The 5th annual AIMIA Digital Summit brings together our country’s digital marketing and media leaders who are shaping the Australian digital landscape. For two days the latest trends and future opportunities are discussed.
I was lucky enough to attend and present this year so I thought I’d post a quick wrap up of some of yesterday’s sessions to give people highlights of Australia’s leading digital marketing and media event.
Digital Economy
The summit was opened by Mia Garlick the Assistant Secretary from the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy. She talked through the recently released discussion paper Australia’s Digital Economy: Future Directions.
It outlines the key areas of focus for Government, industry and the community to maximise the benefit of the digital economy. It is an interesting discussion paper, not least of which because of how it was released- online with tag clouds and individual sections of the document shareable, to promote discussion. The most notable aspect of the report was that the digital direction of the country should be a collaborative effort by industry and the community. A great example of that is the Federal Government’s recent Mashup Australia contest that provides open data-sets for industry to create mash-ups for the benefit of the community.
Super Fast Broadband
Aidan Tudehope the Managing Director from hosting and broadband infrastructure provider Macquire Telecom gave attendees some confidence around the National Broadband Network roll out. He says it will deliver on its promises and that business should start planning now about what they can do with it because in three years it will be live. He claims the the internet user experience will be so rich and fast for web sites/applications that are hosted on Australian servers, it will result in a ‘walled garden’ effect resulting in consumers choosing local digital experiences ahead of those hosted overseas.
User Experience
Michael Kordahi the Developer Evangelist (yes, evangelist is a real job title!) at Microsoft Australia gave the audience a look at the Microsoft Office Labs 2019 video that showcases possible future technologies and digital services.
He then provided some thoughts into the likelihood and time frames of the availability of some of the Minority Report style products which were featured in the video and when they might be available to the consumer market.
While there were so many things worthy of being mentioned as it was my favourite session of the day -- the single observation I took away from Michael’s talk was that now and into the future the user experience is the most important thing. People will always visit and use the web sites that provide the best experience whether that be via static html or flash powered animation. The technology should not drive the development. The user experience should be the focus as it is the easiest most true market differentiator in the digital space.
The Consumer Journey Online
Jonathan Sinton the Strategy Director from research company TNS gave some very interesting online consumer insights out of a Google sponsored study. Specifically dealing with the buying cycles and purchase funnel of consumers, the study looked at the information sources they research products at before buying online. Especially interesting were the gaps identified by the study in consumer generated media by various industry sectors and the opportunities that exisit in certain product categories. He also mentioned that the lack of product variety available online in Australia compared with internationally is holding back online shopping in Australia.
Digital Media
The keynote speech was given by Simon Danker the Director of Digital Media at the BBC. He delivered the reasons why and how the BBC have become a successful 21st century media business -- through the delivery of their programming and content via multiple platforms. He admitted that the media industry is in a period of experimentation with revenue models but felt that their formula for success was delivered by having an audience who was interested in high quality content, on whichever platform their consumers choose but ensuring there is always a revenue model associated with what they do digitally.
When going through the conference attendee list I saw that the ABC has good representation, tI had to wonder where were the commercial stations. It would have been great to have see some of Australia’s broadcasters present.
One Thought
My own presentation was about digital business strategies for the future. My topic dealt with how businesses need to take on the challenge of consumer’s interactive attention deficit disorder (caused by information overload) and why putting the consumer at the centre of the strategy through the “power of one thought” makes a huge difference in terms of engagement. I will post my presentation in a separate blog post. It seemed to go well with the audience laughing at most of the bits I wanted them to and not at the bits I didn’t (thankfully!). I hope the audience got some benefit out of it. I would love any feedback.
Mobile, Mobile, Mobile!
The afternoon program then changed to focus on the rise of mobile with Jennifer Wilson the chairperson of the AIMIA Mobile Industry Group giving a massive number of statistics and insights into trends the mobile marketing sector here in Australia. The most interesting thing Jennifer said that was she felt that iPhone will get some serious competition over the next few years with other handsets, platforms and mobile application stores seriously challenging Apple’s dominance in the smart phone sector. She felt that Google’s Android mobile operating platform will become the dominant mobile ecosystem by 2012.
Claudia Sagripanti the Mobile Communications Director from Group M predicted that within the next 24 months mobile advertising will take off here in Australia. She mentioned that mobile will not be the preferred screen but will be the ‘now’ screen and that the time, place and purpose of usage of mobile will be different from regular internet behaviors and advertisers need to target accordingly.
The last session was with Jennifer Hiley -- a Mobile Integration Specialist at The Hyperfactory who gave five very good case studies of mobile applications. My favourite was the iPhone application for Taco Bell that combined both utility and entertainment through the “Why pay more! Shaker” that had a GPS store locator built in.
Overall, the first day of Digital Summit was superb and I’m looking forward to day two.
Anthony Dever is BCM’s Interactive Strategist
Great summary Anthony – am I right in thinking then that most presentations covered common themes of the importance of understanding user behaviour and the user experience (both online and mobile) and the evolving significance of online communities and clusters of users?
Great summary Anthony – if the broadband roll out lives up to expectation it will have enormous implications for marketing and advertising!