Media Week

Breakfast meetings seem to be the new thing nowadays!

Don't know whether it's because we're all too busy and only grab a sarnie at lunch, or it's a cheaper, non-alcoholic alternative?!

But one frosty morning last week I caught up with Andy Cocker and Martin Kelly from Infectious to get an update on how their digital start up was getting on after Episode 1 and Episode 2:

So how was Q4? I know you were spending some time in New York – setting up an international office already?

Q4 was a manic end to the year we started Infectious.  On reflection we don’t think it  could have been a better start for us.  We’ve won clients, hired staff and had a  lot of fun in the process. Coming back after Christmas, for the first time ever in our careers we were actually looking forward to it rather than having the normal deep sense of foreboding and insomnia ;). 

We did head out to New York for a week which was a great trip.  The reality is that most of the media technology innovation is happening in the US as the market is so large, it will eventually permeate the UK but we wanted to get a headstart.  We met some cool companies and were pretty inspired by what’s happening at the moment.  We think the digital media industry is in for another shake up in the next 18 months as media exchanges will start to have an increasing impact on the display market and create ROI equivalent to search. No NYC office yet, but who knows in the future!

Where do you see the value of display networks in these uncertain times? Are you not interested in chasing search and direct response?

Display networks have stagnated in the last few years and agencies have started to question their value add.  Unless they have a genuine data and technology proposition to add value to their inventory they won’t last the course and there will be a shake out.  We think the next wave of innovation is coming in this field and this will make display a much more viable proposition for many advertisers, we hear from loads of clients about how disappointed they have been when testing network buys so there will be an education job to do as well as picking your partners carefully.

One key change we see coming is that agencies will start to behave more like networks, and networks more like agencies. Technology and data are driving this convergence.  As this market grows, the interplay between display and search will become increasingly important, if it’s direct response advertising, it’s ridiculous to treat them separately. We firmly believe that!

You set out your stall back in June by saying you had a different approach to managing your clients budgets. Given we’re now in a recession, has your focus moved or have you felt the need to make minor adjustments to strategy?

The recession has been an odd thing for us.  We started with no clients or unrealistic targets so we’ve not felt the downturn in many ways, the people who suffered the most are those who had huge expectations for the year and had built resource to meet that.  Strategically the recession has had no impact on what we offer to clients as a product but we think it’s made what we have to say more relevant. 

When budgets are tight, a very data and technology driven approach has resonated with more advanced digital clients.

What have you got planned between now and when we beat the Aussies at Cricket this Summer?

Growth, and ‘product’ development.  This year has started even more frantically than Q4.  We’re doing lots of interesting work for our current clients, pitching for some great new clients and are in the process of rolling out a new business unit that will sit alongside the main Infectious offering. We’re about to embark on a pilot programme with a number of big name advertisers, to demonstrate the efficiency of this new ‘intelligent display’ offering.  

We’ve grown the team already this year, hiring from the investment banking sector which is really refreshing as having not worked in digital means you don’t carry baggage from the way things have been done in the industry to date.  We love our offices but it won’t be a surprise if we outgrow then by the time we complete the whitewash at the Oval......

Robin Goad at Hitwise has just Tweeted that we’re spending more time on social networking sites than fiddling around with online porn!

Apparently this change took place in October but Robin’s been keeping his beady eye on it and although the gap hasn’t widened much, our love for keeping in touch is still out-weighing our need for titillation!

Compared with the US, it’s taken us Brits a while to take a virtual cold shower as our American cousins placed “poking” over porn in mid-2007.

From this BBC video interview with Stephen Fry and the proliferation of other celebrities who are boarding the good ship Twitter, surely porn will be left in its wake over here?

For readers of Media Week who might not be aware of what Search Engine Strategies is, could you give us the 30 second “elevator pitch”?

