At SKM, our media and interactive departments work together to deliver targeted marketing that gets results. From the initial planning of a campaign through its execution, both departments work to find the right mix of traditional and interactive media to ensure that our clients get the best value to every dollar they spend. Our media and interactive experts also sit together, facilitating the convergence of strategy through every step of a project. Here’s a look at how media and interactive combine their efforts to execute a fully integrated campaign.

It all starts with planning; interactive and media put together a comprehensive media plan based on research and client input. Even if a client expresses a desire for either a strictly traditional or strictly interactive campaign, we strive to stay media neutral—especially during planning—to discover the best opportunities from a wide range of media. This channel-agnostic thinking benefits a campaign during execution as well because it makes it fast and easy to take advantage of (often small) windows of media opportunity and roll out creative into different formats on the fly. For illustration, a fully integrated media plan might incorporate two traditional elements, a TV spot and a billboard and two interactive elements, a paid search campaign and a banner ad on an online pub. All four of these elements could drive to one landing page, each element having their own path to that final destination (unique urls, specific keywords, QR codes, etc.) so that individual media performance is easy to measure and tweak during execution if necessary.

During execution, it’s all about monitoring every media property for best performance. Measuring response is a factor in measuring media performance, but it’s not the whole picture. If one particular media property generates high response, it seems obvious that an increased spend would mean even better response. However, this is not always the case as the media environment is always changing: Nielsen ratings, subscriptions, and web traffic often fluctuate independent of response. Still, both response and changes to the media environment can influence adjustments to demographic targeting across all media.

Ultimately, the channel-agnostic approach that comes from the synergy of our media and interactive departments serves our clients by helping them achieve the largest reach and highest response in all their marketing communications, building their brands and boosting their bottom lines.