Up Next: A Post-Digital World

Digital is so yesterday.



It will soon be 20 years since the advent of commercially available digital services such as America Online, multimedia, mobile phones and widespread use of personal computers.

The American household went digital long before marketers embraced technology and the Internet. Now, as companies struggle to get their "digital strategies" in order, they will be surprised to discover consumers have moved on to the "post-digital" age.

In this time, digital tools and services are blended with analog ways of life. In other words, consumers want the real and the virtual to co-mingle in a seamless way. Marketing success in this age will mean companies must combine and leverage the full spectrum of marketing levers online and off. Communities should exist online--and be enabled in the real world.

Today, companies such as Apple and Best Buy are great examples of marketing in a post-digital way. Apple's success combines the simplicity, elegance and innovation of its "I-suite" of products and services with the experiential "wow" of the Apple Store, where visitors are physically enveloped by the brand, can try Apple products and interact with the denizens of its "genius bar." This symbiosis between the real and the virtual, including making an appointment online to get customer support at the local store, is a significant reason for Apple's success.

Dell learned this the hard way. Dell's direct model failed to allow consumers to see and touch the laptops they would be buying or have a place to service their components. Dell is changing this, but they were so taken by their logistics-driven virtual model they forgot that people crave real connections.

Until recently, luxury marketers also took an analog and a digital approach to business. Even as consumers used technology and the Internet to learn about products before they visited stores to buy them, luxury companies stayed exclusively in the real world too long, relying on fashion shows, traditional advertising and brick-and-mortar stores.

Their online forays were tentative and limited. Some companies didn't allow people to buy their products online. Only when Gilt Group and Prêt a Porter started selling hundreds of millions of dollars of products online did it become clear to these traditional marketers that the luxury customer is a post-digital consumer and will be influenced by and purchase across real and virtual worlds.

Today, more fashion houses are rapidly embracing the post-digital world by enhancing and integrating their digital presence with their tried-and-true ways of creating and distributing desire. Burberry celebrates its iconic trench coat on Facebook in a compelling way.

If you are a marketer working on a "digital" strategy or, even worse, a "social media" or "Facebook" strategy, please take a deep breath. Remember that you are a smart person who is guided by consumer behavior and economic metrics. You shouldn't just tick off a digital to-do list. Make sure your partners and experts think beyond narrow specialties when creating ideas and platforms for your brands.

Think post-digital.



Rishad Tobaccowala is the CEO of Denuo, a Publicis Groupe unit dedicated to helping clients, such as Hewlett-Packard, AstraZeneca and General Mills, leverage the changing marketing landscape through new forms of creativity and innovative thinking. Find out more at Denuology.com.