Concepting for online - part 1

So a few offline people approach me from time to time and ask "how should we go about doing the online part of a project?". Usually my reply would be "anything you want", as generic as this sounds it's actually what I believe.

I am going to release a 3 part blog post on this topic for:
- Offline
- Online
- Integrated

Now empty you mind. This is a rough guide of how I go about coming up with online concepts after a campaign has gone live.

Offline
Now for many Digital teams the line "Can you just make this print ad into a web page" is far too common. In my opinion you should be well within you rights to create a fuss, especially if you work in a "creative" agency.

When did rehashing a print ad to become a website become acceptable?

When did creating online for the sake of online become a good spend of budgets?

When did offline become such an after thought?

These are some of the things I say to account people that come up with briefs like that and let's be honest we should all know better.

Any way back to the point, when you do need to bolt online on to a camapaign I tend to look at the executions surrounding the campaign this is a good way to create content with out having to do much here's an example:

You have an event which you interact with people, the interaction could be very simple i.e. questions, experience etc. Why don't you video tape this type of interaction at the event? This is all "free" content, which you can use for the site.

Here's another common scenario, we have a print campaign running, we have some banners and a landing page which need to be created. Well after kicking off again into another rant it's time to get to work.

Recreating an ad from press is soul destroying if you do exactly as account management say, but why don't you go back with something more, take it another level it's online!!!!

Come up with expandable units, video, overlays, virals. Come up with anything if it works. Obviously if the execution is good and exciting enough the client should buy it.

Next post for concepting online is online ideas