just slightly behind the curve

Today's Globe contained a feature by their marketing reporter, Simon Houpt, about how there's no longer a difference between traditional awareness advertising and digital. He uses as proof the recently wrapped up Cannes show and the fact that the Old Spice spot won the film category, but in fact gained real traction through Youtube. The world is digital, and digital is the world.

And I suppose that's true, but it's been such an obvious conclusion for so long that we didn't really need to hear it again.

The interesting stuff is what he lightly skips over at the end. Unlike the amusing but very traditional Old Spice spot, the Nike Chalkbot and Twelpforce campaigns were all about brands engaging with consumers. Instead of passive viewing, they provide meaningful experiences. The Chalkbot allowed people to tweet in messages of support to Lance Armstrong during his comeback and have those messages painted onto the route of the Tour de France; Twelpforce had Best Buy employees competing against each other to answer more consumer questions on Twitter. Both great ideas, but they're more than that.

They're the new paradigm of all advertising – not just digital. Supplying passive spots or ads that merely push messages at people allows them to turn off (think of the last ten years of hand-wringing about the declining efficacy of TV spots) and five seconds later they may remember the creative if it's "great" but have no idea what company the ad's for.

So, sorry Simon, it's not that digital media has trumped traditional media, or it's on par with it, or whatever. The news is that the challenge of marketing is now about creating experiences and persuading people to enter in to those experiences. Giving people something of value, something helpful like Twelpforce, or something meaningful like the Chalkbot, is a far more powerful way of communicating with consumers, especially in a world where people are overloaded with messages. Sure, digital is the main vehicle for delivering those engaging experiences, but it's not the only one.

And it's a far bigger, more complicated and more rewarding task than creating a minute or two of funny video.

Not that the Old Spice spot isn't funny; it's just that, despite all the CGI, it's old.