On the web things have an unusual habit of sticking around, and while extending the duration of a campaign may seem like good news when media budgets are tight, that only works if the messages were designed for the long term. Web content, blog posts, forums and the uncontrollable social media have a memory most marketers – and their brands – are unprepared for. Copy written ten years ago is still alive and well, and thanks to Google, discoverable in seconds when the right question is asked. It’s the politician’s nightmare, and now the marketer’s latest challenge.

The problem is that much marketing thinking is still campaign-centric; transient. Whether for a week, a month or a year, campaign-based approaches expose brands to risks if there isn’t a longer term strategy. In the digital networked society, marketing messages need to be designed as layers that build over time. Next season’s campaign should grow from this season’s, drawing strength from what the brand and its consumers said before.

The explosive rise of social media – forums, then personal home pages and blogs, then social networks like Facebook – now amplify the problem. These environments may build consumer connections, but many brands create content they never anticipate maintaining, or release messages consumers manipulate without preparing a response. The successes like Marmite on Facebook are still the exception rather than the norm, but they truly harness the environment and build real engagement with the brand.

There are strong implications for both brands and their agencies, and a clear need to think differently:

• Listen first
  Start with an audit of the messages already layered in the strata of the web, so the archaeology of communications from the brand and the consumer is clear
• Think long-term
  Look for campaign ideas that stretch over much longer periods
• Evaluate models
  Revisit the marketing model and question whether each channel simply echoes the same message, or if approaches like drive-to-web can help brands get more value from media by building affinity at each step in the customer journey
• Understand platforms
  Explore ‘platforms’ in marketing like Nike’s Run London that can transcend media and entrench engagement with consumers
• Build conversation
  Search for models where the brand creates space for consumers’ conversations, the way STA Travel achieved cut-through with the Off-Exploring blogging platform
• Harness the culture
  And write the content of your own brand websites with the culture of the digital networked society front of mind; accessible, forwardable, and for the long-term

Digital marketing can have a transformative effect on brands, but these new and changing environments bring risks and rewards in equal parts – one of the greatest of which is that today will last forever.

Danny Meadows-Klue is chief executive of www.DigitalTrainingAcademy.com, co-founded of the Internet Advertising Bureau in the UK and Europe and was the publisher of the UK’s first online newspaper www.Telegraph.co.uk

The social media charts: top 10 UK social networking sites

The rise of social networking creates exciting new possibilities for marketers, but remember, messages in social spaces are controlled by the consumer rather than the brand; and because today will last forever, what those consumers decide to write could still be readily accessible in ten years time.

Marmite on Facebook

Over 120,000 ‘fans’ and rising daily: a great example of simple connections in social spaces that will live beyond today’s campaign.

STA Travel become the backpackers journal

By harnessing the Off-Exploring blogging platform, STA creates a homepage for every traveller, and in doing so succeeded in the rarest of goals: creating a community. Their blogs have become a ‘must-have’ for backpackers who not only publish obsessively, but forward messages to their friends, all under the STA brand. A perfect example of a marketing platform that stands the test of time.