Dancing hamsters + the top summer song of 2011= awesome!

KIA®’s Share Some Soul campaign encourages dancing…lots of dancing. To enter, consumers can submit videos of themselves getting down to Party Rock Anthem via KIA®’s YouTube channel and Facebook page. What’s at stake? The winner earns his/herself a $10,000 cash prize and a chance to dance with LMFAO on stage. And who better to decide the winner than consumers.

Contest marketing is a social, interactive strategy that grabs user attention and increases brand awareness. “We really see the world shifting from a world focused around information to one focused on people” (Ethan Beard, 9.20.11, AdAge). Consumer power continues to rise as the influence of social media amplifies. Marketers are able to control the level of consumer involvement, build their brands and take advantage of some great exposure to both target and under-served markets through the use of contest marketing.

But contest marketing should not be your only strategy to create brand buzz. Social media is a tool used for communication and should not be the objective of your marketing strategy. To remain engaged in the communication process across all channels, B2B marketers need to expand their online footprints. Thought leaders and lead generation marketers need to merge their once-siloed strategies with traditional and online marketing – align social, mobile and email initiatives to enhance your B2B strategies and secure brand loyalty.

Being responsive is at the core of interactive marketing.

Consumer empowerment has taken over marketer power for what seems like the past decade. With the tremendous growth of social media, consumers expect marketers to know everything about their buying habits and patterns. Social media has enabled consumer loyalty, but not necessarily the consumer experience. A company may have a massive brand presence on Facebook, but having one million fans does not mean they are giving the consumer the desired brand experience.

Interactive Marketing Plus

Social media provides the opportunity for market researchers to listen to and mine consumer insights, but this is not the only opportunity presented. Social media allows consumers to directly respond to the changing marketing conditions. Social networking has created a virtual space for people to be advocates for their fellow brand ambassadors. However, interactive marketing involves more than just internet marketing.

Crowdsourcing & Measurable Results

Consumers are more likely to talk about a brand via social media rather than through surveys. Although social networks use analytical software to produce measureable results, they are slow to make the data, analysis, and insights available to marketers. Marketers need to reconnect with consumers to optimize the consumer promise and the brand promise.

The mission and challenge for marketers is to be responsive to consumers’ concerns and behaviors with a more measureable, data driven approach by customizing the marketing experience.

It is time for marketers to engage with consumers and effectively meet their expectations. The question remains: when it comes to interactive marketing, who is really in control?

For years Apple has been seen as hip, cool, and friendly, but has that happy reputation begun to sour?  In recent months Apple, had cops raid the house of a blogger who wrote about the unreleased iPhone he got his hands on, made Ellen DeGeneres apologize on national television for dissing the iPhone, taken what seems to be a pretty personal jab at Adobe and their Flash brand (Apple says the move is purely business), and banned an app created by Pulitzer Prize winner Mark Fiore because it “contains content that ridicules public figures…”.  This once friendly tech-giant seems to be turning in to a grumpy version of its former self.

On top of that, a battle has been brewing between Apple and Google, two industry giants with rival technologies, for the top spot in the future of mobile phones.  Since its release in 2007, the iPhone has changed the way the world interacts with their phones, but Google’s Android devices are poised to give Apple a run for their money.  Why?  It’s simple – Android phones have something iPhones do not – more freedom.  Freedom to choose your mobile carrier; Android phones are widely available on multiple carriers, while iPhones are exclusively on AT&T (at least for the time being).  Freedom to design what and how you want to; Android phones are considered to be open source (app developers can create what they want, how they want) and iPhones are not (app developers have to play by Apple’s rules).

Another big difference is Androids are in the works with Adobe to become Flash enabled, while iPhones are not; iPhones support HTML5, the newest version of HTML.  HTML5 allows audio and video to be handled by the browsers, meaning plug-ins (like Adobe’s Flash) are no longer required.  So why the battle between Flash and HTML5 – and why does it matter if Apple uses HTML5?  The problem is that most of the Web is currently using Flash.  The change to HTML5 will force sites to redo their coding from Flash to HTML5, a long and costly process.  In the meantime, iPod, iPhone, and iPad users will not be able to view Flash content on their devices, limiting the sites they can fully surf.

So what is a marketer to do to ensure that their ads won’t get lost in the battle?  The safest bet is not to put all your eggs in one basket – banking on one technology or device can lead to disaster if customer sentiment suddenly changes or there is a glitch in technology that sends users running straight for the next-best-thing.  While it is important to adapt to changes in technology it is also important to be realistic and understand that changes don’t always occur over night.  Do what is right for your company and your audience; don’t get caught up in any back-and-forth between feuding corporations.  Keep your focus on your customer and you will come out on the other side of this tech war unscathed.

1. We start caring more about our existing customers. Nothing like a recession to make us appreciate the customers we already have – what a shame that it takes this to make us realize that our greatest asset is often the most ignored from a marketing standpoint.

2. We are forced to get more strategic. When asked to do more with less, most marketers prioritize differently. The things that are strategic and measurable are harder to cut than those that are not.

3. We can put our focus on growing market share by more carefully targeting the business that we are best suited to handle or where our best opportunities are. This means we focus on the business that we should have – not the just business that we wish we had or worse yet – any business out there.

4. We lose the dead weight – lets face it, just about every company can lean-up from a staff perspective. When the belt tightens companies often make cuts they should have made already.

5. We place more emphasis on marketing measurement – this is perhaps the most important point on this list. This recession is happening at a time when online marketing is coming of age. The opportunities to build highly targeted programs that are totally measurable are staring us right in the face. This is a game changing strategy that some will find because of this recession.

The recession will pass, that is for sure. The question is who will be stronger and who will be weaker when it is over?

Scott LoSasso is President of LoSasso Advertising Inc., a Chicago based interactive agency specializing in content marketing strategies and customer acquisition for leading B2B and consumer brands. (See more posts by Scott)