Connecting the Dots / An Agency Blog

Vancouver, Canada., July 14, 2010 – Engine Digital Executive Creative Director Stephen Beck announced today that James Riley, former Global Director of Marketing for Disney Online and CEO of AdCritic.com, has joined the firm as a Partner and Executive Vice President of Client Services

“James is a formidable strategic marketing talent who will bring innovation, new thinking and solutions to our Canadian and US clients,” comments Beck. “Our agency has maintained a solid reputation as a high growth, strategic creative agency in the digital space, and our partnership with James will help solidify our goal of providing deeper value to our existing clients and increasing our reach into the US market to provide services to larger North American brands.”

Prior to joining Engine Digital, James served as Global Director of Marketing for Disney Online where he managed brand and product marketing teams across several countries for Club Penguin and other online Disney properties. Most recently, James was principal of a strategic marketing firm, servicing a broad list of consumer and business-to-business brands across North America. James has also held roles including Category Director at IBM Global Consulting managing the Unilever account; Director of Digital Strategy for a Connecticut based Omnicom agency; CEO of a Los Angeles based digital media agency working with the Hollywood community; marketing manager at Microsoft; and CEO of AdCritic.com, which he sold to Advertising Age.

Get in touch:
james.riley@enginedigital.com / @MrJamesRiley

SoDA 2010 Digital Marketing Outlook – released today!

The Society of Digital Agencies released their 2010 Digital Marketing Outlook today and it’s packed full of great survey data from hundreds of executives from major global brands, traditional and digital agencies, and vendor / service providers. Some key stats and points of view that have caught my eye so far:

• 81% of brand execs expect an increase in digital projects for 2010
• “The most effective digital platforms have shifted from ‘disruptive’ to ‘productive’ by providing a service or utility…[they] fundamentally change the approach from “how we reach our customers” to ‘how we make their lives better.’” K. Blitz
• 59% of respondants say that cost-per-click, conversion, and ROI are the digital marketing metric they’re least interested in
• Most important technical skill sets to hire / contract in 2010 (in order): Flash, ActionScript, CSS, PHP, iPhone SDK – showing that the microsite is indeed still alive and kicking

Get the report after the jump…

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Whenever one of the big tech co’s does something even remotely of interest, and even more often when it’s under the radar, the tech blogs light up with speculation and criticism instantly. Even when it’s as insubstantial as the Microsoft Bing.com team’s recent internal use of their new Binged.It URL shortener.

Microsoft seems far less
concerned with an extra
character in their URL
shortener, or even the
prospect of using a truly
short URL than they are
about building a solid and
recognizable brand around
the Bing product.

The service isn’t yet public, and for all we know, it may never be. But with URL shortening becoming commonplace and creating some interesting business opportunities – tracking audience interest for example – it would be surprising if the Google’s, YouTube’s, and Microsoft’s weren’t exploring the space with some level of interest.

Microsoft’s Binged.It URL shortener caught some heat recently on TechCrunch.com, with the blog and most of the commenters jumping all over the fact that Bing’s short URL (Binged.It – 8 characters) is longer than the service’s main URL (Bing.com – 7 characters). Fair point, considering a URL shortener should, er, shorten a URL, right?!

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Over at i [love] marketing, Ana Andjelic makes some valid and interesting points on the comparison of digital and traditional agencies in her post titled Why Digital Agencies Aren’t Ready to Lead. It’s an interesting issue to consider. With integration and convergence now more or less a no-brainer, you really can’t have a campaign span both traditional and non-traditional channels without providing a consistent experience (can you?).

Ana defines digital agencies as “focusing on experimentation”, spinning their wheels trying to out-create competing agencies by making bigger and more complex digital experiences, while traditional shops “thrive on exploitation”, leveraging their bag of marketing tricks. This equates to more of a typical business model – make it once and sell it over and over again. It’s true, digital shops are terrible at this.

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With all the buzz around social media these days, its reassuring to see other areas of digital making huge leaps of innovation. YellowBird, a Netherlands-based company is doing just that, with the release of their 3D video capabilities. The uses for this technology seem endless; capturing events, or building interactive environments to tell deeper brand stories.

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