Liza Boston, Founder of Boston Digital Communications recently spoke at TedX Melbourne and her company had a hand in the Sabco campaign we featured in December. She shares her views on strategizing, creating and delivering in the digital environment.

Background

“Since the start of my career I've always been internet focused – how to use the internet, what is the internet, and how to strategically grow brands,” says Boston. “As a 23 year old graduate I was an adviser to the board of Ansett. in the days of the very first e-commerce developments, including e-ticketing, and we helped them launch their global airline.”

In the UK Boston worked during the first dot.com boom in the Telco sector, with Eircom later moving on to work with the WorldCom global team launching internet based products around Europe until she returned to Australia to briefly work with a bank before starting her digital media agency

Interactive

“It was around 2006, the emergence of Web 2.0, the interactive web and social media,” reflects Boston. “I started a company as a digital media strategic consultancy. And then it really quickly grew into interactive creative and then we got much deeper into the technical. Now it's a real convergence of the three. And it's been 5-6 years now, feels like 50.”

Strategy

Marrying creative solutions with corporate objectives is key to the digital solutions Boston provides. “It's really super important to understand business strategy, to understand business objectives, and to anchor your creative solutions in that,” says Boston. “I think that I'm at a really unusual age, having 16 years internet industry experience, always focused on digital, and then having a creative and technical passion – you have to be an avid user of this technology to develop market-leading solutions.”

Social media now

“We're offering them [clients] the opportunity to connect with their customers in a fragmented media landscape,” says Boston of the agency’s service offering. “A lot of my clients will say, ‘we're three years away from needing social media.’ And I'll say, ‘Well that's fabulous, but your customers are completely immersed in this environment. From 2 year old children who are making videos to 85 year old blokes who are remixing songs on Soundcloud.’ It's really irrelevant of age, it is attitude.”

Changing channels

“What does this mean for brands? We're creating a whole new way of thinking about connecting with their customers; really disrupting the economics, to radically cut down media spend, to be super innovative, using all the open source software that is free to air now and digital cameras that are of film quality,” says Boston.

Increasingly, Boston finds that brands are opting to instruct the digital agency as the lead. Rather than investing significant budget in a single TVC, brands might opt for tailored content over multiple platforms, delivering “a one-to-one communication relationship that you can measure and report on in real time.”

Traditional models seek innovation

Many of Boston’s clients are from traditional industries trying to adapt – like print media or music. “They're coming to us and saying, ‘shit, we're on a sinking ship here, how do we diversify what we're doing?’ So at its highest level, it's really strategic consulting around marketing and communications in this new media landscape. First of all: what do we need? What do we do? How do we do it? How much is it going to cost? It's a really unique position to be in, it's end to end,” shares Boston.

Education

Despite an understanding that their businesses need to innovate, Boston still finds many executives don’t understand the digital landscape. “The more senior in the organisation, the more elementary the understanding of the landscape is; which is mind-blowing,” she says. “It's like this crazy elephant in the room: senior communication managers that don't open emails or send sms. They've never read a blog. They exist, they're everywhere in this country,” she says.

Human behaviour

Boston works on multiple platforms in different markets, and is interested in the content shared through each. She notes that in Japan, social media is more about participating in communities than broadcasting personal updates.

Considering that female technical leads are rare in the industry, she’s also keen to explore the results of that imbalance. “I'm really interested in the psychology of gender-based design and interfaces and how that impacts the purchasing decisions, the retail decisions,” she says.

Once more with feeling

For all the channels and approaches available, Boston says creating connection with a brand is key. “At the end of the day, a lot of our branded work is about how we build the emotion around our brand. How do we create? How do we have conversations? It's been a really interesting challenge.”