When it come to technologies role in strategic marketing communications, coding, databases and applications must all serve seamlessly to deliver your value proposition. Technology that has been well applied, never over-shadows the messages or information it is intended to deliver.
“Technology as a tool for communication.”
Technology is tool that helps us deliver a message, it is not the message itself.
We are currently working on a Request for Proposal or RFP for web design project and the specifications are filled with technology requirements for any number of different feature sets and functionality. Pages and pages of the specs are devoted to this subject.
Looking carefully over the RFP again, I confirmed that there was little or nothing emphasizing the value proposition or the integrity of the medium to deliver the “Brand Value.” Am I missing something here?
It wasn’t that long ago clients we screaming for Flash based web sites. It was not for reasons that many of them could not articulate. It was the latest technology in 1993. It was the flavor of the month.
Web site designs strangely began to resemble games complete with button noises and animated sprites. It wasn’t that this platform delivered the messages any better, made for better design or even delivered a better user experience. It was new.
In fact, Flash was bandwidth heavy, difficult to program, required plugins to run and made all content invisible to search engines. Oh yea, that company Apple, you know the ones with IPads and IPhones, won’t run these plugins….hmmmm. So the new latest technology, mobile computing is the new technological flavor of the month? Interesting!
Sorry, gotta go and make sure we are keeping up with the latest and the greatest technology trends so we can incorporate them in our next project.
I guess the point is that that part of marketing that never changes is understanding and articulating your value proposition, identifying the most profitable, ideal client profile and only then, figure out the best way to communicate that message to that audience. Don’t let the medium be the message.