My daily diet consists of traditional media with a side of social, but more and more, social media has taken over the entree portion of the menu. This is the way advertising is changing for all of us and at the Radian6 Social 2011 User Conference, the discussion of integration was more rampant than a Friday night at the Cheesecake Factory. After all, mixing media is all about reaching your audience in all facets. And that includes social.

But back to the moment.

One of the breakout sessions at the conference – Build a Better Campaign: Research, Plan and Integrate – was all over this topic. The panel of marketing meccas from Ogilvy, Weber Shandwick and more presented a smorgasbord of award-winning campaigns that integrate traditional with social (i.e. OscarMayer’s @wienermobile and American Airlines’ wifi notifications).

The insights from this panel were magnificent and I was eating it up. Campaign strategies nowadays need to merge new media with the old – social with traditional. That’s how you best reach your audience. Here’s why:

• Old – Enable your audience to get in touch via a strong call to action.
• New – Push multiple touch points.

• Old – Respond to customer requests after they send them.
• New – Be there before something happens.

• Old – Traditional media is a campaign.
• New – Social media is a commitment.

• Old – Ensure paid/owned/earned media interconnects.
• New – Ensure paid/owned/earned media interconnects.

Like that last one? See, what I learned is we’re not saying everything is changing. In fact, a lot is staying the same. Community, communication, ROI, etc. are things we’ve lived by as marketers for many, many, many years (way before I was even a thought). There is a shift happening and we need to be smart about it. Then and now.

Hungry? Let’s go.

Amanda Nelson has been a New York and Connecticut advertising campaign manager for over eight years. She’s worked on all facets of advertising from interactive (her personal favorite area) to traditional media. She enjoys creating unique, on-strategy campaigns. She also enjoys her border collies, tap dancing and her husband Tom. She blogs at a-media-mix.com. @mileigh13

Advertising and marketing, in some form or another, has been around for a very long time. In fact, the first newspaper advertisement, an announcement seeking a buyer for an estate in Oyster Bay, Long Island, was published in the Boston News-Letter back in 1704. I’’m sure the folks at the helm of the Boston News-Letter never imagined a time when advertising would become as omnipresent as it is today.

So, on that note, we thought we would give you a very brief – and admittedly jumpy - history of some key events in its evolution:

1867 – James Walter Thompson buys Carlton & Smith from William J. Carlton, paying $500 for the business and $800 for the office furniture. He renames it after himself and moves into general magazine advertising. Later, he invents the position of account executive.

1911 – For the first time in its history, P&G pays an outside agency, J. Walter Thompson Co., to launch Crisco, its new vegetable shortening.

1929 – American Tobacco Co. spends $12.3 million to advertise Lucky Strikes, the most any company has ever spent on single-product advertising.

1947 – JWT becomes the first agency to surpass $100 million in billings.

1963 – “The Pepsi Generation” kicks off the cola wars.

1976 – The Supreme Court grants advertising First Amendment protection.

1981 – MTV debuts with frenetic video images that change the nature of commercials.

1993 – The Internet becomes a reality as 5 million users worldwide get online.

There’’s no need to point out that that last one was a game changer. And from the 2000′s onward the brave new world of the internet fundamentally changed the way advertisers worked and what tools they used on the ““get my product/service/company to the most eyeballs first – and keep it there!”” playing field.

Which brings us to social media. Clearly, based on advertising’’s long history, agencies and ad execs are extremely adaptable. Marketers and advertisers need to be at the forefront of what’’s trending and what isn’’t – and why. And they’ve been eager and early adopters of social media engagement and listening.

At Social 2011′’s panel “The Evolution of the Agency”, we’’re going to look at why social media, in all its forms, has become such a key element of agency strategy. Panelists Blake Cahill, Principal at Banyan Branch; David Armano, SVP, Social Business Planning & Integration at Edelman Digital; Jim Tobin, President of Ignite Social Media; Sean McDonald, Colony Master at Ant’s Eye View; and Slavisa Samardzija, Executive Vice President, Market Intelligence at Wunderman will be exploring how they use social strategies and integrated planning to reach key targets and deliver real value to their clients. How do agencies handle the unique challenges that social media brings on a global level? And what, if any, changes have to be made at the agency level itself, to integrate and successfully adopt social media strategies?

