On January 12th, we were pleased to host a panel for the Canadian Marketing Association. I’ve been teaching the online marketing certificate this fall that ended on that great conversation about the future of online marketing. I really want to thank all participants that attended and fed that very interesting conversation. As well as our panelist: David Aubry from Lancôme, Alexis Robin from LG2, Vlad Stesin from Bloom Digital (Cossette) and Christina Brown from CloudRaker. We also really appreciated the input from our strategic planner Sean Saraq.

Here’s the list of questions we’ve discussed:

• Can the web reach a critical mass and build brand awareness like traditional mass media used to deliver?
• Is the online display advertising click and impression model still viable in the next years?
• Will it be possible to track brand awareness in the future by integrating results from offline and online?
• The fact that “traditional agencies” and “media group” are buying and leading the spends on the Internet today, do you think it impacts the potential for online effectiveness.
• Will clients (think of Wringley Gum recently) switch their advertising budgets to their digital agency… do you think it’s the future?
• Can you spend the equivalent of a TV buy online?
• As online goes beyond reach and frequency by building long-term engagement, is the notion of media obsolete?
• Is the notion of online marketing still relevant? Isn’t this the same marketing?
• What can the digital world learn from the offline world?
• In your opinion, will Facebook and Twitter (and other social media) survive as on line marketing media?
• What do you see are the upcoming online marketing trends? The trend of web 2.0 is well established but companies are still fearing the use of these medias. How do you think the web 2.0 will evolve and how the arrival of web 3.0 will impact marketers?
• How do you each sell social media in your everyday job to your clients, managers, colleagues?
• Comment voyez-vous l’avenir des médias de masse traditionnels au cours des dix ou vingt prochaines années?
• What do you feel the key elements of the Marketing Mix will be as the Internet and E Marketing become more and more developed?

A few notes that I took from that night, and hopefully inspire you in your thinking:

• You can’t isolate a piece of media, everything has to work together and you can’t expect one media to achieve all your marketing and communication needs and objectives
• Now living in a digital world, you can spend 24-hrs a day with a brand you love, that’s a huge impact on the familiarity component of your brand equity.
• We should stop talking online or offline world, instead, let’s talk about the nonline world.
• Everything is a question of mix, digital marketing isn’t the only answer.
• We couldn’t find an example of a brand that was built only through the internet, a non pure player brand I mean. If you’ve one in mind please share it
• Everyone can now become a company with Internet.
• There will still be passive and active media consumption even in the long-term.
• You can access the same content through different media which impacts how consumers will react to it: Hulu from a TV, from a computer, from an iPhone
• Media are still brand and authorities that impact your brand perception and equity.

Thanks folks!