• Tweet

• Tweet

An article I wrote for Marketing Magazine reviewing The Australian Direct Marketing Association Forum 2010.

Transcription:

ADMA Forum 2010.

http://bit.ly/admaf

The Marketing industry is in transition!  That was the clear message at this year’s  ADMA Forum at the Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre.

“ADMA 2010 had emphasis on the ability to master multi-channel campaigns” , Rob Edwards – CEO ADMA

As the Social Media Manager for the event I was lucky enough to have a bird’s eye view as local and international visitors shared a similar theme.

A great line-up of speakers offered a wide-range of experienced and newer talents. Tim Suther (CMO – ACXIOM), Stan Rapp, Olivier Blanchard (BrandBuilder), Meaghan Burdick (Obama For America Marketing Director) led the overseas contingent while locally we were ably represented by agency experts including Jeff Richardson from The Online Circle Group, Iain McDonald from Razorfish, and Jeremy Perrot from McCann WorldGroup, and clients with real life experience including Cadbury’s Roger Sharp, Karen Ganschow from Telstra, Ed Falconiform Myer and Daniel Roberts from Woolworths .

Networking was guaranteed with the 2010 event having its biggest delegate numbers ever.  400 people attended the first day’s keynote address and more came in later.

A broad range of exhibitors from a wide variety of business and technology providers showed they understand the challenges of the transition required and are committed to making their offering as detailed and comprehensive as possible.

Lesson #1 from the ADMA Forum 2010 – Multi-Channel campaigns are becoming increasingly vital for companies determined to grow.

• Tim Suther-CMO of Axciom on his presentation (one of my favourites) Hope is not a strategy, “Not too long ago 80% of CEO’s said they deliver a superior customer experience. 8% of customer’s agreed…May I suggest a change may be necessary.”
• Roger Sharp from Cadbury and Jeff Richardson from The Online Circle went into detail outlining a crisis Cadbury went through in 2009 where consumers voiced their cause online against the brand. This forced the company to embrace the online environment with The Online Circle creating a very detailed strategy to listen and work with the online influencers to solve the problem.

Lesson #2 from the ADMA Forum 2010 – Understand multi-dimensional insights.

• Changing consumer behaviour starts with changing yours. You cannot predict the future but you can use your data, analytics information and website behaviour to help shape your Marketing Strategy.

• “One method is not ‘the only’ method any more. Take advantage of all of the direct marketing and social media tools that are available to speak to your customers today. We did and we elected the U.S. president” Meaghan Burdik – Direct Marketing Director, Obama for America.

• The advice on the floor was: Build intuitive, dynamic, multi-channel campaigns to engage customers on a personal level. Engaging with customers in a two-way dialogue, connecting online and offline channels within an analytics framework and fully recognising the value of each individual customer is the way of the future.

·         “Social Media means data. All actions leave a trail and you can use this data for research and strategy. It should be treated like any other Marketing Communications opportunity: with One Strategy, not 100 tactics”. Jeff Richardson, CEO The Online Circle.

·         “Monitor cross channels and avoid channel conflicts” Daniel Roberts – Head of Online Woolworth.

A strong message from the speakers was the need to marry research, on handoff line, with database analysis to define an holistic understand of your target. At some point during the conference someone told me “Better to have a simple analysis that delivers insight than complex analysis that delivers confusion”.

Lesson #3 from the ADMA Forum 2010: Make sure off-line and on-line communications are aligned. Your brand and key messages should be consistent across the spectrum of channels available. Know your market, learn which mixed channel customers respond best and provide premium results. (thanks to Graham Plant from Pacific Digital).

And then came the subject of ROI and the measurement of impact of online into offline conversions

• Olivier Blanchard (@thebrandbuilder), Christian Bartens (Datalicious) and Karen Ganschow (Telstra) nailed the topic, delivering great presentations about the real tangibility of measuring financial ROI and the impact of online into offline activity. Very impressive, real and informative.

Mr Blanchard  “to effectively measure the impact of social media, companies need to blend three things: social media measurement, analytics and a business metric. Where most companies fail is they don’t add that third component.

Through my eyes – it was good to see most companies and agencies measuring social media with criteria such as how often people click on ads, likes and followers those numbers are still the Internet currency. However it was disappointing that they failed to include harder business metrics to truly measure the impact on the bottom line.

Far from being a theoretical discussion, the ADMA Forum 2010 was a forum to discuss the change in consumer behaviour and the dangerous approach of considering your communications in silos being driven by tactics and channels rather than insights and strategy. Well worth being there.

Lucio Ribeiro is Managing Director for The Online Circle and it was ADMA Forum 2010 Social Media Manager, you can find him on Twitter @lucio_ribeiro or http://au.linkedin.com/in/luciodiasribeiro

You also might like:

1. Stan Rapp The godfather of Direct Marketing at ADMA Forum 2010
2. Marketing Magazine Special Edition
3. Affiliate Marketing Forum Australia
4. Things to do Before ad:tech Sydney 2010
5. The Most underutilised Social Media tool.