The great thing about the ad:tech Melbourne program is that we’ll be revisiting some of the content from Sydney. This is good because it means the best content is being aired twice, and in the interim the speakers can re-evaluate their material in light of any feedback and taking in to account the local market. Here’s a few examples of those:

From Advertising To Advocacy by Craig Davis, Co-Chairman & Chief Creative Officer, Publicis Mojo
Sound And Movement: Insights In Online Video with PwC Australia, ninemsn and Yahoo!7
How To Use Digital Media Successfully For Specific Events with Jill Colvin, Sydney Festival and John Curtin, Totem Onelove
Beyond .com – The Next Internet Revolution with M&C Saatchi and AusRegistry International

And, of course there are new sessions as well, and I’m really excited about some of these Melbourne specific sessions. This content really came together following guidance from our excellent advisory board and some of these topics are really timely and specific to what’s happening in the digital media community in Melbourne. Here’s a few examples of those:

Syndicating Your Brand And Marketing Message Through Different Mediums with memery, DTDigital, Honda Australia, Firefly Millward Brown
Which Distribution Networks Are Best For Your Digital Media & Marketing Plan with speakers from The Comedy Channel & 111 HITS, FOXTEL , The Dubs, Reprise and Viocorp
What Should A Digital Strategy Look Like? with Clear Light Digital, Target, Starcom Melbourne

Of course I’m also looking forward to the Keynote Presentations. The two brand speakers that we have will be excellent. We’ve been working with Bonin Bough in the States and his team have been delivering some really innovative material. I’ve also had a sneak preview of the Tate presentation and it’s superb – more about that later I think.

I’ll be very interested to see how the Melbourne event experience compares to Sydney; how involved the audience are, what they make of the content, what the main differences are. I expect I’ll be learning a lot….

Any questions let me know but look forward to seeing you there.

ad:tech Melbourne
30-31 March 2011
Hilton on the Park, Melbourne
www.ad-tech.com/melbourne

Book tickets here.

The Core Digital Media advisory council for ad:tech Sydney 2011 met to discuss the issues that are affecting the market and the content that should be on the ad:tech programme. Here is a summary of the key areas discussed:

Skills and structure
• Who – on the client side – can write the briefs and manage and implement? One person with those skills is hard to find.
• Can’t find best of breed in ‘these’ solutions, especially integrated skills. And, when things are new how do you know what is best of breed?
• How do you get skill sets for things that aren’t even out yet? Where does the responsibility sit?
• There can be a challenge between marketing and IT on the client side. IT have different rules, regulations, ideas etc on what can be done. How to align the company infrastructure – what’s outward serving, inward serving etc.
• And for multinationals you come up against what’s been built out of HQ – which is a challenge for local market like Australia
• Clients are working with a growing number of agencies / outsourcers and they are keen to see who’s integrated
• One business (agency or outsourcer) can’t serve all requirements. Fragmentation and expansion of digital has made this a challenge, integration is absolutely key
• Inefficiencies exist (when there are too many agencies) as does not getting skills (when there are too few agencies)

Creative
• In digital creative hasn’t had the focus it’s needed or ‘meant’ to have to work. There is a challenge to creative community to raise the bar but also the briefing process is flawed because where digital fits the overall creative process isn’t clear.
• Silos kill ideas and creativity but there is a lot of protectionism, confusion over jargon and a limited talent pool in digital.
• Ideally, you’re all the team, not above / below the line and brilliant ideas should be supported regardless of channels. There should be no delineation between ideas –who cares where it came from, or how it rolls out, a great idea should be supported
• Digital gets scrutinised because the numbers are there but the numbers aren’t compared like for like. And there won’t be like for like comparisons because digital sold itself as the great data source.
• Attribution modelling is the key moving forwards. Understanding about how consumers operate now.

