Fine Print

Mitch Joel crunched some numbers from a survey and reported that (Joel bolded it, and that’s good enough for me): 65% of Chief Marketing Officers and marketing executives said that because of the troubled economy more of their money will go toward digital/interactive marketing than before.

More stats from the same survey (PDF):

- Social computing (including word of mouth, social networking sites, viral advertising, etc.) was the most popular emerging channel with 42% of marketing executives expressing interest in adding it to their marketing mix;
- Blogs were the second-most-popular emerging channel, with 35% of marketers expressing desire to use them and 19% already using them;
- Almost one-third of CMOs mentioned podcasting as an area of interest, with 31% interested in adding it to their marketing mix and 18% already having done so;
- 29% are interested in Mobile Devices (phones/PDAs) and 22% have added them to their marketing mix.

[Italics are mine.]

The declarations of “interest” and “desire” are great, to a point, but it would be preferable to see some “planned” or “commitment” sprinkled in there too. Makes me wary that the CMOs are willing to experiment a bit with social media, because their hand has been forced by the economic climate, rather than the fact they believe it’s a firm strategy.

If they do decide to move ahead, here’s a handy tool to see if their brand name has already been taken on all the major social media hangouts.

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada