Two Cents

Here are the highlights from some of the sessions on day two of the AIMIA Digital Summit which I attended last week.

FMCG Opportunities
Paul Fisher, CEO of IAB Australia, started the day with some facts and commentary about local online advertising. He commented that marketers are learning to leverage the multiplier effects of using online display advertising with search, email, video and social media by understanding how each tool reaches and influences consumers.

He felt there are big opportunities for FMCG brands in the next four years. His opinion was that now reach and frequency are being delivered online in Australia, it will demonstrate to the major supermarkets that digital marketing can have a real impact on unit sales. This should lead to shelf space in stores being allocated to brands that implement compelling and effective interactive campaigns which should encourage more FMCG brands to embrace the medium.

Facebook, Facebook, Facebook
Regional Vice President of Facebook, Paul Borrud, told the audience that we have entered the marketing era of interactive – one that is built upon creating powerful networks and maintaining relationships with consumers. He gave some astonishing statistics into Australian Facebook usage, indicated that users interact with ‘Engagement Ads’ the same way they interact with other content on Facebook and how conversations with users lead to organic impressions on the social network. Paul’s talk reinforced to me how Facebook gives companies the perfect platform to make their brand more open and connected to its fans.

Analytics Driven Interactive Success
Stuart Tucker from Aussie Home Loans and Ian McDonald from Amnesia delivered the best case study of the conference when taking us through the digital life of Aussie from the year 2000. The web is such a driving force for Aussie now that they no longer put their phone number on television ads, just their URL. It is a long way from when the company had to purchase the aussie.com.au domain name using “cash in brown paper bags” to ensure that they didn’t continue to lose visitor traffic to the most intuitive web address for their brand name which they did not own.

The company now generates 75% of its business from the web. Aussie has been able to achieve this by making their interactive focus all about the customer journey and experience. Results are driven using live monitoring of web analytics and conducting weekly analysis of business data against online activity. Search campaigns, the web site and online application forms all undergo multivariate testing and optimisation so that every opportunity to improve the user experience and ultimately conversion rates is achieved.

Video Killed the Television Stations
Ian Gardiner, CEO of online video streaming company Viocorp, gave the digital summit attendees some interesting information about online video. He stated that over three billion videos are watched online each day and that because broadcasters in Australia haven’t provided suitable video content platforms which consumers have embraced, we are now the highest users per head of BitTorrent in the world.

When asked if a single platform would win the battle of online video, it was Gardiner’s position that while TiVo, Apple TV, Hulu, Boxee and Foxtel IQ were good services, he did not think one single platform would dominate the market. He followed that by saying if the iPhone could dramatically improve its processing power it may possibly be the single device that could “win” video content delivery by linking together consumers’ three screens (television, computer and mobile).

Australia’s Slow Internet
Tony Marlow, Research Director at Nielsen Online, showed some interesting statistics from Nielsen’s studies about cross media consumption. Nearly 60% of people use the internet while watching TV. These fragmented spans of attention mean that as marketers we have to work very hard for the time and attention of consumers.

Tony mentioned that dial up internet has almost been completely phased out as broadband has now reached near saturation in metropolitan Australia. Though, our access speeds are slow by International standards. Out best is 30MBS compared to the 100MBS available in the likes of Singapore, Hong Kong, Sweden and Japan.

Selling Handbags Online
Iain Nairn, CEO of the Witchery Group who own the fashion accessory retailer Mimco and Karson Stimson from WeAreDigital presented an excellent online retail case study about Mimco’s online store.

From the outset the company placed an emphasis on web analytics and business intelligence and unlike many retailers, they were not fearful of it cannibalising sales from their 60 offline stores so resourced it as if it was an additional store to ensure its success. Since launching in August 2008, the online store has already grown to be their 10th largest and turns over $90,000 per month. Mimco recovered their initial outlay for setting the site up in the first two months.

It’s also interesting to see how Mimco make use of social media. Nairn indicated that people are loyal to a brand and want to connect but not just to a handbag. Social media allows Mimco to talk to their consumers in a richer way than advertising ever could.

Thanks!
I’d like to thank AIMIA and the organisers for allowing me to present and attend the Digital Summit. There were a terrific range of speakers and topics discussing the latest trends and future opportunities in the digital marketing sector. I hope this and my day one wrap up gave people who didn’t attend some insights into what was an excellent event.

Anthony Dever is BCM’s Interactive Strategist

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

We live in an age of fragmenting media, increased reliance on word of mouth recommendations, and technology like Foxtel IQ that makes it all too easy to skip an ad.

Doesn’t it sometimes make you wonder… are consumers simply outgrowing advertising?

Next Thursday, BCM partner Kevin Moreland will be chairing a Round Table discussing exactly that. He’ll be picking the minds of some of the best in the industry, including:

• Paul Fisher (CEO, Internet Advertising Bureau, Sydney)
• Drew Parkes (Digital Marketing Manager, Microsoft XBOX, Sydney)
• Paul Byrnes (General Manager, Emitch, Brisbane)
• Andrew Lockwood (Managing Director, Postclick, Sydney)

Presented by the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association (AIMIA), it promises to be a highly informative, entertaining and practical discussion, of value for all marketers. It comes highly recommended to all readers of Two Cents.

The Round Table will be followed by networking drinks (always entertaining at AIMIA events!)

For more details about what to expect on the day, click here.

Tickets are selling fast, so be sure to secure yours – we hope to see you on the day!