As an agency, we do a lot of work influencing personal behavior. It’s become a specialty. We reduce teen smoking, encourage people to seek treatment for problem gambling and substance abuse. We encourage middle schoolers to eat healthy and exercise.

Tomorrow I’m speaking at the 2009 Prevention Symposium put on by Training Resources a Division of Iowa Behavioral Health Association. The presentation is about communications strategies to reduce underage and binge drinking.

In nearly all social marketing situations the target audience already knows what the right thing to do is. Smoking is bad for you. Gambling too much is bad for you. Drugging is bad for you. Yet people do it. And if you tell them not to, they usually do it more. It’s not rational.

In all cases, the secret is within the target audience. We work really hard to peel back the layers of resistance to find messaging strategies that influence the audience’s thinking. Sometimes in an evolutionary way and sometimes revolutionary, but always in an honest way. Don’t tell a teen they’re going to die as a result of having a drink because they see people drinking who don’t die. Find a way to help them make intelligent decisions and remember always in the end it is their decision. If you respect that, you’ll have more effect changing their thinking.

Remember the Borg?  It was a race on Star Trek that assimilated worlds into a collective intelligence to conquer the universe.  It used the thoughts of billions to outsmart the thoughts of millions.  They collaborated throught telepathy.  Well, substitute digitally for telepathy and you can start to wrap your brain around the collective intelligence of the Net Generation.

The Net Generation lives in a world where it can collaborate with its members spontaneously.  Want to know about life at a university, find a FaceBook page on the university.  Go to Youtube.  Look for student produced videos.

Insert any product that the Net Generation is interested in and you’ll find a collective intelligence about that product.  You’ll find ideas to make the product better.  And you’ll find members feeding off one another to brainstorm and develop better products.

If two heads are better than one, are two million heads better?  Maybe when it comes to creativity.  If you believe one creative thought leads to another, potentially better creative thought than maybe two million brains working on a problems is better than two.  Regardless, marketers can use this drive to collaborate to their advantage.

We’re doing market research using social networking sites as a platform to involve respondents and it’s working very well.  The involvement of our respondents is deeper than typical focus groups, we’re not bound by a 90 minute time frame and we don’t have to sit behind a mirror eating Peanut M&Ms.  We’re exploring brand identities, testing strategies and learning better ways to engage this audience.

If you’re selling to the Digital Borg, otherwise known as the net generation, they will gladly help you improve your product, communications or service delivery.  All you have to do is tap into the collective intelligence.  You may not immediately know what they’re thinking, but you can beam yourself in digitally.  But remember, Captain Picard always won.

Live long and prosper.

Stop and think.  How many ways do you get information?  If we documented every method, it might surprize us just how much of an information junkie we have become.  And the same exists for the audiences to whom we market.

Here’s a hypothetical information half day in the life of a business executive.

1. Morning newspaper, or web site over coffee.  Good Morning America in the background.

2.  Check email on iPhone.

3. Satellite radio on the way to the office switching back and forth between CNN, FOX, Bloomberg, a local sports talk station, CNBC and POTUS.

4.  Checking email on iPhone while driving, also stock updates, Twitter and weather.

5.  Arrive at work, check email.  Scan Google alerts about clients, industries, social network marketing.  RSS feeds from bloggers you read. Visit ten sites that the alerts and briefs have highlighted.  Check news aggregator sites like Drudge Report, AAF Smart Briefs, Politico, Bloomberg.com, ESPN, CNN, Fox. Check on investments online, just in case something changed overnight.

6.  Visit Wall Street Journal’s web site, along with the New York Times.

7.  Check Facebook page, Summize and any message boards followed.

8.  Access Google Analytics to check web visits, where they’re from and who their from.

9.  Check snail mail.  Breeze any magazine received.

10.  Go to an association lunch to listen to a speaker. Check email, stocks prices, Twitter and Facebook from your phone during the talk.  Listen to ESPN on the drive to and from the office.

