Juice Digital, Making you Digitally Famous

In September 1976, I went to a  pub out in the sticks called the Lodestar in Ribchester, between Preston and Blackburn. I’d gone to see this unsigned band I’d read a piece about in the NME, the Sex Pistols. There were about twelve people there. I remember Steve Jones headbutting the door
because we all just stood opened -mouthed and didn’t react.

That was the beginning of my fascination with punk and its attitudes. You know what happened next. Over the next two years, punk became the biggest musical revolution since rock and roll and the world and his wife were fans (except Bill Grundy, but that’s another story).

I remember being miffed when all these new so-called experts appeared. Oi! I was here first. Who are these bloody Tony Parsons and Julie Birchill – what do they know? Where were they when Nick Kent and Charles Shaar Murray were changing the face of music journalism?

I see a similar reaction from some of the early-adopters in digital marketing. A mild resentment towards the new kids on the block (not the band, that is). And a snootiness to old ‘new media’. A fashionable sneer at Facebook here, a condescending shake of the head at the Skittles experiment there. Now that’s only natural human behaviour but, if unrecognised, it can lead to tunnel vision.

In my case, it was the dismissal of rubbish, non-punk David Bowie for the towering talent of Adam Ant. Quite. And there lies the danger. There’s a temptation to dismiss the effectiveness of all the ‘two legs bad’ traditional marketing and accept all the ‘four legs goodness’ of anything that can be tagged digital. Whereas an open mind and an integrated strategy could pay dividends.

I’m an evangelist for the effectiveness of social media marketing, digital PR, sentiment monitoring and all forms of ‘word-of-mouse’ marketing. But most of all I’m a fan of the BIG IDEA. A marketing idea that revolutionises a brand and simply works. Take the rebrand of UK TV Gold 2 to Dave. It’s seen its KPI, audience figures, rocket by this simple, but big, idea. Brilliant. Mind you, I’m not sure how many re-runs of Top Gear even my son can watch.

So we should continue developing and applying all our digital marketing techniques, remain mindful of the effectiveness of other approaches, and, remember, there’s no substitute for a great idea.

And be careful, the New Romantics followed Punk!

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