If only it was 1999 again! They were the days for digital innovation and creativity!
Back in the early days of digital media you could describe the times something like this:
- It was a frontier time for digital
- Client and agency focus was on creating innovation and firsts
- Clients were growing in confidence, but more importantly felt brave
- All efforts were focussed on creating user experience and impact
- There were high levels of creativity and opportunity within the medium
- There was a wide variety seen across final websites, making brand activity distinctive and memorable
- Agency teams were very young, wild-eyed and full of unbridled enthusiasm
- Dot-com finance was in full flow, helping to build digital exposure and adoption
Given all of this, things must really be fantastic ten years on then right?
Well maybe they are and maybe they aren’t?
Taking each of the points above one by one and comparing them with things as we approach 2009 you might describe things like this:
- Digital media is an established and key part of the marketing mix
- The focus is now on effectiveness and workman-like delivery within projects
- Client belief and confidence is high, but many fear ‘breaking any moulds’
- Most efforts are now focussed on DDA compliance, Search Engine Optimisation and Content Management
- Subsequently there are limited levels of creativity and innovation
- There is now quite limited variation across sites making branding more about the logo than about functional innovation or distinctiveness
- Agency teams are now older and far less wide-eyed, particularly at management level
- Dot-com is now a dirty word as opposed to an investment opportunity
Perhaps these things are not just true within the digital arena? Perhaps the same could be said for TV advertising and other types of media? The proliferation of digital channels and global or pan-European advertising campaigns certainly seems to have had an effect on the creativity and sensitivity used when making TV spots.
All this sounds very negative but the reality is that there is as much opportunity, creativity and enthusiasm as there ever was, if not more, as long as you know where to look for it!
There may be some limitations to the amount of creativity on offer in the business to consumer area but in the business to business arena creative opportunities have never been better. In addition, whilst advertising on TV may be being dummed-down they field of online advertising still offers great opportunities to experiment, innovate and differentiate.
Google Analytics and other web statistics packages have greatly increased client interest, understanding and enthusiasm for the details of any digital activity – the ‘black art’ has finally seem some light and the ‘new’ has eventually been taken away from new media. Even the huge focus now directed towards Search Engine Optimisation has its benefits. Online content used to be largely inappropriate having often been ’stolen’ from elsewhere in the marketing department, as opposed to being created from scratch, but the importance of SEO now means far more attention is paid to the creation of online content, particularly in the written word.
Although the huge sums of money invested, even ‘thrown at’, any dot-com idea ten years back, certainly helped to grow consumer awareness of digital media, the checks and balances in place today mean that the days of ‘www.buy-pet-food-online.com’ are thankfully gone. Projects in new online-only industries today, such as social networking, are with serious, diligent, experienced and committed clients as opposed to the ‘three mates from college’ teams so often ‘in charge’ of things back in the late 1990s!
Even within the core area of website design itself, there is exciting news. Developments in technology like PaperVision3D are once again encouraging clients and agencies alike to create online experiences, as opposed to just online services. In addition, the open-source roots of PaperVision, and other browser extensions, is creating as vibrant and innovative a space ‘behind the scenes’ as it is on the ‘main stage’.
There is no doubt that times have changed over the last 10 years or so, but surely the reality is that they have changed for the better, when one considers the details? Sure the late 1990’s were exciting, gold-rush, frontier-land times, but the mine is now built and it is time to start getting some of that gold out onto the open market!
I have been ‘lucky’ enough to experience both of these ‘digital decades’, and on balance I prefer the one we are in now!
Am I right, or am I just getting old?
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