SES London is the only established Search Marketing Conference in the UK.  Specifically it is a forum for marketers and their executive management teams to get together with expert practitioners and discuss digital marketing opportunities for their business specifically as they relate to Search Engine Marketing and Optimisation (SEM/SEO). SES London is a fantastic opportunity to see if your marketing plan stacks up to the competition’s. 

You're relatively new to the top job overseeing all the global events, how’s it been going?

So far so good… the Search and larger Digital communities have welcomed me with open arms, and for that I am extremely grateful.

Let’s not forget about ClickZ.com and SearchEngineWatch.com by the way (the sites get over a million digital marketing and agency professionals visiting each month!).

How do UK search marketers stack up against folks from the rest of the world? Do you see any regional differences in approach?

Search Marketers transcend boarders… there are a few differences but for the most part skill levels are not dictated by region.  One difference I have seen however is that multilingual SEO and multi-language PPC management is of greater importance to UK SEMs likely due to their closer proximity to Europe and its bouquet of cultures/languages (this however is on a case by case basis and is more company specific than regional).

What can delegates expect from this year’s show?

50 Sessions designed so that you leave with pages upon pages of actionable notes (Paid Search and SEO fundamentals through to advanced techniques, Landing Page Tuning, Social Media Marketing, Successful Site Architecture, Brand Management and much more), 80+ Expert Speakers & 2 Keynotes - Matt Mason, who will speak about how the youth culture online is blurring the long-established boundaries between right and wrong online and how business can take advantage of this phenomenon and then a roundtable Keynote discussion on where the SEO Industry is headed, which will feature moderator and show host,  Mike Grehan alongside the all star panel Kevin Ryan, Rand Fishkin, Brett Tabke, Chris Sherman, and Jill Whalen.

We have also added an extra day of classroom style SEM training for those who can not make the 3 day commitment or those who want to fully immerse themselves in all things Search.

This is really a fantastic opportunity to get out of the office for a few days meet some new people and really catch up on all the developments the industry has experience this past year. 

Any incentives to attend in these lean economic times?

For you… of course.  Because your subscribers are smart enough to read your column they get a 20% discount to the show if they use 20MWK during the registration process.

Anyone see Big Chef Takes on Little Chef last night on Channel 4?

The roadside cafe and the Happy Eater chain were the height of gastronomic delight when I was a child, so seeing Heston Blumenthal try his hardest to revamp the menu and kick start a bit of life into the British standard was a funny and at times gripping show, although he was definitely taking the p*ss with some of the dishes like Lancashire Hotpot with sweetbreads and oysters!

Alas as with all these things, the firm and their “blue sky thinking”, “thinking outside the box” chief executive failed to get their website in order so when I went on during the show it had crashed!

Now the second part of the show is on tonight, so I hope they stick a few more 50ps in the meter and pump up the bandwidth because they have a great way of driving folks back into their restaurants here, and if people want to find their nearest branch or check out the new menu, then the web if the first place they’ll start.

This ad made me feel REALLY old when I saw it last night!

Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Our Price and Wimpey......where did it all go right?

If you cast you mind back to Christmas Day 2007, you may remember the headlines being all about shopping online.

The Telegraph told us that a whopping 3.5 million of us would be hunting for delicious deals on the web, and they weren’t wrong.

As the likes of M&S and Argos started opening their virtual doors, searches for the keyword “sales” grew exponentially.

Hitwise reported a 249% growth in the use of the search term and John Lewis reported sales up 68% on the previous year.

This year, 4m Brits were spending Xmas cash in between the turkey and the Queen’s speech, £102m in fact and 21% up on last year!

Now, although transactions were up, sales were down. What I’ve read points to people buying items of less value, but that surely stands to reason as everything seems to be on sale or heavily discounted.

The credit crunch hasn’t stopped people shopping online at all.

What these lean economic times have yielded is a much more savvy shopper. I was shopping in Kingston and around Richmond over the holidays and the stores were rampant!

