For the online marketing world, 2010 was well..let’s see.. Crowded!


Social media, mobile, local, we heard it loud & clear!


Google & Facebook war, Foursquare & Facebook places, digital insanity  in the name of  mobile apps,  busy, crowded, loud social music, sounding more like noise – we saw and heard it all. Local & mobile stormed to the forefront. There was a new guy in town- Assange, publishing ( read – leaking) classified documents. Suddenly publishing was the new buzz word .


All of  this was done in the name of content and brand engagement.


But sadly behind the scenes, we failed to notice a silent erosion of relevancy.   We did not care if our actions justified the dollars spent, or whether our clients or our “brands” are aligned to the channels and the technology that’s been thrown at us by scores every day.  It was just cool and we had to embrace and adopt them. We forgot to ask that million dollar question “what works?”.


Personally, I witnessed advertising cost creeping up, citing competition. This, while Yahoo fell back, Bing lost share and Google flexed muscle. Marketing agencies struggled to keep up with the noise while weeding through the best and the most relevant solutions for our clients. Facebook ad spend surged but with questionable targeting and limited reporting – acceptable as long as it is for the purpose of brand building . More in a detailed post coming up.


Agreed, it was a year of technology and channel upswing. I  doubt if relevancy followed suit.


Passing through JFK the other day, my husband & I were drawn to this eatery – Croque Madame (terminal 2), offering mounted ipads on each table for ordering. Travelers were more intrigued by this seemingly, interactive brilliance, from what we overheard. Really?? Interactive?? The iPads weren’t for food or ambience review (both of which were  great). It also didn’t allow any brand engagement. We were willing to check out their facebook page and check-in using facebook places /foursquare, provided we got some  consumer recognition (read-deals). None of those were possible. Yet this huge investment was made in the name of technology. What do we classify this as? Irrelevance or incompetency? I wonder if they stopped to asked themselves “how can we make this work” before embarking on embracing the coolness.


Hope 2011 brings more technology, better channels and increased action based on relevancy. Here’s to a happy & successful new year!


-Bibi