Legal
• There are consistent legal implications in digital. How do they ‘fit’ with real time, dynamic, organic nature of digital? And should this be managed internally / externally?
• This will be a bigger issue as brands are evolving to be publishers
• Companies and brands are handing over more of their own assets to customers – especially through social media. But legally ownership still sits with the brand. Consumer behaviour is ahead of the law.
• Privacy is fast tracking now
• Education piece on privacy is planned for consumers.
• The government haven’t considered the positives of targeting behavioural advertising

Email
• EDM is still effective for existing consumers: repeat business / intelligence. But it’s not good for acquisition.
• You can’t personalise email enough
• How many companies are wasting their money on ineffective email
• How much transparency is there between marketing and other departments about the efficacy of emails?
• Quality of the data, strategy, execution is important; having a lot of data doesn’t mean you have a good email strategy.
• The prospect of social media is a more exciting relationship environment than email

Video
• Pre-roll is it the solution we want – is it effective. Demand issue. Are we measuring it well?
• Hulu is coming soon.
• Tivo is sitting between the two worlds, what services do they offer- do they offer value to consumers?
• Debate on providers and the impact on consumers and brands and marketing.
• Crowd sourcing – applied to TV – using principals to make real time decisions vs. search dissection. What do you base your decision on?

Have your say

This is a summary of the points that were made in the meeting. We’ll be working on this and integrating these topics and themes into the ad:tech Sydney 2011 conference programme. If you have feedback on these points or want to make suggestions about additional topics or speakers for the programme then please leave comments or get in touch with me here.

Notes from the other advisory council meetings

Who’s on the other advisory councils:

Social Media Strategy
Data & Analytics
Digital Strategy
e-Commerce / Online Retail advisory
Monetising Digital
Unwired Media
Creative & Brand
Entertainment & Experience
ad:tech Sydney advisory council groups named

Once again we have an ad:tech advisory council for Core Digital Media. This group covers areas such as email, video, home sites, ad networks, affiliate marketing. It’s a broad remit. The aim is to look at the channels, platforms, practices that are still core to our market while technology advances, consumers change behaviour and the market fragments further.

The ad:tech 2011 CONFERENCE program will feature presentations on Core Digital Media and we’re delighted to be working with this group of local industry executives to shape and guide the content:

Chris Brown, Group Managing Director, DDB
Kerry Field, Partner, Innovation, Mindshare
Patty Keegan, Director, Digital Chameleon
Kim Portrate, General Manager, Consumer Marketing, Tourism Australia
Paula O’Connell, Managing Director, Returnity

Have your say on the ad:tech program. Use the comments box to suggest topics and speakers that you think would add value to the program. We look forward to hearing from you.

Read about the other advisory councils:

Social Media Strategy
Monetising Digital
Unwired Media
Digital Strategy
Data & Analytics
e-Commerce / Online Retail
Brand & Creative
Entertainment & Experience
ad:tech Sydney advisory council groups named

Marketing is ultimately about connecting with a group of people and communicating a message to them. Simple in essence; enormously challenging in execution. The myriad of information, options and opportunities at hand mean that you can approach the connection/communication task from a variety of angles.
When we think about marketing, even digital marketing specifically, all marketers have the same tools available to them, websites, social media, email, mobile etc. In addition, the average consumer is subjected to hundreds of advertising messages a day in one form or another. So in this environment, how can a marketer make sure that their message rises above the clutter?
In the old days, advertising was driven by a traditional art director/copywriter team coming up with a “big idea”…the creative. Now, with a more complex list of potential channels, the focus has shifted to less emotive and more analytical considerations such as behavioural insights, channel insights, technology insights and experience insights that enable a brand to connect and engage with the audience… the strategy. But even this is not enough and can lead to widespread wastage if it is directed to the wrong people. The real key comes in how these factors work in combination with targeting the right message at the right person at the right time … in other words, the data.
The debate remains however, what is the most important component of the mix: Creative, strategy or data?
Drayton Bird from Ogilvy once said that the success of marketing activity is 60% targeting (data), 25% offer (strategy) and 15% execution (creative). Is this still true? Is this true in the context of every campaign? Who should be driving the solution given that these three elements are typically managed by three different people within an agency?
This year we have assembled a panel of people from different perspectives to hash out the real question of who or what should be driving the bus in our future marketing landscape. In this session, you can hear from:
Session Leader:
Tom Hutton, Managing Partner, Ideagarden