Social media has changed forever how we all do business. It has also changed the way customers view and respond to products and branding. It has, in some ways, made a smarter consumer, smarter than anyone back in 1704 could ever have imagined.

What do you think? Has social media impacted your work as a marketer, as a PR professional? Have you seen your clients change? And what does that mean to an agency? Has social media blurred the lines between traditional agencies? We appreciate your comments and questions.

Jim Tobin shares his views at http://www.ignitesocialmedia.com/blog/, David Armano shares his views over at http://darmano.typepad.com/ and Sean McDonald can be found sharing his views at http://www.antseyeview.com/blog/.

In the world of traditional agencies, brands rely on them for copy, press releases, statements, marketing to consumers and more. Rarely do we see a PR agency make a statement at a press conference or be quoted in a brand release; on the flip side, rarely do we have an advertising agency give final approval on brand positioning.

So, why has that changed in the social media space?

There have been proclaimed “turf wars” when it comes to who “owns social media.” Advertising, marketing and public relations agencies are all jousting each other to be proclaimed winner. For agencies to make social media work for their clients, they must utilize an integrated approach for planning and strategy.

Corporate and Agency Sectors present at the Integrated Social Strategy/Planning Table

• Public Relations
• Advertising
• Marketing
• Customer Service
• Management / C-Suite

While numerous agency sectors have a spot at the social media strategy and planning table, should they be the ones to execute the campaign? There are definitely two sides to the argument.

Transparency and trust are the two areas a brand should focus on when making the decision on execution. Once strategy and planning has taken place, decide who will respond, when they will respond, if it’s a collaborative effort between the agency and client, or if the execution falls solely onto either party.

Here are some best practices if a brand asks you as an agency to execute the social media campaign:

• Make sure to identify who is representing the brand, whether it is in the bio, response or comment.
• In responses to complaints, ask, “I’m sorry to hear that. How can I help? I will get someone to reach out to you shortly” or “I understand your frustration with ABC’c customer service. I help ABC with these types of issues to make sure every issue is responded to quickly.  I’ll reach out and help get this issue resolved.”
• Have an approval process plan in place for responses. Once you reach out to a person to get more information, how will you handle responding? Do you take it privately and email your client contact? Or, does the client reach out directly?
• Have a social media crisis communications plan in place with initial responses and what each person’s responsibility is.
• Educate the client on different responses, conversations happening about the brand and suggested tone.

It is also up to you as the agency to provide education throughout the process, so that once the brand is comfortable, they can either collaborate on execution or handle.

A question that brands and agencies need to ask in the planning process is, “Do you think opinion and trust would be swayed if a consumer was talking to an agency hired, rather than the actual brand?”

If a brand executes the social media campaign, agencies can still be involved in the execution process. They can assist in wording responses, planning campaigns, assisting with what should be pushed out and providing education/advice.

What it comes down to is consumer trust and what they take at first impression face value. This will vary depending on goals, objectives and what overall strategy is.

What do you think? Should agencies execute campaigns or not? Let’s discuss.

Weber Shandwick to roll out the Radian6 solution globally to all employees, supporting the agency’s efforts to present expanded social media intelligence services to clients.  The public relations firm will be the first Interpublic (NYSE: IPG) unit to benefit from a strategic partnership between the IPG Futures Marketing Group and Radian6.

Weber Shandwick Completes Early Adopter Trial With 34 Clients; Part of Radian6′s Strategic Partnership with Interpublic

NEW YORK, November 14, 2007 – Weber Shandwick today announced it will deploy the Radian6 Technologies Inc. social media monitoring solution throughout its offices worldwide, effective immediately. The public relations firm will be the first Interpublic (NYSE: IPG) unit to benefit from a strategic partnership between the IPG Futures Marketing Group and Radian6.

