Red alert, full tilt, hyper speed innovation required. “Beam me up Scotty I need a reprieve from the Digital Revolution”.

Rapidly the world of communication is changing and its changing our world at a break neck speed. It used to be we would get our news from the daily paper and the evening news on television – not anymore. The computer is so pervasive in our lives and hooked to the internet and to a global network of other computers; it facilitates a two-way exchange and entertainment that is unmatched in any traditional media. There is a new relationship that has been forged between those producing the media and those consuming the media but no one has quite figured out how to get along yet.

This is a highly interactive super media world we find ourselves in. And, this new media wants to be fluid and non linear so the old marketing models just don’t cut it. Its like trying to fit a round peg into a square hole. Content is shared, created and consumed by the consumer who is shaping this new world. It is a world where we are hyper-linked. No text is a closed system as its always touching another document. Any process is variable and modular (Wikipedia is a great example). It is also a world where advertising is avoided by the consumer and permission-based marketing is the law. Consumers decide what to read, watch or play as they insist on being in control.

So if you are finding that your television, newspaper, radio and yes, even your yellow pages, are not delivering the leads and ROI they used to then here are some tips on how you can join the digital age and promote your brand in this challenging climate.

Adoption is the first step. There is no turning back. The Digital Revolution is very real.

1. Define your target customer (in great detail). If you have several customer groups then segment them if necessary.

2. Find out where they hang and visit their online communities. Be friendly, transparent and sharing.

3. Invite them to your community and attract them to interact with your brand. To do this you need to put yourself into their mindset and think beyond the box.

4. And finally be consistent and don’t give up

There was this cool running shoe place where you could paint and design your own shoes online and they would be shipped to you. In two to three years the business grew to 4 million in sales. Word of mouth advertising or social marketing as it is referred to today has always been #1 in terms of delivering cost-effective leads to a business.

In 1965 Intel founder Gordon E. Moore predicted that computer circuit size would double every two years – exponential growth that is holding true today. That growth has contributed to the explosion of miraculous computer-enabled breakthroughs like global positioning, digital imaging, the human genome project, cell phone systems, powerful laptop computers, the IPhone, and the Internet.

Did you know it took radio 38 years to reach 50 million people, television 13 years, the Internet 4 years, the IPod 3 years, and Facebook 2 years? And, with remarkable speed we just hit another global landmark.

On January 23, 2009 the Internet, just over 6,000 days old, had its BIG birthday announcing 1 billion global visitors into its foray.

According to Comscore, a leader in digital measurement, 41% of the share of users are from the Asia-Pacific region, 28% from Europe, 18% from North America, 7% Latin-America and 5% from the Middle East.

By country, China leads with 18% of visitors with the United States close behind at 16%. Canada in comparison was ranked 11th at 2.2% of global usage or 22,000,000 visitors. (2 out 3 people in Canada use the Internet – not bad).

Google was the most popular site with 778 million visitors, Microsoft had 648 million and Yahoo had 562 million visitors. The most popular social networking site was Facebook having grown by 127% over last years survey. They boast 222 million visitors.

Now these numbers are especially interesting when you consider that they do not include visitors accessing the Internet from their mobile phones or PDAs. According to the newly released Ipsos Reid research paper “The Face of the Web”, Internet access via mobile is actually outpacing wireless access from a PC. They indicate 28% of mobile owners are currently accessing the web. If you consider that half the world owns a cell phone (3.3 billion) this means that there are potentially 820 million additional visitors accessing the Internet via mobile.

Do you hear the “ring” around the world?

Is radio experiencing its digital revolution? Cheaper radio chips and the increasing penetration of wireless networks has given rise to a new technology said to be a disrupter of satellite and AM/FM radio.

The WiFi Radio. Selling between $200 – $400 dollars these battery powered internet radios can access the over 10,000 internet radio stations freely and they can be combined with existing devices like smartphones, MP3 players, and connect to a home computer linked to home stereo system. They come in various shapes and shine and the techology has even made its way into some car stereo systems.

The idea of listening to radio over the internet isn’t new. It has been around pretty much since the early 90′s. As a late night insomniac I have for many years listened to the after midnight “Coast to Coast” show and to Art Bell interviewing interesting scientists, psychics, and other odd people via streaming audio, podcast, MP3 download or through live broadcast. I used to download some radio songs I liked but found many stations hard to find after the copyright regulators cracked down. Apparently radio broadcasters are not allowed to broadcast the same songs over the internet as they are on their broadcast radio stations. I believe this stunted radio’s online growth and its opportunity to explore its new media opportunities. But things are now changing for radio.

