Imagine what it’s like to work in advertising or marketing. No two days are alike; every day, everyone tells you that everything is different and that things have already changed, so you must change everything you’ve always done. You need a new agency to do X, you need an app to do Y, and the list goes on.

Every day you are bombarded with statistics telling you that marketing is no longer what it once was. The digital environment is larger than television in terms of time spent, according to eMarketer, and mobile advertising will receive 70% of the digital budget in the UK by 2018.

There is an avalanche of facts and alleged actions that create a negative image for agencies and marketing. The truth is that digital and mobile have introduced new realities into the marketing landscape, but the principles haven’t changed.

So, next time you see a spectacular presentation telling you that the rules have changed and that statistics show why everything you’ve done so far was a waste of time, take a step back. Take a deep breath and remember the simple principles of marketing.

Brands must start where they have always started, with a communication plan and a media strategy built around the consumer, the company, and cultural insights.

There will, of course, be many variables, such as the product being advertised, the country, the period, and the target audience. All of these influence strategy and execution, but none should be unknown to clients.

It is true that the media landscape has become more complex and interconnected (half of Generation Y in the US were active on social networks on their computers while watching TV, according to a survey by Harris Interactive). The landscape is global and has become more technical, but that doesn’t mean we have to start from scratch.

Marketing
Of all the changes that have occurred in the world of agencies and clients, three things have always been true and have remained unchanged:

  1. Global thinking is not a new thing in media – The Economist and Financial Times are among the longest-running print publications; TV advertising and now YouTube likes provide them with global audiences, while the spread of PCs and the internet has seen traditional publications digitize their offerings on portals like Yahoo or Microsoft.
  2. Specialists are not a new thing. Large agencies (and some large clients) have teams of specialists they have always had, whether they are mobile, social, search, or even TV and OOH specialists.
  3. Consumer behavior is the same. Technology has influenced this behavior to happen at a higher speed and on a larger global scale than before. It has happened over the last ten years, and we have witnessed the birth of the first “.com” businesses, such as Myspace, later transformed into Facebook and WhatsApp following the “mobile first” principle.

The challenge agencies face remains the same: to deliver the brand’s message/content/promotion to the consumer in the most relevant and engaging way. The changes lie in the media platforms used, the technology, and the new providers offering all of these. Therefore, marketing agencies have the additional responsibility of ensuring that the brand navigates today’s complex and interconnected media landscape in the most efficient and relevant way possible.

Mobile platforms certainly represent an important part of the new landscape, playing a significant role and becoming increasingly active in the consumer’s life. The most important parts are not considered in isolation from the entire communications system. In an increasingly interconnected world, it would be a mistake for marketers to see these responsibilities as separate.

The first step in determining the role of mobile strategy is understanding its role in consumer buying behavior and how it interacts with other media. These should be the indicators for budget allocation.

The mobile environment delivers information that helps the brand understand how other channels work – data from consumers’ phones is important for success on other channels. For example, using the option to know consumer locations.

In the future, this information will be a huge part of how a brand creates its media systems, helping it obtain more data about the target audience.

These things are only possible if you have an overview of the entire media landscape and if you focus on the fundamental principles of marketing and media. Our responsibility to the brand is to deliver experiences that connect it with the consumer, through the most efficient combinations of media channels and on the chosen screen.

This does not mean distributing the media budget based on the media with the highest consumption or treating some channels as being too sensitive to be integrated with those we already know. It is very easy to stray from the right path if you listen to the noise around marketing. Brands that take fundamental principles into account cannot deviate much from this path, regardless of the chosen channel, whether it be mobile, social, TV, or outdoor.