Nissan’s marketing manager Roel de Vries has said that brands are being blinded by 'digital' and not focussing on integrating its marketing channels.

This ‘fashion of digital’ and lack of integration has resulted in budgets being blown on various different campaigns “creating a lot of bling”, making “our marketing less efficient than the traditional TV ad, which it shouldn’t.

“If we look at all the analysis, traditional media is still doing extremely well, and it’s not because traditional media is more powerful, it’s because we and our agencies are still in the learning process of how we engage people.” De Vries told The Drum.

Talking to Marketing Week, De Vries said: “Everything is digital, we should not separate, we should integrate.

“We want to change the perception of our brand but to do that we need to engage and be part of the discussion; creating advertising that makes people sit up, sponsorships that make our brand part of what people care about and digital platforms that people can engage on.

“I would not look at the percentage of investment going into digital – I would look at how much engagement we can make – If we create that through TV commercials that bring people to the conversation or through display advertising, then great.”

With this in mind, Nissan has integrated all of its agencies into one; Nissan United. De Vries explained that integration is a big part in how Nissan aims to progress, from a marketing perspective. “A big part of Nissan United is to start integrating again. I want to have the PR person, the digital person, the traditional creative person and the media agency sitting around one table”.

The Nissan-dedicated division includes the car maker’s main agencies, such as Interbrand and OMD.(Sources: Marketing Week, The Drum.)