Inline Advertising

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There is a crack between the online and offline ad agencies and million of dollars are slipping through. Though the crack is getting smaller every day as mid-size shops create competencies in both areas and the holding companies try to align silo shops, bringing them into the same room, the rift exists.

 

While with a marketing boutique not long ago I tried to get the partners to embrace the view of one approach to online and offline marketing. I called it “inline,” where all communications: PR, promotion, advertising, direct and web are the result of one brief, one brand plan, one idea. I hadn’t heard it before, it sounded differentiated and unique. 

 

One comment I heard at out little shop was that “inline” sounded archaic. Inline, I was told, suggested newspaper column inch imagery. Dooh. In Ad Age this week, Philip H. Geier Jr. ex- chairman of IPG, wrote this about marketing in a recession “Integrate your campaigns to connect with consumers on TV, online, in print and OOH. Build campaigns around one, big, central idea – and push the same message through all marketing “pipes.” Inline it is.