Alex Vişa
Managing PartnerAbout DFB
Over the past few years the evolution of digital medium has accelerated. In particular, internet services, websites and social networks became part of our daily lives and inherently of our consumption habits. It all happened so fast that brands, clients and communication agencies are making efforts to keep up with the multitude of digital channels and tools available. With more and more consumers online, browsing on search engines, using social communities or accessing applications, digital has without a doubt become the new found land for advertisers. But before plunging directly into a digital ad campaign or a viral buzz, marketers should first consider one thing: this new found land comes with its own communication rules, many of them different from what we’ve been accustomed to.
So, before going digital, we must all understand what digital means, how it works and how it can help reach our customers.
This is the main reason why we created and published the Digital Fact Book. Its purpose is to help you, advertisers, digital agencies, media companies, and internet enthusiasts to have an understanding of the digital universe in Romania: where we stand now, how we can use it and how to prepare for the future.
To make understanding of the the digital environment easier, and correctly evaluate its resources and limitations we looked first at the digital consumption and its demographics. Then we moved further by analyzing the marketing budgets channeled towards digital in 2010; based on historical track down we made our budgets forecasts for 2011.
However, budgets are not everything. Based on objectives and target, one must chose from a wide array of digital channels and this task can sometimes be difficult, especially when we’re dealing with a continuously changing and growing market. So we went further. We looked into what differentiates digital communications from its traditional sisters (print, radio, TV, outdoor) and we identified the key factors that make digital communication a completely new territory, with different communication rules.
Moving further, we could not overlook the importance of technology. Technology and digital go hand in hand. The faster the rate of adoption of new technologies (Smartphones, tablets) grows, the higher the Internet penetration gets and the higher the number of consumers that can be reached through a variety of digital channels becomes.
Last but surely not least, we saved the final chapters to open a discussion about creativity and mindsets. Digitalization changed the concept of “creativity” for the mere reason that in the online space the public takes control over our initial creative ideas, shifts them, changes them, mixes them and many times the end result is difficult to foresee. The challenge for creative people consists in always being hands-on, flexible and quick to adapt, change and add on to an idea, so that what started of in the creative department to become a powerful user driven cause.