Digital is finally out of the ghetto. It used to be the last medium to be considered, often an afterthought in most marketers’ minds. Today it plays a fundamental part in any marketing and communication strategy...

By Saher Sidhom, AKQA

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Great news for those who work in digital. However, in most cases digital for the uninitiated it still feels like a black art. Often misunderstood, under-utilised and in our experience, not fully exploited.

To break some of the myths about digital marketing and communications we’ve written a set of principles to guide and help illuminate how to approach digital strategy. Any great and successful communication has a great and clear strategy behind it.

To really exploit the digital medium it is vital to have an understanding of how to use it. These Ten Commandments, we hope, will shed some light and give both the un-intiated and practitioners alike some food for thought, a set of principals to start from.

A vision for clients and practitioners alike

At AKQA we apply these to our projects as they provide a solid foundation for our work (for more examples of our work check out our website www.akqa.com.) They are also particularly good at introducing the digital environment and thinking to our clients in a way that is digesteable and applicable to their brands.

The Ten Commandments will attempt to answer some of the thorny strategy questions facing the digital marketer, for example:

• When should digital be involved in the overall communication strategy?
• How to build digital strategies?
• How to develop ideas for digital?
• How to integrate digital into the rest of the mix?
• How to evaluate digital activity?
• In short, how to get the best out of digital.

The Ten Commandments are written as a series of ten articles that are easily digestable, collectable and useable. Each article deals with a fundamental principle in the formulation and development of digital strategy from objective setting to evaluation. The articles are full of examples and case studies from both our work at AKQA and within the digital industry in general. We hope you find them as useful and as valuable as we have.

Digital Advertising Strategy Top Ten Countdown
http://www.nmk.co.uk/article/2006/02/21/digital-strategy-overview

Blog
Feel free to start and join a debate around digital advertising strategy in this dedicated blog:
http://10commandmentsofdigitalstrategy.blogspot.com/

About AKQA:
AKQA is a global interactive agency that uses innovative ideas and technology to deliver results for the world's leading brands. They were named Creativity Magazine's first ever Interative Agency of the Year in 2006 and have been twice recognised as 'most respected agency' by New Media Age. Their global staff of over 350 people is based in five offices across San Francisco, New York, Washington DC, London and Singapore.