Panellists:
David Whittle, Managing Director, Mark
Jason Davey, Managing Director, Bullseye
Brent Annells, Head of Radar DDB, DDB

The program for ad:tech Sydney is almost 100% complete and we’re working closely with the panellists to finalise content. I will be blogging about the topics again so that we can get a broader view of the key issues that you, the industry would like to discuss.  To kick off my blogging effort this year, I chose to focus on a subject close to my heart…digital strategy.

2 or 3 years ago, many digital agencies gave strategy away with a pitch in order to win the production business. Now, the field is varied.  Some companies still consider their web presence a channel and relegate it to a project manager to … well, manage.  At the other end of the spectrum however, we are seeing more and more companies pitching strategy out separately and involving many people in their organisation who previously had no insight into marketing activities or their rational.

The question for this panel is, does a company need an overarching digital strategy or is the strategy digital?  Here are a few things to consider:
• Digital is like a retail location.  Even if customers are not wanting to buy right now, if they’re looking at your web presence, they are an opportunity.
• Customers’ expectations are to be able to transact online but delivering this often requires new products and services to be developed.
• Digital initiatives often interface and depend on large scale CRM systems and data warehouses.  Responsibility for these areas crosses many different departments and might require complex political negotiations to get working together.
• When companies start investing big budgets, they also expect ROI. 

Since this is what I do for a living, I have to say that yes, companies do need a digital strategy, but how far should we go? 

Some initiatives in digital marketing are no more complex that promoting something or gathering email addresses … over thinking a simple campaign microsite makes what used to be a cheap and effective use of the internet, prohibitively expensive.  It is interesting to debate just how necessary a digital strategy is.

Strategy also implies something fixed.  However, the ‘always live’, instantaneous digital experience affects how strategies need to evolve, like a living, breathing thing based on feedback and results. How many companies budget for and organise themselves around this kind of effort and how many are still revamping their website every few years and then leaving it alone?

So what makes a good strategy today?  One that the board can understand and ‘buy in’ to, or one that constantly evolves?  Can these be the same thing?  My view is that it is more dependent on organisational culture and less on the PowerPoint but there are times when I have wondered. 

This panel should be really interesting (Tuesday 16th March, 9.45am, Track 3).  Anthony Goldman, Citrus; Ben Dux, theirspace digital; Yvette Mayer, SMV Group Australia; and Mac Walker, Hyro would love to hear what you guys think and any other burning questions you think are worth debate on this topic.
What is the role of a strategist today?
    * What’s the right skill set for a strategist today?
    * Does digital have a role in strategic planning in 2010?

We’ve just announced that Sean Finnegan, President, Chief Digital Officer, Starcom MediaVest Group will be key-noting at ad:tech 2010

ad:tech, 16-17 March 2010

Sean will be talking about how Starcom have worked to get to know their consumers, markets and audiences as closely as possible so that they can deliver really on-target messaging.

The ad:tech keynotes are FREE to attend when you register for an Expo pass. You can see details of the exhibition and keynotes here.

We’ve also released the first details of the program with content and speakers announced online. Register for the full conference before Friday 18th December and you can save over $500.

Any questions, just give me a shout: lucy@ad-tech.com / 02 8923 8334

This was raised by a few people along the way as an area that we should focus on. The idea here is that we have a mix of clients and agency who have recently gone through the process of developing a more strategic approach to their digital marketing efforts (rather than just banging out websites to support the TVC’s.)
What are the most important aspects to get the panel to discuss in relation to this though?

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.