Are you a digital adventurer?
Our new website went live last week and one of the lines on BWP Enthuse’s page challenges organisations to “Join us on a digital adventure!”. It got me thinking: are companies really ready to be truly adventurous with digital, and how does this compare with the people’s personal digital exploration?
As with many questions like this, the answer is “it depends”. It depends on who is involved in the decision making process. It depends on the organisation’s industry/sector/vertical. It depends on current technological advances and possibilities. But most of all, it depends on budgets.
Over the last five years we’ve seen examples of those who continually push the boundaries and come up with concepts that you could really class as adventurous, but I would suggest that they are usually organisations who have made their money in a core area and are “playing” in another small area. Google is the obvious example, but for good reason: just think how ground-breaking Google Maps (or rather, Google Earth, as it was born) was, and now it’s become part of many people’s everyday life. Google could only be adventurous on this scale because their business was underpinned by their search division — it was a long time before paying adverts made their way onto Maps and therefore started paying for it directly.
Having said this, those responsible for campaigns are becoming ever more creative with their budgets, often ring-fencing a small amount for forays out of their comfort zone. I feel much of this is being driven by the new generation coming into positions of authority and influence in organisations. Generation-Y have grown up in a world where the digital frontier is moving at quite a pace. They are generally digitally adventurous in their personal lives, often signing up for new social networks and services before they are deemed tried and tested by the wider online community. They want to make sure that their company is also adventurous with digital, but there’s often large hurdles to jump over in order to catch the competition. It brings to mind pictures of a high speed car chase that starts with a big gap: in order to catch the villains, the law have to go significantly faster than their quarry.
The industry argument is an interesting one; some companies claim to be in an industry that shouldn’t and doesn’t need to be adventurous with digital. My take on this is that there always has to be a pioneer in each industry, otherwise the whole industry will be at a standstill. Surely there must be other areas that have been pushed forwards by being adventurous, why not with digital?
All of this draws me to the conclusion that the term “adventure” is always relative to the person or organisation that it’s being used by. I, as an outdoorsy type, would think that climbing a mountain I’ve yet to conquer was adventurous, whereas some may find going down the flume at the local swimming pool a real adventure: we’re both right. Relating this to organisations, sometimes it’s a challenge to get a company to commission their first video to as part of their content marketing strategy, others may have a whole video library already and we view it as our job to challenge them to be creative with it and find new ways to engage their audience with it.
The key word in all of this is “challenge” — challenge and adventure are best buddies and they explore new territories together. My challenge to you: have a little more digital adventure in your life, both personally and professionally.
