More iMedia moments

"Stay relevant" said Dave Cormier from StrongMail. Stay relevant, test & monitor, keep things in balance and add a sence of urgency to your email.

"Grow or go" said Mehrdad Baghai of Alchemy Growth Partners in an awesome presentation that highlighted the elevated discussions of the corporate strategists considering "Where to compete", vs the day-to-day dilemas of most marketing practicioners worried more about how to execute. Granularity of growth a great book if you want to purchase.


"Know your customer, digitally" professed Anthony Goldman of NextDigital. A challenging thought for those of us not skilled in proctology. Pretty good overview for his Ten Commandments for digital strategy. The 4 P's have become 10 P's in the uber-complicated digital world.

Ed Smith from News Digital Media cracked open the 2nd day with his inspiring presentation on the global trends from his recent visit to Cannes. Whopperfreakout and HBO Voyeur campaign blowing people away with its scope and breadth.

And wrapping up Tuesday morning was Jenny Williams from IdeaGarden nailing the need for internal organisational change and a commitment from industry to bridge the skills gap.

Awesome crew.

iMedia Brand Summit is all action

The iMedia Brand Summit kicked off in the Blue Mountains last night with Mark McCrindle from McCrindle Research giving a very entertaining overview of the changing social landscape, and how that is fundamentally affecting how brands connect with consumers.

Of note were the key trends of a post-life stage, post-structure, post-linear and post-rational society.

Shifts from the drawing to Tradition to a drawing to Innovation. From Reputation to Recommendation. Sit and Listen, to Try and See. Long-term needs to Short-term wants. Content, to Process. Authority, to Authenticity, and from Tech IQ (a given), to Emotional IQ.

These changes best reflected by an observation of a friend of his trying to offer a Gen Y-er a job. Highlighting the generational gap the Boomer saying "You're ignorant and Apathetic", to which the Gen Y-er said "I don't know what you mean, and I don't care"...

Good luck to us all.

Some interesting downloads from his site.

No Such Thing as an Average Joe

When it comes to discussions about email marketing I often get asked the same question: What is the average click through rate?

Without wanting to be too flippant with the standard 'piece of string' comparison, its important to get past what the Average Joes (or Joneses) are up to. Benchmarking is one thing, but in the world of digital media the cost of entry is so low, and the quality of measurement data so high, that there's no real excuse for not putting a toe in the water and creating your own INTERNAL benchmark. Then all you need to do is test some variables, look at the results, and apply the information in a cycle of continual improvement.

In a blog post at Email Insider, Jordan Ayan notes that 'industry average' metrics can be so broad a range as to be totally useless, and that companies should look in their own backyard to find that starting comparison. Trust your own stats, and improve on them from there.

The Adelaide Crows Inner Circle

Fanatical Adelaide Crows supporter, Rebecca, had a real MCB (Money Can't Buy) experience on Saturday when she belted out the Crows team song arm in arm with the players after a nail biting win against the Western Bulldogs.

Rebecca was one of more than a thousand punters who risked the life of their mobile phones in a deluge of biblical proportions when she texted her entry in the Carlton Draught Text'n'Sing promotion at AAMI Stadium.

Via Media was engaged by the Crows and Fosters to manage the interactive side of a test campaign that looks like running through to season 2009 after positive feedback from club, sponsor and fans alike. With co-operation from partner 2moro Mobile, Via Media set up an inbound mobile number to capture entries, before bouncing back an unexpected voice message from superstar Crow Nathan Bock, thanking fans for their support and asking for help to get the Crows over the line in what was a tense final quarter.

Not quite the Big Ad, but targeted, relevant, timely, contextual, engaging communication. Maybe just what Fosters was after?

Marketing Week Goes Digital. Finally.

Last week saw the Marketing Week roadshow hit town, and refreshingly, 'Digital' got it's fair (i.e. dominant) share of the speaker calendar. Themed The Marketing Revolution, 'non-traditional' communication was collectively endorsed as the future of marketing, effectively giving advertising agencies as we know them the life expectancy of a needle-sharing Baghdad mortorcyclist.

Our own CEO Anthony Coles had two speaking spots, IdeaGarden's Jenny Williams painted the big picture in her inimitable way, and industry leaders like Matt Baxter (of Naked fame) and ex Singo's MD Phil Smith underlined the opportunities available to marketers who embrace the changes we're seeing (and thanks also to Phil for adding a guest spot at our ADMA Digital Certificate course to his list of presentations - a rare opportunity for an appreciative audience).

I'd like to think that Marketing Week has galvanised a few people who've been meaning to 'join the revolution', so it will be interesting to see who in Adelaide steps up, and who falls back into the comfort zone of yesterday. Telling times ahead...

Google Adwords Makes a Few Changes

You might have seen some news on changes to Google's Adwords service.

In a post on the company blog, Google has advised that changes to the Quality Score metric means that ads will no longer be tagged 'inactive for search' if they don't meet a minimum bid value. What does this mean? Every ad will now remain live regardless of their maximum bid settings, but it's unlikely to have much/any positive effect on your campaign given the ad is still unlikely to rank on the first page or two. Google will also introduce a metric that indicates the minimum bid value required to be on the first page of paid listings, effectively aligning their metric to a marketing objective, rather than a nominal active/inactive setting. Quality Score will also now be applied dynamically at the time of each search, rather than in batch on setup, to enhance the user experience and ad relevance for people using the search engine.

In a nutshell, be aware of the changes but don't expect any revolutionary difference in the way you use Adwords. You still need a high Quality Score (relevance) to keep bid values low, and still need competitive bids if you want those valuable rankings near the top of the list. Pretty simple, eh?

Read more on the detail here.

Inside AdWords: Quality Score improvements

ADMA Digital Certificate Kicks Off

Last night was something of a watershed moment for digital media education in Adelaide - the intro session to ADMA's certificate in digital marketing.

Part of Via Media's charter, and the reason for our involvement with the course, is using education to bridge the disconnect in SA between companies "knowing we need to do digital" and them actually doing it.

There's belief in the potential of the media, but - without the baseline knowledge required to develop a strategy - uncertainty about where to start. And that translated with the group last night. The key takeout was that digital marketing IS direct marketing, and while I expected a few eyes glazing over with the statistical analysis that comes with 'DM', it was evident that Digital offered these marketers accountability and clarity, as well as the chance to be creative.

A marketing campaign with looks AND brains? Maybe not such a rare creature after all...