What do you think? Is this something that marketers in Australia still need to learn about? Are there particular elements of this that are more pressing?

The dust has now settled a little on last week’s Ad:Tech conference here in Sydney and I have had a chance to catch up on some work, reading and even a little writing.

There have been some great summaries and wrap-ups of the event – which has been very useful – particularly as there were three concurrent streams running at any one time. So, despite missing out on two-thirds of the conference, I can still glean a little of the proceedings thanks to the blogs and Twitter streams of other attendees. (Neerav Bhatt has a great overview of the Twitter stream and Jenny Williams sums up the even on the Ad:Tech Brain blog.)

Both Ben Shepherd and Mark Jones provide great overviews of day one; and Carl Moggridge breaks down the sessions.

For my part, I thought that the keynotes could have gone deeper. Nick Brien from MediaBrands took the big picture approach and got the day rolling. He suggested that “Marketing 3.0” required adjusting to some new realities – but did not take the opportunity to delve into the agency world to suggest how these new realities may play out. I did think this was where the speech was going, but I was wrong. However, he did remind us all that “Promotional driven marketing opens conversations and broadens appeal of your brand” – something that is too easily forgotten in the rush to produce the next glossy TVC or shiny website.

On the second day, Kim Niblock, MD of BBC.com promised much but ended up delivering what was mostly a media kit for their new site. They had done some nice work on attitudinally profiling their audiences – but that really was to be expected from a quality outfit like the BBC. It will be interesting to see how robust this commercial foray will be for the BBC. I am sure the ABC will be watching closely too.

The social network panel with representatives of all the major platforms were interviewed by Jenny Williams. I don’t think I was alone in feeling that Facebook, MySpace, Friendster et al are all beginning to transform themselves into 1990s style portal publishers. Jye Smith suggested that social networks should pay more attention to the thing that made them successful in the first place – the people who use them. As the session closed, I asked whether we would see any differentiating innovation in terms of the platforms or whether they would continue copying each other’s features and functions. And in the last few days, as Facebook’s attempt to out-micro-blog Twitter rolls out around the world, this question seems more pressing than ever. I have a feeling that we will all tire of this cannibalistic behaviour sooner rather than later.

The panel discussions were opportunities for a little more depth. And while there were initial misgivings around the balancing of the conference agenda, it soon became clear that the social media stream was worth it’s weight in gold. Each of the sessions were packed out, often with standing room only.

The digital strategy session ended up being more about the execution than strategy; and the Johnson and Johnson case study while solid, ran in 2007 and felt out-of-date.

Julian Cole and Fake Julian Cole stirred up the audience with some theatrics and audience-directed questioning in the session on “dark marketing”. Of course, the question was raised around the use of fake virals – and the recent work for Witchery by Naked. While the panel seemed to think this was not the way to go for brands, I tend to agree with Iain McDonald:

There are better, bigger, broader opportunities to engage consumers using social media that can still be authentic, mysterious, realistic. Yes it’s a creative challenge but if we can start to get this right there are big wins for consumers, clients and agencies alike.

Jye Smith, Laurel Papworth, Mike Hickinbotham and I spoke about the relevance of Twitter. It felt like it went well, but time flies when you are in front of a room of people … and it felt like we were out of time before we really got going. Jye facilitated the discussion well – diving into the audience to take questions and keep us all in order. Mike stepped us through some of the approaches and lessons they learned from launching the @BigpondTeam on Twitter – fingers crossed his presentation will be shared at some point.

Iain McDonald, Stephen Collins, Lesley White and Katie Chatfield created a powerful buzz when talking social media measurement. “Data is everywhere, but insight is rare”, suggested Katie, while Lesley explained that there should be a focus on the rants vs raves in any conversational analysis. There were some great points made by all the speakers and Katie shared this fantastic presentation on the tools and techniques that any digital strategist will love.

