Contemporary Jazz: The Increasingly Symbiotic Relationship Between Creative Agencies and Digital Marketers

2010 doesn’t exactly seem like ancient history, but in the world of branding, it might as well be. The landscape has changed drastically in a short period of time – in a good way. The cornerstone of our business hasn’t changed. We continue to build brands that inspire, evolve, engage and grow. Creativity doesn’t have an expiration date, and in today’s digital world, a brand’s visual communication is more important than ever. What has changed is the way we implement and cultivate brands.

Over the last few years, Google’s organic ranking algorithms have become incredibly intelligent. In order to weed out poor and sometimes malicious content, Google is implementing more “real world” logic to its search – and brands are playing a bigger role. Brands represent a good search partner because of their reliability. People TRUST brands they know. But how do you create a trustworthy brand in the digital space? That’s where digital marketing comes in.

Not so long ago, creative agencies and digital marketing agencies were two ships passing in the night. We inhabited the same world, but rarely worked closely with each other. The explosive growth of social media and digital communication platforms has changed everything.

Now, while we develop a brand, a similarity is happening with digital marketers. This evolving interdependency is driven by data. We now have real-time views into potential customers’ habits and preferences, as well as metrics on the effectiveness of individual marketing efforts. The access to both quantitative and qualitative data drives brand development tactics that lead to better-defined brand personas, more efficient communication with potential customers and social influencers, more effective strategies – and stronger brands.

By merging branding and digital marketing efforts, we can now more effectively guide potential customers through the “Awareness (brand recognition) – Consideration (brand equity) – Decision (brand loyalty)” journey, and create strong, lasting brands.

I like to think of the digital marketing/creative relationship as good jazz music – we’re each masters of our individual instruments, but when we’re playing together in the same room and interacting with each other, magic happens.

On Thursday November 6, I’ll be giving a presentation on “The Importance of Brand in Digital Marketing and SEO” at the Customer Engagement World Conference in New York City. Along with co-presenters Grayson Lafrenz and Nicholas Slettengren of Power Digital Marketing, I’ll explain the importance of maintaining brand cohesion and how that will affect growth, engagement and drive conversion. If you’re planning on attending CEW, come by and see us!

If you’d like to learn more about how digital marketing combined with branding strategy can help you engage customers, fill out the form to the right and we’d be happy to chat!