Resn's Andy Wil­li­ams is the only New Zea­l­and mem­ber of SoDA (Soci­ety of Digital Agen­cies) and is a con­trib­utor to that institute's latest report – the Digital Mar­ket­ing Out­look 2011, released today. That report – free to good homes – can be down­loaded here.

The Digital Mar­ket­ing Out­look 2011 com­prises a sur­vey of 600-plus mar­keters, agen­cies and tech­no­lo­gists; art­icles and case stud­ies from lead­ing agen­cies around the world; and com­ment­ary from the DMO Advis­ory Board of senior mar­keters, as well as many other prom­in­ent con­trib­ut­ors. The sur­vey was con­duc­ted and ana­lysed by Answer­Lab, a third-party research firm.

Some brief notes dis­tilled from the 200-page doc­u­ment indic­ate that accord­ing to those sur­veyed, 69 per cent plan to invest their resources in social net­works and applic­a­tions. 43 per cent of mar­keters plan to decrease their invest­ment in paid tra­di­tional media and 61 per cent plan to increase their invest­ment in unpaid/earned media. In addi­tion, the hir­ing of social media mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sion­als tops the list of hir­ing pri­or­it­ies for mar­keters in 2011.

Ann Lewnes, DMO Advis­ory Board Mem­ber and Senior Vice Pres­id­ent of Global Mar­ket­ing for Adobe Sys­tems, says in a syn­op­sis of the find­ings that social net­work­ing is vital to a company’s suc­cess in the digital age.

“We act­ively cul­tiv­ate and par­ti­cip­ate in the pas­sion­ate social com­munit­ies which have developed around our products and brands,” says Lewnes. “A ded­ic­ated social media team along­side indi­vidual Adobe employ­ees – from C-level exec­ut­ives to employ­ees in the field – con­trib­ute to our social com­munit­ies with fresh con­tent and news on a reg­u­lar basis.”

“We have learned that gen­er­at­ing earned media comes from the right com­bin­a­tion of stra­tegic clar­ity, con­sist­ency of brand story and highly dis­rupt­ive cre­at­ive. But if you can only have one, it’s always about the cre­at­ive,” says Vic­tor Mehren, DMO Advis­ory Board Mem­ber and Senior Mar­ket­ing Dir­ector, Wm Wrigley Jr. Company.

Resn's Andy Wil­li­ams calls the report a "must read" for any marketing/advertising pro­fes­sional. His opin­ion piece, titled "Not Your Brand, Theirs!", was pub­lished in the report. It fol­lows below:

Digital has given the mod­ern brand the oppor­tun­ity to cre­ate util­it­ies for con­sumers to own brands. Is doing this unpre­dict­able, dangerous…maybe? Might your brand need a little of that?

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