I went to a portfolio viewing recently to scout for potential creative interns. All of them featured integrated or 360 campaigns in their work. As I went through the portfolios, one by one, the students would explain the thinking behind what they did. One after another, they showed good thought on their print pieces, out of home, and broadcast storyboards. But when it came to their online offerings it was an entirely different story. The work seemed flat, as if a train of thought started down the tracks and then ran out of steam.

One campaign featured windows opened in unusual places with unusual things on the other side of them. For example, you would see an open window on an industrial building, but inside was green grass, and bright skies. When we turned to the online (banners), it was simply the print work pasted into a thin dimension. When I asked the student what the online was about, they replied, “I don’t know, it seemed to fit with the campaign.”

The integrated mistake
The above-mentioned students can’t really be blamed for the drop off when it came to the digital portions of their work. They’re suffering from a common mistake/misconception, which is that a good integrated campaign consists of messaging that is consistent across multiple media. To give an analogy, the belief is that if you take all the pieces of an integrated campaign, stitch them together and lay them flat, you could run your fingers across them and not feel the seams.

In broadcast and print, the consumer value attached to the advertisements is external. They get a TV show or a magazine article served up alongside their ad. In the interactive realm, the audience consumes the advertisement because it, in itself, offers them value. This has obvious implications for integrated campaigns. Agencies will often devote significant time trying to make sure there is a consistent message across all media. Although this is an important part of creating an effective campaign, it simply isn’t enough to make all aspects of the campaign effective. You also have to make sure that each medium in the campaign has value. So how do you make sure your interactive initiatives have value in the eyes of your audience?

The answer is “Why?”
“Why?” is a question we ask all the time in the advertising world. We use it to help us define problems and devise creative solutions. In the more mature media – such as print, out of home and broadcast – the biggest “why” is answered for us: “Why is our audience viewing/reading this?” With broadcast and print the answer has to do with subsidy. It’s an exchange of the audience’s time for subsidizing something they value.

Why does someone watch a commercial? Because without the commercials, the TV shows we love would be too expensive to produce. Without commercials, there would be no House, or Grey’s Anatomy. And although you might get up to get a snack during commercials, odds are you will sit through several during the viewing of your favourite show.

Same goes in the world of print. Our own Dave Hamilton explains, “I love The New Yorker, but if there were no ads in it, it would be way too expensive to buy.”

Advertising subsidizes the salaries of the writers, and offsets the price of production. Readers of the magazine will at least see the ads in the magazine. In the digital space (web, mobile and such) the answer is not as obvious.

Why in action
A few weeks ago someone sent me the Elf Yourself link. I spent a good 20 minutes using the application. I found images of my family. I cropped them out. I uploaded them. I chose a theme. And then I spent several minutes waiting for the application to process it all. Out popped a video of my wife, kids, and myself singing and dancing as elves. I then spent another 5-10 minutes sharing the video, giving it further exposure.

The question is “Why?” Why did I invest 30 minutes of my time (specifically half of my lunch) using an advertisement for Office Max?

The answer is that I interacted with the ad because it, in itself, provided me with value. In this case I knew my boys (ages 2 and 4) would love to see themselves dancing and singing as Santa’s Elves. I also knew that some of my immediate friends would find seeing my wife and I dancing as elves entertaining.

This is the digital “Why?”

There is no formula for creative value in interactive advertising. It simply requires a lot of thought and imagination, combined with putting yourself in your audience’s shoes. You need to imagine yourself as a member of your audience, and ask, “Why would I do this? Why would I participate? Why navigate? Why read?”

If you can come up with great answers for all of these questions, you’re well on your way to coming up with an effective piece of digital advertising.