June - 2009 issue > Technology

By Arish Ali

The Cambrian Explosion in Digital Media Evolution

In the Darwinian theory of evolution, the Cambrian Explosion is the name given to the relatively rapid appearance of large number of species around 530 million years ago. In the last couple of years we seem to have witnessed a similar phenomenon in online digital media. A few years ago having an online presence primarily meant setting up a website that could be viewed on desktop web browsers. Today we are living in a digital world inhabited by iPhone, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, BlackBerry, Android, RSS, Google Gadget, YouTube to name just a few of a rapidly evolving array of social sites, widget platforms and mobile phones. Online marketing in today’s world requires the understanding and mastery of not just one technology and platform but the development of a whole arsenal of diverse technologies and skill sets. And even that is not enough – the pace of change in today’s world is so rapid that if you are merely doing things in “Internet Time” you have already been left behind.

For any company whose core expertise is not technology, it is virtually impossible to stay on top of what is happening in online media today. On the one hand, such a company can opt to grow in-house expertise in all these different areas which means spending a fortune and wasting a lot of time in hiring and grooming engineers with the right skill set and experience. On the other hand, the company can choose to work with a host of different vendors, each specializing in its own niche technology arena, which leads to the nightmare scenario of trying to manage and coordinate marketing campaigns across different teams while trying to keep costs in check. Both these choices are hard to justify in today’s economic reality of a recession, multiple layoffs and severely tightened purse-strings for new marketing initiatives.

Faced with the above choice, for many smaller companies the only sensible option right now is to wait out the downturn and simply go after a few low hanging fruits that do not require significant new investment or effort. Set up a Facebook page, start a Twitter channel or improve the usability of your website. However, if you are a bigger company, or if you have the luxury of having a budget for new online marketing initiatives, it is a fantastic time to reach out and connect with your consumers in an unprecedented manner by launching what can be called the “Next Generation Online Marketing Campaigns.”

Next Generation Digital Media Campaigns

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