A lot of people in the industry may disagree over the ethics, but few can dispute the huge success of recent online teaser-style campaigns.

So is it OK to throw out the status quo? Just recently a couple of articles in the SMH gave a direction advertisers and agencies will look to more and more as the economic downturn looks increasingly like a recession.

The first article titled ‘More cuts predicted for TV and print’  described a perfect storm of bad news for traditional media advertising, which is expected to fall between six to nine percent in 2009.  These conditions will accelerate the shift to the Internet.

The second article titled ‘The Wild West revisited – online’  raised the ethical issue of viral videos like ‘Man in a jacket’ for Witchery that appeared on You Tube as content when they were actually commercial ‘video teaser’ ads.

Right now, YouTube doesn’t charge brands to run their ‘video teaser’ ads.  So with the right content, a campaign can achieve maximum exposure for minimal cost.

Creatively marketers are charting new ground, we are no longer restricted by the ‘rule book’ created by decades of TV and print advertising.

Our challenge is to engage an audience that has greater choice and control of where they spend their time.

By ‘thinking digital’ for a recent membership drive campaign for the Newcastle Knights our commercial ‘video teaser’ ad using the symbol above was placed on YouTube. To increase reach and impact it also ran as a 15 second TV spot and the symbol was also bill posted around Newcastle.

The phones to local radio and TV stations ran hot and the question “What is it?” was at fever pitch. Most people suspected it was for a brand but had know idea what it was, except for one lady who thought aliens were communicating with her via her TV.

After a couple of weeks we revealed that the symbol was the outline of the Newcastle Knights Kingdom, their home stadium.

We followed the commercial ‘video teaser’ with print, TV and electronic direct mail (EDM) calling for Novocastrians to ‘Defend your Kingdom’ by becoming a member for the up-coming 2009 ticketed membership season.

The power of the Defend you Kingdom campaign came through ‘thinking digital’ and using traditional media channels sparingly. We didn’t buy a single radio spot but had a campaign on morning radio that ran for two weeks - that’s the power of ‘thinking digital.’