Digital specialist vs digital generalist

The growth of digital in Asia has been explosive in recent years. However, the marketing and advertising industry's use of digital media falls far short of this trend. In Hong Kong, the interactive media shared only a paltry 3% of the total media spend from January to May, 2007 while digital consumption has grown exponentially. Hong Kong people are spending a staggering 122 minutes of their lives on digital each day, according to Synovate Media Atlas survey from Apr 2006 to Mar 2007. This huge disproportion needs to be redressed if we are going to catch up with other regions such as Europe and the U.S where the media spend and investment in digital is far greater.

In the last 3 years, even though some marketing and advertising practitioners are paying more attention to digital development, they have been overly relying on digital pioneers to do the work. The harsh reality is that in Asia, we have never produced enough digital pioneers, which is significantly delaying and holding back the marketing and advertising digitalization progress. In Hong Kong, digital spending focuses on 3 categories: education/training, banking/investment services and computers/internet services. They share almost half of the total digital spending. All other categories invest very little in digital, which could have serious repercussion for us in the future.

Obviously this is a chicken and egg issue. While marketing and advertising practitioners have a lower level of digital knowledge and experience, they tend to allocate a lower digital budget or in many instances, nothing at all! Hence, we see far less success in main stream categories to support the use of digital advertising. The problem is further exacerbated by the fact that eCommerce isn't popular because of the convenience of shopping in Hong Kong. Exceptions to the rule are in banking and investment services, online bookings for hotel and traveling. Digital advertising is less accountable than it is in the US and in Europe where it is taken far more seriously.

Another controversial issue is the low remuneration scheme for digital advertising. While we know the cost of planning and implementing digital advertising is high, advertising agencies cannot recover their costs even when charging the full 15% commission. A vast majority of marketers still want to pay the single digit commission rate as of the conventional media while the total budget for digital is just one-twentieth of this. So how can an agency at best sustain or even provide good digital services in this difficult scenario?

When digital development took off about eight to ten years ago, the industry classified digital as the unconventional offline media and most of the leading "conventional" advertising and media agencies selected not to step into this offline territory. In addition to the bubble burst in 2000, the industry ceased to grow this area. And, until the middle of last year there had been no industrial training whatsoever, until Hong Kong 4As organized the first digital training session. However, the current need of digital advertising know-how far exceeds the current supply of digital talents. Thus, we are unequivocally seriously lacking in digital skills across all fields.

In order to really grow the digital business, I believe the tipping point within the industry should move from the early adapters to the mass adapters. So that everyone doesn't just talk about the fantasy of digital world but actually implement digital marcom plans by themselves.

Industrial training is extremely important if we are to grow and take the digital market to the next level. Training has to go way beyond planning and buying practitioners, and creative people to marketers at all levels. We must ensure that marcoms people understand digital from concept stage right through to implementation. This is absolutely crucial if we are to move forward. There should be collaboration between 3 bodies: the Advertisers Association, Advertising Agency Association and key digital vendors. Moreover, training should be very practical with real life cases to avoid just teaching them conceptual ideas, which would amount to very little.

This collaboration should also help to set up local digital marcom standards with international references since we are severely lacking in digital research and tools here. Last but not least, we should provide remuneration for digital work so this area does not remain underinvested in by all parties concerned.

Whether we like it or not, Digital media is part of our daily life now. To the consumers, there is no differentiation between conventional and new media, so same rule should apply to all our communication plans. Therefore, it is of paramount importance that we train all marketing and advertising practitioners to equip them with adequate digital skills as digital generalists. Of course, the market needs another group of digital specialists, who will deal with and implement more sophisticated digital communication planning.

Stewart Li

Managing Director

Carat Hong Kong