Five things from Ad:tech Sydney

It has come to my attention that I kind of ramble on a bit so I'm keeping this post really short and a pointer to possible future content. Back in March (Hey I know, sooooo current!) I was lucky enough to go to Ad:tech Sydney and I've got lots to share from that experience but the five big things were really...

1. Digital Display Ads: Go big, go smart or go home.Small ads buried down the bottom of a secondary page in a website don't work, you need to think of online display advertising almost like a TV spend. You have to throw decent money at it if its going to work. The caveat is if you are a niche product and can target niche websites which are cheaper.
   
   Going smart, well it's an area I know little about but those who are big on analysis know that its about using the metrics at your disposal, learning about re-marketing and tracking your customers. By way of example we are looking very closely at the Canberra Times online. Their weekday unique visitors outstrip their daily circulation and the advertising is 100% 'viewership' rather than CPI which makes it good value. We will shortly be giving this a serious trial and looking very closely at the metrics (when I get time to skill myself up!!).
   
   If you can't afford to go for impact then it really is best to look more so at Google Adwords, Youtube and Facebook Advertising instead. Which is certainly not second best, in fact many professionals who can afford to go big actively choose not to and use these tools more often instead.
2. Optimise for mobileThe universal trend was that if you aren't currently optimising for mobile then you are already behind, speaker after speaker was ramming home this fact, 16% of all web traffic is currently done on mobile and in a year's time this will be 32%. Also mobile web traffic happens closer in proximity to the purchase, be it in time or geography (such as if the item requires attending a bricks and mortar location like a restaurant). If you aren't giving a good mobile experience you are about to not be in the game.
3. Take Part is potentially a really valuable engagement toolTake Part is a new initiative at my work, the basic premise is that the impact of the arts is magnified immeasurably when people are given the opportunity to engage more deeply with that product, learn more about the story and artform and artists, Take Part is our sub-brand for advertising these opportunities. It basically makes for more affected and loyal advocates.This basic premise was repeated in more business-like terms often throughout the conference, the Commonwealth Bank was heavily focused on using social media to herd people toward engaging with the Comm Bank at a local level at real world events. Other businesses were clamouring for that elusive path between social media engagement and real world engagement that I could see we already had.
4. No one really knows what to do with EDM'sThe agencies weren't even pitching campaigns with email components, not one case study featured the words "and then for the email we did..", even the paid-for-by-stallholders breakfast panel of EDM solution suppliers didn't really know what do say, I've never seen a more maudlin bunch!
   
   So EDM's are a bit like newspapers and faxes, yesterday's news and at the beginning of a slow decline BUT your business has all these email addresses still right ? Maybe a few less than five years ago, maybe with lower stats but it's still a powerful resource right?
   
   The best take-homes from the panel was get smart, smart, smart! Sophisticated slicing and dicing, preferably with some systematic automation to make it workable during your business day is the key to maintaining this resource. Hitting just the right customer, with the right product at the right time is the key. Having an about-to-lapse trigger, a trigger when for when X consumable would be just about empty and hit them with an offer to re-purchase. These are the ways forward, and the arts industry patiently waits for its ticketing systems to catch up!
5. This simple yet powerful brainstorm process – define the problem, define the solution then ask “what’s the magic?” and don’t stop until you find it.Dave Whittle of MC Saatchi was running this little workshop of case studies and this simple yet powerful phrase "What's the magic?" really resonated with me. He also said "Never ever start a campaign with 'what will the poster look like?'" which is so true, start with Problem>solution>MAGIC! then maybe later you'll need to design something, but first go for the magic, the idea, it may not even be a designed focused idea it could be anything. Starting with the poster constrains your thinking. 

Umm hows that? Not so short huh? Sorry will try harder next time, in the meantime keep asking yourself "What's the magic?", I know it's simple and a bit obvious but it's really powerful if you let it in.