Digital Is the Fulcrum

Carat CEO David Verklin put an early exclamation point on the morning's conversation at the 2007 AB MIXX Conference & Expo. "I think for traditional media to thrive in the future, digital has to be at the core of the strategy," Mr. Verklin told the packed room at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in midtown Manhattan. "The market has shifted so much, so rapidly. We need to come to a place where we do the communications plan first. The hottest word in the advertising business today is 'media mix.' The media plan of the future will be more complicated. And digital has to be the core of the strategy. More and more, we’ll be taking things like television and driving consumers to the web site.

"I’d argue to marketers in the audience today" Mr. Verklin added, "that you’d actually want to drive them web site before you drive them retail."