Recently Media Management Association (MMA) had the pleasure of talking with Professor Joseph Plummer, an Adjunct Professor at Columbia Business School and co-author of The Online Advertising Playbook, about his upcoming spring course, Emerging Media.

When asked about his motivation for his course, Plummer responded “It’s just so easy to get caught up in new media technology because it’s fascinating, constantly changing and driving significant innovation…so I wanted to create a course to focus on moving away from the ‘buzz’ surrounding emerging media and instead focus on effective strategies and applications to use these technologies to meet real business objectives. I want students to walk away from class always asking how this new media fits with their particular business objective.”He continued by highlighting one of the ‘mega-trends’ in emerging media which will be discussed in detail during his course – social media advertising.

Plummer believes that social media is currently most effective as a tool to engage the consumer, not as a means for push advertising. In fact, he notes that social media platforms such as Facebook provide advertisers and marketers with an unparalleled opportunity to listen to their customers, however, many inappropriately use this medium to push a sales message via traditional banner-type advertising, an approach which Plummer asserts “has so far not been all that effective in social media.”

The real value in social media, Plummer notes, is the ability to create online communities and fan pages dedicated to specific brands and products, which enable companies to create a dialogue with their customer. These communities can reveal insights far richer than traditional market research, and will drive an increasingly segmented social media environment in which custom advertisements can be delivered to a specific type of consumer.

Online video will play an increasingly important role in social media. In fact, Plummer contends that the recent exponential growth in online video usage is driven by an innate human desire to communicate visually. “There is a whole lot of information available online and it’s far easier to compact a lot of ideas into video form, rather than text.”

MBA students lucky enough to be enrolled in Plummer’s spring course should look forward to lively class discussions and engaging guest speakers. “I hope that each student will complete the class with a greater appreciation of the advertising potential of these amazing new emerging media technologies.”

About Professor Joseph Plummer:
Dr. Joseph Plummer is an adjunct Professor in the Columbia Business School and Senior Associate at Olson Zaltman Associates. He is co-author of The OnLine Advertising Playbook focusing on the emergence of the internet as a marketing platform. Prior to teaching at Columbia Business School, Dr. Plummer was EVP at McCann Worldgroup, Vice Chairman at DMB & B, EVP at Young & Rubicam, and SVP at Leo Burnett.

He was also a managing director at Paine Webber/Y&R Ventures, and Chief Research Officer at the Advertising Research Foundation. Dr. Plummer is a board member of Mediaadvisory Partners LLC, Zogby International, Voxpop Investing, AdSafe, Innerscope Research, Inc., and C3 Research. Previously he was a board director of Sunstus, Audits & Surveys. McCann Worldgroup, DMB & B, and Young & Rubicam. He was a member of the Board of Trustees at his alma mater Westminster College, where he earned his BA; and on the Presidents Council at the Ohio State University where he received his Masters and PhD degrees.

In addition to The OnLine Advertising Playbook, Dr. Plummer has published more than twenty-five articles in journals, written over twenty chapters for books and been the editor of of The Journal of Advertising Research. He was selected as the Distinguished Marketing Practitioner by the Association of Marketing Science in 2007.