360DigitalInfluence

Irfan Kamal has just joined the 360 ° Digital Influence raising our collective brain power far in excess of his  modest bodyweight. He’s smart. Whip smart. Ninja smart. MBA Smart. He thinks about how C-suite execs handle their business  online.  Like a lot of our team members, he  comes from a non-traditional background. One of his recent gigs includes counseling Jeff Bezos of Amazon on investment opportunities. I think his title was “Entrepreneur-in-Residence for Amazon.com’s founder Jeff Bezos.”

Now he is our “Entrepeneur-in-Residence” and I couldn’t be happier. I asked him a few questions the other day:

JB: Why did you gravitate to social media and integrating that into your digital marketing efforts and your entrepreneurial background?

IK: I’ve had the opportunity to work across a number of industry sectors and company sizes.   One very strong trend I’ve observed is the increasing effectiveness of word of mouth and conversational media in influencing everything from brand awareness to actual sales.   There’s so much messaging clutter, it’s natural to rely more and more on the opinions of the people we trust.   Combine those characteristics with the promise of online measurement and conversion tracking, and I believe we’re looking at what will be one of the most effective and efficient ways to connect consumers with products and services.   Considering the enormous growth potential — “social media” currently receives less than 5% of online media spend on average (which translates into less than 1% of total media spend) — it’s a tremendously exciting place for an entrepreneur like myself to be.

JB: Do you think public relations and marketing as disciplines are coming together (i.e. towards integration) or moving apart (towards more specialization)?

IK: It would be great if we can bring the two disciplines closer together so it’s easier to provide integrated marketing and conversational planning.   However, public relations has typically been less quantitatively planned and less driven by the types of metrics used in traditional marketing/advertising, so it’s been difficult to integrate the two disciplines.   Now, online social media and conversational/word of mouth marketing have the potential to be more rigorously planned, measured and scaled and have more in common with their online advertising counterparts.   These trends make me hopeful we can move towards greater integration over the next 3-5 years.

JB: If you were to define 2-3 key trends that are impacting marketing and communications this year that stand out from the crowd what would those be?

IK: First, I believe people are influenced less by traditional advertising.   Advertising will always have an important role, but it’s increasingly falling victim to shifts in consumer share of attention towards online and casual/console gaming this year.   Second, I think there’s been an explosion of experimentation in “social media” which has pushed the area into an almost frenetic “hype” area.   As social media matures over the next couple of years, we’ll see it become a more predictable part of the marketer’s main menu.   Third, I think that we’re seeing more creativity globally throughout marketing and communications (in for-profit and non-profit sectors) — from the US election candidates use of social media to bloggers at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.