The Digital Revolution Is Here: Alaska's PR community talks digital, social marketing.

AuthorBarbour, Tracy
PositionPROFESSIONAL SERVICES

Last summer, Thompson & Co. Public Relations launched a monthly Twitter chat to promote Alaska's Tourism Marketing Program. The PR agency incorporated local travel writers, editors, and other influencers to help amplify tourism-related messages during the chats. The messages focused on fun topics and intriguing questions such as "What do I pack when I come to Alaska?" and "What are the top twelve icons to see when you're here?" The campaign adopted a simplistic yet effective approach to leveraging Twitter. "It's using a well-known platform and putting an Alaska twist on it," says Jennifer Thompson, president and CEO of Thompson & Co. "It wasn't super expensive--but it had a really wide reach."

The successful Twitter campaign illustrates one of the key PR and marketing trends playing out in Alaska--digital. PR and marketing practitioners are increasingly using digital media to help clients connect with their target audience. A number of other trends are also at work, and agencies are adjusting their approach to carry out successful campaigns throughout the state.

Digital Driving Current Trends

The use of digital media represents a major trend in Alaska, according to Alexa Dobson, president of the American Marketing Association (AMA) Alaska Chapter. There's a greater awareness of the importance of digital and technology on the side of clients and marketers, says Dobson, who is also a digital marketing specialist at Yuit Communications, an Anchorage-based strategic communications and software development firm. "We're definitely hearing a lot more about the digital component of ad campaigns from clients," says Dobson. "And digital is making up a larger portion of the campaigns we put together."

However, the adoption of digital is occurring at a slower rate in Alaska than the rest of the United States. What's transpiring now in Alaska is what was happening in the Lower 48 five years ago, Dobson says. "I think we're consistently on a few years' delay, but we're definitely moving in the same direction," she says. "I've always believed that this is an advantage if anything. In a sense, we have 'future vision' because we know what's going on in the Lower 48, and we can scale to that."

Marketers can also capitalize on this digital "lag time" to invest in their education, attend conferences, and meet with other agencies in the Lower 48. AMA Alaska strives to facilitate the education process for its members. "With AMA, we make an effort to bring up several out-of-state speakers every year so people who can't travel can attend and get a sense of what's going on with marketing," Dobson says.

Digital marketing is also impacting the way Alaska's marketers produce content by making them more strategic and purposeful. It's much more important to provide digital content that is relevant, adds value, and encourages engagement, according to Laurie Fagnani, president of MSI Communications, a full-service, Anchorage-based advertising agency. "Otherwise, people will tune you out," she says. "Consumers are delivered endless amounts of ads online across many devices and platforms, making their attention a scarce resource. You only have a few seconds to catch their attention--don't waste it."

Another marketing trend that's happening in Alaska is programmatic, digital-ad buys. MSI uses this type of advertising to give clients a targeted, scientific, and cost-efficient experience as well as an effective way to connect with audiences online. "It allows you to pinpoint your target market across channels based on their online habits, shopping trends, and viewing history," Fagnani explains.

MSI also capitalizes on Connected TV (CTV) for serving targeted video ads to viewers who stream media on Internet-connected televisions, computers, and other devices. This enables the agency to penetrate major networks like ESPN, CNN, and Fox when users are viewing content on devices such as Chromecast, Roku, and Apple TV, reaching a younger demographic of "cord cutters."...

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