By: Robert Petković, Analytics Lead, Bruketa&Žinić&Grey
The 6th AllWeb conference on digital marketing in Macedonia was held on 17 November 2007 in the Drama Theatre in Skopje. It is one of the best conferences on digital marketing in the region. The organisers, Darko Buldioski and Slavica Biljarska Mirčeski, have been attending conferences all over Europe and brought with them to Skopje the most interesting speakers. Their concept “we may not have the most interesting of themes prepared but we do have the most interesting speakers” has proven to be success yet again.
The conference was opened by Dave Briss of OpenForIdeas.org with an interesting and amusing presentation on creativity and how much we don’t know about it and how much we hide behind it not knowing what we doing. All the best ideas are not necessarily the most creative ones, for instance putting parmesan on chocolate might be a creative idea but certainly not a good one. An idea doesn’t necessarily have to be new, what it does need to be is useful.
Damian Damianovski of Assemble Group, the man behind the “Share a Coke” campaign showed us the difference between a good campaign and an excellent campaign, and what brands have the corresponding 12 archetypal personality traits. Peter Szanto, the founder of SpringTab.com, reminded us that data is not clever nor is it stupid, it is us who add value to it. He also said that in today’s digital age we shouldn’t swamp our audience with adverts, we need to evaluate our target audience very carefully and create personalised messages. Aimee Holland concluded the first set of presentations with a talk on chat bots with examples showing that they can sound more human than the average call to a call centre.
After a coffee break during which several interesting discussions started, there was presentations on digital advertising and e commerce. Miroslav Varga of Osijek Agency Escape who is the best Google AdWords trainer in South East Europe took to the stage. In his own inimitable way, he made even those who were still half asleep laugh and using concrete examples showed that the correlation between data doesn’t necessarily mean causality and that millennials like to take things in their own hands because they google less and less “sex” but more and more “porn”. Sergej Zafirovski of InsiderID presented the results of a research project on Macedonia’s readiness for ecommerce.
Zlatko Spasov of Infinite Solutions showed us what omnichannel access in ecommerce means, how to use it and importance of the clients education in terms of the correct promotion of their products and services by the use of more channels.
Jovan Despotovski presented the Fund for Innovation and Technological Development and said there are no stupid ideas the only question is whether they are applicable or practicable.
Coming to the stage after Mirosav Varga would give anyone the jitters; I heard “Robert Petković, the Analytics Lead of Bruketa&Žinic&Grey coming to the stage” from the speakers. It fell to me to keep the audience awake and make sure they won’t be late for their lunch. That aside, I showed the audience that playing around with a lot of data doesn’t have to be boring, especially when we make it sing using psychological torture.
As with all conferences in our region, the Skopje audience do not ask questions during or even after presentations, they do however like to ask questions when face to face when they can’t be overheard. Although I am not keen on that, I’d rather everybody could hear the questions, I’ve become used to interesting discussions starting during the breaks and it is this that make coming to these conferences worthwhile. So it was this time, almost making us late for the next presentation.
Heimo Hammer, the owner of Kraftwerk, the biggest digital agency in Austria, first got us all moving and then by using online poll asked questions of the audience we were all expected to respond to and the results were seen immediately on a digital display provoking discussions. Towards the end he spoke of his most successful projects and their results.
Next on stage was Matej Lončarić of 24sata who demonstrated to us why their digital video works won a whole bunch of international awards last year.
Goran Jankulovski and Miloš Skokić showed us by using real examples that content creation must not be boring and that we really need Instagram.
The final presentation was given by John Burkhart of TBC Global; he talked about creativity and content strategies. Jon presented his b.a.l.l.s.y. concept of quality content. The presentation ended in a fun way by us all throwing balls at Jon as his “crime and punishment”.
Darko and Slavica took to the stage again in the end to thank everybody and announce next year’s conference in Skopje. The thought “surely this can’t be over already” was a confirmation of a useful day, my notebook bulging with inspirational ideas ready to be implemented, it was really worth while being at the Skopje conference.
Thanks for the invite AllWeb, see you next time.
