacturers and brand messages and how they provide feedback, so there’s a more dynamic interrelationship between consumer and brand than there was in the past.

This has always been possible in a low-tech way -- but now, given the proliferation of different platforms, the relationship between consumer and brand can be much closer, intimate and leading to loyalty or spinning out of control. Marketers are in a high-risk high-return situation, where they can deepen loyalty by having a mutually beneficial relationship.

MDN: What roles do traditional and new media play? Are they mutually exclusive, complementary or overlapping?

They do overlap, and technology makes the overlapping much more important. You can now have a QR code that pops up on a TV screen for TV ad, or an outdoor billboard, which prompts consumers to visit a new site. But in general, traditional media is more for shaping a message, whereas digital media is for triggering behavioral change. And this is something that marketers need to align, so that more tactical promotional messages are compatible with the traditional image-shaping media. Nike’s “Just Do It’ is not just a slogan, it’s a bilateral interactive relationship that is underpinning for subsequent engagement. The high-tech Nike+ ecosystem enables an always-on interactive brand idea.

MDN: How can marketing professionals integrate traditional and digital?

We need to get the best of both worlds together. There are two types of thinking in marketing. One is what I would call "conceptual distillation," which tends to be much more lateral. The other is "systemic thinking," which tends to be more linear. The goal of marketing companies needs to be to get these two types of people together, because they often are two different universes. That is why today there is little bit of discord between so-called traditionalists and the new generation people. They’re very different in how they digest the world.

Things like technology platform builds, advanced CRM programs, or critical pathing in terms of user experience optimization are rooted in linear thinking. On the other hand, content generation, viral videos and other idea-driven creative outputs tend to be more conceptual and lateral in terms of thinking that goes behind it.

MDN: Is digital marketing a conceptually new approach or just another medium?

It is just another medium. However, it is a new domain just because of its abilities for proliferation, engagement and interaction. Consumers for the first time are in position to respond and trigger a dialogue in mass. The New Media tend to give more power to the people, which from marketers’ perspective is both good and dangerous.