Digital Intelligence

I totally made it up.

When I first decided I wanted to get into strategic planning, I didn’t really know how one became a strategic planner. So I kept my eyes and ears open and discovered that there are two ways in: research or very senior account management.

In interactive, digital strategists are still a new breed and they come from all kinds of backgrounds, mainly: technology, account planning or marketing management. Finding a digital strategist that can offer both technology and advertising expertise is rare and in high demand.

Recently, I was given the opportunity to jump into the digital strategy pool because of my advertising background and sharp instincts about the www. And like traditional strategic planners, I’m starting out doing hardcore research – a practice which I’ve coined “digital intelligence”.

I can see you…

What’s cool about online marketing is that a lot of what’s happening in your category is fully transparent. At any moment, you can dive into what your competitors are doing online if you’re willing to invest the time… and if you can afford it, the tools.

Unlike traditional advertising where ad effectiveness can be difficult to measure or predict, digital marketing can be a little bit easier to control but it requires the manpower to strategize, optimize and manage everything from media plans, search campaigns, SEO, landing pages, display creative options, user experience, etc.

For people who are go-go-go, this job probably sounds terribly tedious. But what makes this position so rewarding comes from knowing that the fruit of my efforts has an overall effect on the business. Educated clients make sounder decisions; a well-informed agency gains stronger trust; and a strategy based on reality rather than assumption performs better.

Snowballing

In this article from Adotas on Interactive Creative Skills that Every Agency Needs, while it doesn’t include a digital intelligence specialist, it does illustrate how interactive agencies can’t function the same way as a traditional one. In today’s interactive shop, we all put on different hats depending on what we’re naturally attuned to (and not necessarily on what we went to school for). As long as it’s all for a common goal which should always be to effectively drive consumer behaviour through online technology.