It’s now 1:00 p.m.

We have stopped thinking about mass media audiences and now think about our audience’s media finger print.  That is the revolution.

The time of silo interactive activities is over.  The time for integrated interactive strategies is now.

Integrated interactive planning is about producing measurable results for less.  This economy demands the reinvention of your marketing plan.  Most companies can no longer rely on a fat media budget to drive business.  Now is the time to look differently at your interactive strategy because it may provide a way for you get through this recession and come out stronger on the other side.

The first thing you have to do is forget about silos and remember that all of your interactive, traditional and non-traditional marketing activities must work together.

The first thing to do is to realize that your web site is the most efficient sales tool/retail location you have.  It’s open 24/7, you don’t have to feed it, clothe it, move it, pay it(much), or insure it.  It won’t call in sick, argue with you or goof off on the computer.  That’s why we’ve put it in the center of the Interactive Integration Wheel.

Second, forget about silos.  Forget about branding being separate from web development.  Forget about search being separate from online media.  Instead, consider how they all can fit together.  Duh?  Maybe it seems like I’m pointing out the obvious, but we see all too many marketers who keep everything separate.

Specialists often find it difficult to think about the interaction all the different marketing activities that go into a successful integrated plan and prefer to work only in their comfort zone.  So, the danger is that one activity will receive more attention than another, creating an imbalanced marketing plan.  It would be like spending 90 percent of the budget on a beautiful website and only 10 percent driving people to it….or vice versa.

Third, think of every circle outside the hub as being a hub of its own wheel.  For instance, social networking would be surrounded by Facebook, Myspace, twitter, YouTube, blogs  and a few hundred others. It’s kind of like a never ending galaxy of opportunity and much of it is in the economy of free except for the labor required to make it happen.

Fourth, some activities on the wheel are one way communications and some encourage a dialog with your customers or sales force.  Dialog that makes or saves money should receive top priority.  Customer service is a prime example.  You can provide customer service online with FAQs, chats, e-mails and as a last resort, phone support.  If you’re successful in supporting your customer without a phone call, you’ll save money and return more to the bottom line.  The best part is you can document the ROI.  If you have a call center, imagine the savings if you could cut 10 percent of the cost of phone support.  Think you could find something else to do with that money?

Fifth, somethings won’t fit.  Just as some media won’t fit your target audience, some interactive activities won’t fit your marketing needs.  For instance, if you’re marketing to teens, twitter is not a good choice.  Myspace might be.  On the same hand, don’t discount an activity until you’ve thought about it.

The more you want to prove ROI, the more attractive integrated interactive strategies become.  You can see the results.  Your CEO can see the results.  And you can soften the blow of a draconian budget cut by redirecting a little of the money into a highly effective arena.

We’ll be the first to admit that on the surface, integrated interactive strategies can look a little intimidating.  But there’s gold here.  If you’re interested we’d love to talk to you about how we can move your business forward with a comprehensive interactive plan.  Not just a website, not just an e-mail campaign, but an overall plan of attack to make your marketing budget more effective.

Once upon a time there was a company.  It wasn’t very well known, it’s product wasn’t much in demand but it had a wonderful website.  If you searched for its product, the company was at the top of its category.  Sadly, few people searched for the product.  The company bought Google ad words, but sadly, few people searched for those words. There was less traffic on this website than a side street in a town of 100 at 3 a.m. on a snowy February night.

The president of the company called a meeting.  At the meeting, he announced that the website isn’t working.  “Our sales aren’t any better than before we had a website.  Who created this failure?”  The conference room fell silent as every face in the room turned to the Director of Marketing who sheepishly replied, “With all due respect, you did when you cut the marketing budget.”

Producing a wonderful website and doing nothing to invite people to visit is kind of like printing a great brochure and never handing it out.  Building a better website isn’t the answer.  Making it the center of an integrated campaign is.