Birkin on Digital Experience
Michael Birkin, former vice chairman of Omnicom Group and Omnicom Asia-Pacific CEO, recently took a 70% position in RPMC, a leader in events and entertainment marketing. He had some interesting perspective on why he made the investment and why having a digital strategy should be pervasive throughout the organization and not seen as separate from your other communication channels.
From the MediaPost article: “Michael Birkin believes it’s more about building brands like the Olympics and World Cup with a variety of tools. Every campaign should have a digital component, but not digital for the sake of being digital, he says.”
“You can’t play the World Cup or run 100 meters on the computer,” Birkin says. “We have to make sure we understand the way the digital world can impact our support of brands in live events, such as Olympics, World Cup and Formula One.”
Birkin believes agencies get it wrong by seeing digital as an end in and of itself. The concept he has always struggled with, and continues to struggle with, is when companies try to support digital campaigns for the sake of being digital.
“It’s a bit like saying you go to the Sistine Chapel because Michelangelo was a mathematician,” he says. “The fact that he was a mathematician and could use that perspective meant that he created a better product. The digital world is no different. It’s a question of harnessing what it can do, rather than looking at it as being a digital product. It’s almost an oxymoron.”
