The Razorfish Digital Outlook for 2009 came out last week and as always, it’s a great (but long) read.  Given the report measures over 175 pages from start to finish, I wanted to take a couple of days and really read through it all the way.  While others have captured the broad themes of the report, I wanted to focus on some of the specific commentary that really stood out to me.  This included:

• At every industry conference you’ll hear someone make a compelling case that the future of creating and sustaining brands is in building experiences, not just in producing great advertising…For a growing number of brands, the digital experience is becoming as important as the actual physical product. [pg 8]
• With this expanded palette, we can build experiences that become an integral part of the brand. Experiences that have the ability to add value, create new categories, surprise, delight, serve, simplify, entertain and tell a story in an entirely new, richer way than ever before possible. [pg 8]
• “The year of mobile” has come and gone withbthe advent of the iPhone. Mobile is still an area of tremendous growth but the idea that it will have a “break-out year” has passed… The question brands need to ask themselves now as it relates to mobile is: how can they add value to their customers’ lives in this environment?… provide the convenience of relevant information at your fingertips when and where you want it. [pg 13]
• “Portable” and “beyond-the-browser”opportunities will create new touchpoints for brands and content owners  But Apple’s iPod changed all that, launching a portable media revolution that continues to churn today.  Advances in smartphones and entertainment devices have delivered endless on-the-go options for music, video, social networking, news and email. Portable media has also come to mean that content unhinged itself from legacy devices; music is free from the turntable, primetime broadcast is no longer limited to the TV, and so on. The very things that define a media platform have become rather blurry.
• Top-down branding will experience growing impotence. Most brand managers are used to defining their brands in relative isolation of the marketplace — or they do extensive customer research and see it as their jobs alone to define the brand (or the manifestation of the brand) in different forms. That’s going to change as consumers define the brands by the sheer volume of their opinions; they’ll be shaping the brands more than the brands will be shaping them.  As a result, in order for them to be remembered, brands will be forced to deliver much stronger value propositions to their customers. Cute advertising won’t be enough as the focus shifts to
  value exchanges. If you’re a brand manager, you can either fight this or treat it as an opportunity to take your career in a different direction. [pg 28]
• Not just friends, but friendsters, will start to matter. There have been a lot of debates about whether a person’s “real” friends matter in a social graph — call it the tension between friends and friendsters. In 2009, we’re going to realize that loose ties (like your friendsters on Facebook) are as valuable as your strong ties (close friends)
  because they’re the ones that bring new ideas into your world and share your opinions with people who are further removed from you. [pg 29]
• Marketers will organize around Social Influence Marketing™. In today’s organization, SIM is everyone’s stepchild. It is part public relations, part direct response, part brand marketing, part customer intelligence and part sales support, just to name a few categories. That will change in 2009 as marketing organizations discover the benefits in approaching it holistically.  Budgets will be put behind SIM and it will be treated as the third dimension of marketing with its own team, objectives and initiatives. This will also force corporations to rethink how they are organized, including agencies. Niche social media consulting firms will find it harder to compete as SIM goes mainstream. [pg 30]
• The bottom line: Consumers have demonstrated a desire to access Web-like data anytime and anywhere.  Some consumers are seeking snack-sized entertainment, and some consumers want utility, like price comparisons. Marketers must assess what consumers need from their brands while on the go and invest in building those applications. [pg 50]
• Digital is creating a new generation of shoppers who expect stores to provide them with answers to their continually-evolving questions, to know them better over time and adapt to the way they shop. Consumers expect no distinction between online and brick-and-mortar shopping — they simply want the same features, products, access and service no matter where or when they decide to shop. [pg 90]
• These challenges make it more important for content producers to find ways to monetize their content across multiple screens and across an infinitely-fragmented video landscape. [pg 148]
• The Web Gets a Pulse.  The “real time” nature of the Web is taking on a new dimension: this year, we will close that gap between archived information and what’s going on right now. Not only is the Web becoming more social — it is becoming instantly reactive. From twittering and yammering to live online social events to intelligent, location-aware mobile connectivity, the Web is beginning to take on a pulse — or, a life — of its own. Social Web users, whether they are connected teens or digital moms, are increasingly unable to draw boundaries where their physical and virtual worlds divide, or to distinguish between their known and anonymous peer groups.
• Fragmentation Moves Beyond Media.  It is no surprise that audience fragmentation continues to challenge marketers, but in 2009, it is increasingly challenging to content owners. Media content was once relegated to a platform with an established, advertising-supported business model: TV, print, online, mobile or out of home. But as consumer attention splinters, so, too, will the content, the platform and the media revenue model.

BTW – Have you ever looked at the website for Razorfish?  I love the pixelated “webcams” they do for each office.  Very cool design that adds a human element to the site.

Tags: brand management, digital marketing, Presentation & Stats, Razorfish, Social Media, Web 2.0

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