There was an interesting research study done by a UK research firm RAJAR. They tracked WiFi radio listeners during a period of May through October 2008. They found most internet radio listeners listen at home (89%), 1 in 5 listen at work (21%), and 6% indicate listen elsewhere. In their latest media study Deloitte (Dec 2008) indicates that in their opinion WiFi radio is positioned to take off because of improved broadband connections and the fact that two-thirds of households are subscribers to high speed.

Radio broadcasters may now have a very real opportunity to turn the tide on their fortunes. Radio revenue was down by 12% in the 3rd quarter of 2008. Online revenue grew by 5% over 2007. According to the US Radio Bureau online currently represents only 9% of total radio income.

The internet offers the radio industry an opportunity to extend its reach and strengthen relationships with current listeners while at the same time build new listener relationships. At its core radio programming is sponsored audio content and entertainment that can be shared over multi-platforms. Enter a contest through SMS and announce the winners through a sponsored web-based video. Interesting? Radio has always been a media that engages and as such is strategically positioned to finally shed the “old media” label for the more attractive “new media” one.

I believe the “signal” is clear, radio has a “new media” face.

In the days of the cavemen (Web 1.0), we measured page views, hits and click thru rates. Clickstream analysis and browser tags followed this. There was great debate in the mid 90′s over which method provided a better ROI tool for measurement – browser tagging winning out. In 1999 the web analysis market preported to be around 150 million was growing by 200%. By 2000 it reached 400 million. The leading companies to emerge were Web Trends, Accrue and an interesting company Net Genesis. They were part of a prolific group of 60 + web analytic vendors.

Marketing Buzz today now centres around Coremetrics, Omniture, Web Trends and Webside story. What was once a technolgy focused market has now matured to becoming a process driven market. Businesses are interested in how web analytics can foster greater online presence in an integrated way that considers search, categorization, personalization, and multi-channel analysis.

As we move more into the exciting future of universal search advertisers will look to web analytics to measure interaction, creative, reach, recency and conversion. Recognizing the whole experience and measuring all the touch points, including how offline media contribute at various stages along the conversion funnel, will become increasingly more important in effectively measuring ROI.

Kristen Nomura, Search and Analytics Marketing Manager at Google, indicates that advertisers need to sometimes look beyond just conversion. They need to look at all the things they are doing higher and lower in the conversion funnel, then take a leap to conversion.

While she has a point success will also be determined by establishing clear KPIs.

The end of the holidays and “back to school” is music to the ears of many. I mean I love my kids but tag with the two yellow Labrador dogs in the living room leaping from chair to couch, and webkinz (these funny little stuffed animals) nesting in your shoes…well in these desperate moments the Japanese Robot babysitter PaPeRo sounds enticing.

According to the International Federation of Robotics, there were 610,000 robots in service worldwide in 2004. Today there are 6.5 million with this figure expected to reach 18 million by 2011.

PaPeRo (Partner-type Personal Robot) is a rather interesting Robot developed by NEC in Japan. In tests children have found it friendly and have had no trouble making friends with it. PaPeRo comes with a camera, face-recognition software, microphones and wireless communication via a mobile phone. Imagine going out for dinner and leaving your children with a Robot babysitter you monitor from your cell phone?

The thought is a little scary. I don’t know about your children but I would fear my son with his outrageous creative mind would find a way to cross and reconnect a few Robot wires. In no time the PaPeRo would be chasing the Labradors and repeating there is no bedtime. The image of a Robot babysitter rewired by my 6 year hoodlum makes the idea of re-renting the movie “Home Alone” sound rather lame.

However, there is a lot more to Robots than this application. The fact is that Robots have a tremendous untapped ability not only in our daily lives but in the marketing of products and services. They can “stop traffic” and present important commercial messages and are an asset at store openings, or special events. They can sing, perform a show, follow people (hey is there someone you are pissed at?), shoot out prizes or coupons, spray perfume, and interact with people. With the advances in Robotics this long-tail marketing niche provides a new dimension in engagement marketing.