It appears, that although people are reluctant to spend a huge amount of cash on holidays this year - Robin Goad at Hitwise has indicated that searches for flights are 42% down on last year – the UK consumer still has an eye for a bargain.

If they can get that smart work suit for 70% less or get 300 DVDs for the price of one, they will, and they have the funds to do so!

There is uncertainty in our economy. Some folks are sadly in a bit of a pickle having overstretched themselves, and some face losing their jobs, but there are swathes of consumers who will spend, and who will spend wisely.

This year’s Christmas online traffic results prove that advertising online is still a hugely viable option because that’s where the consumers are looking for stuff they need.

Advertisers just need to adopt the same strategies that consumers do, taking a bit more time over their budget allocation, insisting on value for money and then getting deep into the analysis of business results.

After what seems like ages, I’m back in the office, plump, refreshed, not drinking for three weeks and full of the joys of.....erm....a freezing cold English winter.

Colleagues within a few feet of me have already started smoking, waiting for the Chinese New Year to try again, and one burly fellow in our editorial department is furiously applying “stop ‘n’ grow” to his fingernails at an alarming frequency.

Personal resolutions aside, I’m interested to know if there are any business ones out there?

Here are mine:

Work Smarter!

Notice I didn’t say harder. I’ve found that juggling so many balls/projects over the years has made me adopt bad habits when it comes to prioritising tasks. I’m not very good at sticking to one thing for very long, but that doesn’t mean I should be trying to do bits of five different endeavours at the same time.

Towards the end of last year I started setting time limits for me carry out work. This would mean shutting down email so I couldn’t see new stuff coming in and using my laptop’s clock to race through a blog post in say an hour.

If I’m writing a report I’ll challenge myself to complete as much as I can in 45 minutes in the morning before moving onto something else, promising to return to the report, review, rewrite and finish in the afternoon.

It’s a technique that really worked for me and also helped me figure out what on earth I’d done on that particular day by the end of it.

Better Presenting!

I love talking to advertisers about online marketing and have done loads of seminars and conferences to hundreds of people over the years. I wrote a post on my personal blog - Public Speaking Tips To Improve Presentation Skills – which spawned a load more tips and tricks from others in the industry like:

Brian Carter – “… it would help EVERY SEO/SEM conference speaker- is that the biggest danger of the expert or informative speaker is being BORING.  It’s tempting to fill your whole presentation to the brim 100% with solid, technical info, tips, and tricks, and you might be concerned about seeming to have too “fluff-filled” of a presentation, but if you can’t keep them awake and stimulated, you can’t get ANY of your points across. The real problem is finding that right balance of entertainment and information.”

Jon Beeston – “Before I speak at any event, I mentally rehearse what I want to happen during my talk, e.g. people engaging with me, laughing at the jokes, nodding in appreciation, applauding at the end etc. Always focusing on the positive outcomes and emotions I will experience, rather than a word-by-word rehearsal. I’ll go through this 3-4 times, preferably 5-6. When it comes to the actual event, I can be extremely positive and confident because mentally I’ve been through it before and I’m in the right state of mind.”

I’ll be actioning some of this presenting advice this year for sure!

Be Nicer!

This might sound like a personal resolution but I think it can be very effective in a business context, especially in these lean economic times.

In my line of work - social media, blogs and forums – you can come across far more negative content than positive. People seem to be much more willing to talk about what’s going wrong, what they don’t have and what they can’t do, than to articulate what’s going right in their lives and what they’re happy about.

In every office in London there’ll be that person who’s dissing everyone else, the office moaner who negatively manipulates and tries to bring everyone else down. I’m not saying I’ve ever been that person but I can sure as hell try and dilute the poison by being positive, happy and nice to be around.

Having a “can do” attitude will rub off on others and create a great working atmosphere where colleagues recognise there are challenges but stick together and work to overcome them, rather than sitting around complaining.

Will you be working any differently in 2009?