Overall, this felt like a great conference. There was plenty of good discussion and the panels worked well (for the most part) – and the vibe was strong. There were a couple of talks that were borderline pitches, but they were in the minority. I would have liked to have seen more detailed cross-over discussions between traditional advertising and social media – it seems that there are two distinct points of view with a chasm of understanding separating the two. Perhaps then we will see the type of fireworks that we really do need to see to move the industry forward in a meaningful way.

http://www.servantofchaos.com/2009/03/a-personal-take-on-adtech-sydney.html

Soooo … was it any good?

Lets start with the exhibitors. Not a bad turnout considering “the economy”. Myspace/FIM won a few fans with free booze and Flossie were giving away condoms, chocolate and fairy floss. DGMs ping pong table started strong but seemed to fade into the day. Traffic was strong … good idea for Adtech to make people walk through the exhibition to get to the sessions … something that wasn’t done in San Francisco and I think it adds some value to the exhibitors.

Sessions … I made it to 4 today. First one was Nick Brien who is CEO from Mediabrands. It was okay … very macro consumer trends stuff. Weirdly didn’t touch on the challenges to agencies as a result of the new media world and also the economy … I did expect that, not unreasonably, from an AGENCY keynote. His point that opportunity presents itself from crisis is pretty apt. I will probably get fired for this, but much more enjoyable than Sir Martin Sorrell at DMS2007 despite how macro it was.

I went to the Digital Strategy session in the morning as well … didn’t really think it touched at all on strategy however. Felt it was weird the Diageo person nor the Amnesia person could tell the audience what was spent on the campaign or the KPIs. I have often mused that the word ‘digital strategy’ is almost without a definition and I felt from this presentation almost everyone feels it means something different. I don’t think this was a strategy panel … or I have no idea what digital strategy is. Both are entirely possible.

The Cash for Comment session in the afternoon was good. The fake Julian Cole was funny … some good examples in there about the issue. Jenny Williams made a very valid point about regulation. Felt this panel needed more heads on it … it’s tough for 2 people to go back and forth for an hour without repeating themselves. I was skeptical about this one pre-event but I enjoyed it.

The Twitter session was very packed and generally very solid - audience enjoyed it and of all the panels today I think it will be the one people remember.

The things it would have been interesting to hear about are the impact of Twitter in the evolution of search (ie realtime) and the local scale and takeup of the platform and the issue of resource versus reward. Mike from Telstra was great … his approach is fantastic and it was refreshing to hear such honesty. Telstra have 3 employees as part of their BigPondTeam … maybe it’s the cynic in me, or the realist … but I wondered how they can justify the resource when they only have 500 odd followers (I have 260 followers and no FTE’s working on my account) … especially in this climate … seems like an expensive CRM nice to have. Spun correctly it makes for a nice story but yet to see any great example of Twitter ROI in a CRM sense that is backed with quanitified data and some of the examples raised today made for good anecdotes but not much more. We talk about ROI, accountability, measurement etc across digital constantly but we never apply this sort of analysis to next big things.

I thought Jye was a really good engaging moderator and Laurel Papworth was very polished speaker and honest which made you want to listen to her. It’s a horrible cliche but a true one … people who are passionate about things are generally people you want to hear and support.

The Twitter usage of the event has been big and a good way to get up to speed with panels you have missed or find more info. Follow the general stream here - http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23atsyd

Very positive to see no big media bashing and no sales pitches. Also good to see a whole heap of people I haven’t seen for ages. The attendance is good - most sessions I attended had solid numbers which is a great result.

A gripe is that sometimes I felt some questions from the audience weren’t being addressed. This is frustrating … please panelists answer questions that are asked … no one likes being spoken to like a politician. Don’t answer a question with a cliche.

See everyone tomorrow!

btw - the pic above is of my dog playing with his multi coloured ball last night. My fiancee sent it to me and I wanted to post it somewhere.

http://talkingdigital.wordpress.com/2009/03/10/adtech-sydney-day-1/

Here are some initial ideas:

• The approach that companies take (internal vs agency driven)
• The barriers that they must overcome (people, money, buy-in)
• Whether this should be centralised or spread across a whole organisation
• How ready are your average company to take on a full blown digital strategy?

Just some initial thoughts but keen to hear what challenges you think companies face in developing digital strategies and what info you think is most worth getting the panel to discuss.