Digital marketing is set to represent the majority of media investment in some countries for the first time this year and where they go, others will follow. Although digital has been a part of media plans for a decade or so, it is only in the last couple of years that this exponential growth has really entered the mainstream.
The digital skills gap is a clear manifestation of this, with marketers of all levels struggling to keep up with the fast-paced nature of the industry and know how best to maximise the opportunity or evaluate the campaigns they are presented with.
For all those working in the industry there is a real danger that their lack of digital skills and knowledge will one day render them worthless to the businesses they work for.
Much has been written about this gap and the important work that must be done to fix it, but not much is said about an unexpected skills gap which is opening up in the other direction: driven by bright, new thinkers and innovative startups, digital marketing is in real danger of not knowing enough about traditional marketing best practice to truly deliver.
I’m a digital evangelist but I tend to think that senior marketers were right to be sceptical about its early days – their unwillingness to commit large budgets to these emerging platforms wasn’t a sign that they were unable to understand them, but on the contrary a sign that they truly understood what drove their business. Although most made some concessions, deep down traditional marketers must have questioned what all the early fuss was about Facebook. How could a channel that was speaking to such a tiny part of their target audience truly make a difference when their TV needs to reach millions to do so?
Over several decades of art and science, marketers have built up clear views on how marketing works, of the creative nuances required, of media planning best practice and ultimately of how consumers respond to such stimuli. People now consume media through an alarming array of new channels but they still remain the same people; these channels offer new creative canvases and opportunities but the art of brand storytelling remains largely unchanged. New media plays by different rules but the old ones of reach and frequency still rule.
As digital marketing matures it is becoming simpler and clearer for marketers – the key big channels they need to focus on are emerging and cross-platform opportunities such as video help further iron out the differences between mediums. There will always be nuances from one platform to another that agencies and digital experts need to keep up with, but marketers can begin to build a clear understanding of how digital marketing fits in with their wider planning that is unlikely to change drastically over the coming years.
On the other hand, there’s a very real worry that a new generation of marketers will come through and, blinded by the promise of digital, they will not learn enough of the old craft of marketing. Since joining a media agency and working in a role across all media a year ago, I’ve learnt more about digital than I ever did by focussing purely on it. I’ve learnt how it interacts with other media, how it supports and extends them, how the rules it plays by have been proven by science decades ago, and what makes it different and unique in a way that puts TV to shame.
While established marketers do need to make a real effort to learn the essential points of digital marketing, it’s equally important that they go out of their way to pass on their huge wealth of knowledge to the next generation. Far from being rendered useless by new technology, old-fashioned marketing and storytelling principles are more important than ever.
Jerry Daykin is a global digital director at Dentsu Aegis Network. You can follow his campaign for #DigitalSense in marketing on Twitter @jdaykin
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