Digital (Not 'Internet') Marketing

I’m teaching a course in Digital Marketing this Fall at Baruch (my biz school alma mater), although the course is formally titled “Internet Marketing.” The department chair asked me to justify the name change to the school’s administration, so I wrote the following. It’s hard for me to conceive of a course for a marketer (as opposed to a technologist) that would consider the Web or Internet in isolation, and separately teach “digital” marketing.

Internet Marketing is a phrase that in 2008 sounds almost quaint. Marketing strategists today need to engage consumers where they are, and that is increasingly on a diverse array of digital devices that can serve as highly personal touchpoints. The marketer might use Twitter, a mobile text messaging and Web-based application through which Dell by February had sold a reported $500,000 worth of equipment. He or she might integrate the Web and mobile devices, as in the recent Adidas campaign, which sent text links to mobile phone browsers that lead to a website also available via computers through which users could register for callbacks to phones from NBA stars. Or perhaps create viral YouTube videos watched on an Apple TV or Netflix device hooked to a television, a laptop computer linked through the Internet or an iPhone on a 3G cellphone network. A consumer product branding campaign might employ traditional banner ads on Web-based portals or search engines.

Rather than focus on the platform, today’s marketer needs to concentrate on where to cost effectively engage the market. And any marketing executive hoping to work as a cutting edge strategist must understand the importance of integrating all available digital tools. To consider the Internet in a vacuum and disregard the deep interrelation of various digital channels would ignore current realities, do a disservice to students and deny them the chance to study the latest research and industry wisdom.

And sorry I haven’t posted for awhile ... Allowed myself a respite during vacation.