Last Wednesday, the Atlanta Interactive Marketing Association (AiMA) set out to debate: Can Digital Drive Brand Strategy? As a digital marketer myself, this is a common question among my colleagues and myself.

We hear the rumors day in and day out. Print is dead, commercials are Tevo’d and magazines only exist on a iPad. Sure it may seem that way as budgets are repurposed and less and less money is spent on “traditional” media each year, but does that mean a brand can rely on digital to propel them into the next few decades?

As Bert DuMars of Newell Rubbermaid pointed out, when a consumer goes to a store like Target, they generally enter the store with the intention of buying something, anything. From there an advertisement or display may catch their eye and do just that: purchase.

When shopping online the response can be vastly different. A consumer may visit a branded website to look up a product and read consumer reviews, they then may turn to another site to scope out prices, head to a social network to ask for advice and then – head to the store or buy online.

In the case of a new brand or product – sure digital is definitely the place to be. You will not find a better-engaged audience or test segment than those who seek out your product online. You can learn a lot, in a short amount of time and bear witness to large demographic of people.

For A.J. Brustein from Coca-Cola this is exactly what happened with this year’s Happiness Machine video. Users were able to spread the word and share their reactions quickly, but the video still  has  a little less than 3 million views on YouTube, pebbles compared to the amount of impressions other types of media have seen. But – if you can pass the same video along to global markets to share on TV, during events and maybe even in store, you will see those numbers will sky rocket.

A.J. said it best when he noted, “traditional media has had 100+ years to perfect itself, this is only the beginning of digital.”

So should you toss those TV ads or in-store placements goodbye? No. Should you dabble in digital and only spend money on there? No. The biggest shift we as marketers are facing is diversity.

A strategy must include all sides and all departments – cohesively. Your Facebook strategy should tie into your OOH, your Tweets match your print ads. Doing this successfully will be the key – and the brands that get it right will be the ones you remember in 100 years from now – you know, when digital becomes old news.