"OUR OWN VIRTUAL BACKYARD?"

Online - The BIG Idea - November/December 1996
by Bayard Saunders

Cyber-NewsFlash:

Online and automotive history will be made from the motor-city on December 3, 1996, when the first public early introduction of a new car occurs simultaneously live at a press conference in downtown Detroit (broadcast live on a private satellite network), and "webcast" live in cyberspace on a website open to the public via the Internet. Point your browser to "http://www.regal.com" before, during or after the event to experience it yourself.

While new cars have been shown online, this is the first time one will be introduced to the public in this manner. The collaboration for the live and virtual event, conceived and produced entirely by Detroit-based companies, includes the new Regal brand teams at General Motor's Buick division, McCann-Erickson Advertising, Miiacom, Inc, The Internet Factory, EDS, GM Cyberworks, Trio Communications, Projections, Inc., Grace & Wild Studios, and Morley Productions.

Will interactive communications go the way of national campaign film and television production, that is, mostly out-of-town? Or will we be able to keep the work in our own actual (vs. virtual) backyard?

Every industry has turning points in history - a critical path of development. The problem is that those points are not easy to spot, until they are in the past and part of history that cannot be changed. The exception is that we know the online industry has reached such a critical point now in the Detroit area. And the question is, "What will we do to continue our early success?"

No longer embryonic, interactive communications have been adopted and integrated into most of the Fortune 500's advertising, marketing and sales plans. Not limited to "online" activities, these programs span the spectrum from telephone to FAX to videogame to CD-ROM to website to experiments in virtual reality. And they are being judged, as any other media, on their relative success in meeting planned goals and objectives.

But at the recent judging for Caddy awards in the interactive category, one of the panel of "experts" complained that the criteria set-forth for the evaluation did not help to direct the industry; that it became an arbitrary contest of favorites instead of specific recognition of excellence by design, a direction we would all like to move in. This is not a problem limited to our local awards, but echoed also in the disparate results of national contests.

While Detroit-area companies are leading the world in some areas of technical interface online (especially integration with database mining and telemarketing), and development of interactive communications programs for their clients, the creative community here has fallen-short of embracing and moving the new media forward. Incentive to do so, of course, is still limited by financial reticence on the part of clients carefully allocating limited resources to a medium which is, for the moment, limited in demographic reach.

The challenge is to unite our professional community in the common goals of education about interactive communications, and integration of interactive elements in the strategic and tactical creative direction and planning for our clients. To that end, an organization is, at the time of this writing, in the formative stages, which would work toward those goals by acting as a central focal point for interactive activities in the local advertising and marketing industry.

Leaders from agencies, production companies, internet service and presence providers, design houses, newspapers/magazines, universities, telcos, marketing and promotions firms, etc. will gather to help determine direction for the fledgling group, which will provide a forum to meet and share ideas on how to best utilize interactive technology for the specific purpose of marketing products and services. The organization will also serve as a valuable resource for communicators who are interested in tracking current and future trends in the industry, and creative professionals from every arena are needed to help fulfill this objective in a meaningful way.

In this way, we hope to take advantage of this point in history, when we can potentially provide direction by example and perhaps chart the course for the industry nationally by publicizing the splendid interactive efforts of our local creative talent base. For more information, contact Brad Carse at J. Walter Thompson, or Jeremy Eckhous at CE-Communications, or Jim Savage or Richard Grundy at Ameritech, or Mike Walsh at Olympia Enterprises.

To get on-line call:

• America Online - (800) 827-6364
• CompuServe - (800) 848-8199
• Prodigy - (800) 776-3449
• Delphi - (800) 695-4005
• Michigan BizServe - (313) 761-8742
• Microsoft - (206) 882-8080
• Netcom - (800) 501-8649
• Greater Detroit Freenet - (810) 691-7077