Digtal media is a slippery, slidey thing morphing faster than a Terminator CGI. Just when you think you have a handle on it it changes before your eyes. When I first got involved back in the dark ages of new media (1990’s) it was a dark art, the preserve of strange hybrid creative geeks and bored (or visionary) graphic designers. When I tried to sell it commercially, the most common rejection I received was, ‘We don’t know who is looking at it: probably some 13 year old kid in Uzbekistan’.
Then a tsunami of metrics hit us, and digital became the most measurable medium available to marketers and communicators. Classically trained marketers loved it… and stats ruled over creativity for a while.
Then creativity returned with a vengeance riding on the back of rich media. When I started as a young creative in a Manchester ad agency the chance of working on a TV commercial was a remote day dream. Rich media attracted passionate creatives who were already cutting their teeth on social internet. On-line became the most exciting area for creatives to work.
Today we are seeing a convergence of measurability and creativity. Marketers, particularly those involved with brand issues are seeking qualitative as well as quantitative measures. Click through rates are no longer the end of the story… or even the beginning. I’m not suggesting the on-line arena has matured and the factions are now living in happy harmony: as I said at he outset… it is a formless, changing beast. What I do applaud is a return to creativity and a chance for every aspiring creatives to produce stunning, provocative solutions and snap at the heels of those with multi million pound budgets. And, an opportunity to use the stats to demonstrate that brave ideas actually do deliver in a crowded, media-rich community.
Although, as I have discussed before, digital project management is a valuable discipline, I mused for a while on where it came from. Many digital organisations came from the design and advertising industries, where, although significant project management skills are practised, it is not recognised as a discipline. Having worked in those areas myself for a number of years, I understand that the concept of a project has negative connotations. Project based work means that the company has to constantly be chasing new work – the holy grail is to turn those projects into clients requiring on-going service. The management philosophy is usually built around account handling and account management, rather than project management.
When digital media arrived, the type of work originally undertaken was the building of websites. These were usually individual turnkey projects, and as such were amenable to project management methods and approaches. But what of the other services now offered by companies operating in the digital arena? Web marketing, on-line promotion, and digital communications all can be looked at as on-going processes, rather than finite projects with a beginning and end point. However it could be argued that if a strategy is in place with defined objectives, project management is the route to go.
Okay, I admit a lot of this is semantics and depends upon the taxonomy of roles within an industry sector, and most operations will embody both account and project management disciplines, but I think it is also a reflection of the culture and business philosophies to observe which is dominant within the sector.
There are hundreds of companies and individuals out there to help companies with their digital projects, from web developers to search marketers. But the biggest issue seems to be managing these projects. Big organisations may have a team of managers charged with digital or new media marketing and management, but many do not… and few SME’s have such a resource. So most organisations dump digital projects on some already overworked marketing or IT person. Most of the problems I see with companies unhappy with their digital marketing stem from failures in project management.
It isn’t a difficult discipline, but does require a broad knowledge of the industry and available technologies and solutions. But above all, it is a process, involving all the tools familiar to project managers in any industry. A good digital project manager – internal or external – is worth their weight in gold.
- Agreeing and setting objectives – obvious but so often overlooked
- Strategy planning – not a 100 page document, the best strategies are less than one side of A4
- Identifying internal resource – do you have the people? Who will execute and manage the project long term?
- Selecting third party help – absolutely critical. There are some great people out there, but a lot of cowboys as well. Your web developer is not necessarily the best person to mount an email marketing campaign or handle your search marketing.
- Identify performance indicators and measurables.
- Creating the digital brief – a verbal briefing is not enough. The terms of the brief should include deliverables, performance indicators, cost indicators and timescales. This will form the basis of contracts with external suppliers.
- Evaluating proposals and tenders – are we sure the outside suppliers understood our brief, and do we understand their proposals.
- Negotiating – life is never straightforward and compromises have to be made
- Liaison – keeping all parties connected
- Reporting – how is the project progressing? To brief, on time, on cost?
- Time and budgetary control – speaks for itself, but needs constant vigilance
- Sign off – know when the project is over, don’t let it drift. Easier to manage if you set discrete stages.
- Evaluation and tracking – did it work? Quantify the results.
Yes there is a lot to be done and a lot to control on even the simplest projects – this is why things often fail through lack of tight project management. Use a specialist if you can. A friend of mine uses the analogy of needing a shirt: you can either go out and spend £20 on a shirt or you can make one. You can learn how to do it from a book, buy material from the market, stay up late at nights cutting and sewing and at the end of the day you have saved yourself £20… but would you really want to go out in a shirt you had made yourself?
The financial crisis was brought about by the sector, an overvalued model, and incompetence of players who should have known better. But the digital world did have its part to play, as a tool and a conduit rather than a cause. The speed and spread of communications can bring the dominoes tumbling with far greater rapidity. Traders worldwide are watching their screens and reacting instantly. Data is transferred instantly to investors, fund managers, the media and the world at large. But not just data – information, misinformation and rumour travel just as fast. So while the credit crunch itself was due to staggering miscalculations and lack of competence, digital media was probably part of the conduit by which a crunch was turned into a crisis.
