My industry pieces of the past have included too much personal exposition. I know this because reading the “published” end products, I can sense words that have met with editor’s affinity for the delete button. That said, I’ll just get to it. Here are some reasonably qualified and wholly unquantified predictions for the world of digital marketing. Some are obvious, as noted by the title.

Facebook will become the home of the marketing microsite du jour.
It wasn’t really that long ago, maybe four or five years, when a new brand campaign or initiative meant we in the digital world would create a stand-alone microsite to support it. Because the brand’s website wasn’t built to support the constant shifts in communication, or because the brand wanted to market a vanity url to shorten the journey to the message. Whatever the case, rather than revising the website in the name of a single campaign—the microsite was employed. At this point, we all know the flaws in that practice, and the results. Some folks visit, but without a tie back to the brand’s site, we developed fractured experiences; and in a lot of cases, we left a lot of that work out there hanging to wreak havoc on natural search results.

Note recent work for GAP, The Ritz Super Bowl effort, even Tide with its “Loads of Hope.” The “fishing” work doesn’t drive to a brand site anymore. They drive to brand experiences on Facebook. Visits to homepages on the brand websites above show that yes, ties do exists to campaign efforts as well, but, the information is relegated to a “promotions” tab and is often at least a click away from the homepage. Where we created custom microsites, we know create Facebook experiences.

If you’re building a consumer targeted brand microsite right now, you might want to think about why you’re not developing custom work for your brand’s Facebook page. Just sayin’

Banners are going to go the way of “traditional” advertising.
As a blanket statement, this one may be tough to swallow. But consider this: in the world of integrated marketing, the banner is often tied to the print, the TV, the outdoor… Traditional agencies are making the effort (once again) to bring the banner format back in-house. Driving this are our clients, who have history and solid comfort levels with traditional formats. Let’s face it, TV is sexier. In the integrated mindset, banners should match.

I didn’t say I agreed with this one. Banners should actually crack the door on a larger digital experience, which may offer something a bit different, (read: more) than a passive consumer message. If your brand’s digital experience offers value, a service unto itself (but is tied to a campaign), then your digital experience is something close a to a product. Banners should advertise that product. That’s tougher to do when you have the clashing agendas of matching luggage and increased consumer value through digital functionality. Harder still when banners are created in one place, and their pay-off is created somewhere else.

The Brand Agency Lead model that places a traditional agency at the lead of all others, including digital, often flies in the face of a model in which ideas lead. Not necessarily because the two are incompatible—they can be. But I digress, and this topic deserves its own separate piece

I hope I’m wrong about this one.

Everything is going to go faster.It could simply be that I’m a father of two approaching middle-age, it may have something to do with the expanding nature of the universe and science that I frankly don’t comprehend, but time has seemed to “speed up” in the last decade or so. Our 2.0’s hit faster now, and 3.0 and 4.0’s follow soon after. We see and hear all, from all over the world. A recent Virgin Mobile TV describes perfect relationship stalking tactics as enabled through a mobile device. We are people who crave instant gratification, and that means as marketers we must move faster, to catch our consumers, who are also faster.

Standard practices can only remain so for so long, they must shift. Proven tactics must evolve. As the Gen X mindset hits middle age and the millennials come of age, I can’t see any slowdown in sight.

Just remember, your right answer today, applies only to today. Just think about what happened to the microsite.

Gary Nelson, Executive Creative Director, Organic, Inc.