The trade press is fascinated by digital. Perhaps they believe their own existence depends on it, as well as the existence of the entities they daily report on.
Adweek and Ad Age are both featuring articles about digital trends to look for in 2010. Ad Age reached out to Duncan Southgate and Ken Mallon for their take. Adweek put staff writer Brian Morrissey on the job.
Among other things, Morrissey believes the distinction between digital agencies and traditional agencies will continue to blur. Mallon and Southgate think marketers will take a more scientific approach to their viral campaigns.
Neither trade pub offers the following insight: agencies and their clients will conclude that one of the truest measures of online success is a campaign’s ability to drive offline activity. In other words, numbers of followers on Twitter or Facebook don’t mean much, unless there’s also a bridge to a transaction or an offline brand experience (that ultimately leads to a transaction).
According to Ad Age, Duncan Southgate is global innovation director at Millward Brown and Ken Mallon is senior VP of custom solutions for Dynamic Logic. And we know Morrissey is a journalist. Would it have been out of the question to have the future of digital presented by, I don’t know, somebody actually creating the stuff?