Radian6’s social media monitoring “dashboard” tracks what is being said online about brands, organizations and issues. The program monitors all forms of social media, including blog sites, top video-sharing sites, opinion review forums, photo-sharing sites and micro-blogging platforms. The Radian6 solution offers visually rich analysis with the ability to export graphs and data.   The tool also helps point to the most popular and influential social media thought leaders in a client’s specific industry.

Weber Shandwick has been a strategic development partner with Radian6 for the past eight months. More than 34 of the firm’s clients have participated in its successful Early Adopter Program focused on social media monitoring trials. Weber Shandwick will now roll out the Radian6 solution globally for its employees, supporting the agency’s efforts to present expanded social media intelligence services to clients.

“Radian6 was designed for public relations professionals by public relations professionals. The service offers the most highly customizable features to address the specific social media needs of our clients,” said B. Bonin Bough, executive vice president, screengrabTM, Weber Shandwick’s interactive, social and emerging media group. “By putting these technologies at the fingertips of all our account teams, we are delivering rapid-fire social media monitoring solutions that deliver real-time flagging and analysis of the complete social media landscape.”

“Radian6 is a powerful and flexible social media monitoring technology,” said Bant Breen, president of Interpublic’s Futures Marketing Group. “Our relationship with Radian6 and our recently announced partnership with BzzAgent are important elements of Interpublic’s broader social media strategy to provide an array of cutting-edge solutions that support Interpublic agencies.”

Radian6’s user-friendly web dashboard allows topics to be quickly set-up for monitoring, queries and analysis. Content is delivered to the dashboard in real-time, as it is discovered. This means seeing data earlier, catching issues immediately and getting instant feedback on engagement strategies.

“We are delighted to enter into a global partnership with both Weber Shandwick and Interpublic. We’re confident the company’s agencies and clients will benefit from Radian6’s in-depth monitoring and analysis capabilities,” said Marcel Lebrun, chief executive officer of Radian6. “Our solution’s unique ability to allow agencies to define their own formula weightings for ranking social media influencers will ensure both Weber Shandwick’s and Interpublic’s strategic intellectual property is embedded in the results they share with clients.”

About Weber Shandwick
Weber Shandwick is one of the world’s leading global public relations firms with offices in major media, business and government capitals around the world.  The firm specializes in strategic marketing communications, media relations, public affairs, reputation and issues management, and offers corporate communications counseling services.  Weber Shandwick also provides specialized integrated services including Web relations, advocacy advertising, market research and visual communications.  Weber Shandwick received the highest client-satisfaction honors in the 2007 Agency Excellence Survey by PRWeek U.S. and in 2006, was named Large PR Firm of the Year (PR News U.S.), European Consultancy of the Year (The Holmes Report) and Network of the Year (Asia Pacific PR Awards).  The firm also won the United Nations Grand Award for outstanding achievement in public relations.  To learn more, please visit www.webershandwick.com. Weber Shandwick is a unit of The Interpublic Group (NYSE: IPG).

About Interpublic
Interpublic is one of the world’s leading organizations of advertising agencies and marketing services companies. Major global brands include Draftfcb, FutureBrand, GolinHarris International, Initiative, Jack Morton Worldwide, Lowe Worldwide, MAGNA Global, McCann Erickson, Momentum, MRM Worldwide, Octagon, Universal McCann and Weber Shandwick. Leading domestic brands include Campbell-Ewald, Carmichael Lynch, Deutsch, Hill Holliday, Mullen and The Martin Agency. For more information, please visit www.interpublic.com.

About Radian6 Technologies Inc.
Radian6 provides the social media monitoring solution for PR and advertising professionals. The company’s flexible dashboard enables monitoring all forms of social media with results appearing in real-time as discovered.  Various analysis tools give users the ability to uncover the top influencers and which conversations are having an impact online.  Visit www.radian6.com for more information.