The Internet and Mobile Marketing Association of the Philippines (IMMAP) just held the 3rd Interactive Marketing Summit at the SMX Convention Center in Pasay City and it was a very informative 2-day conference. Having the theme "Digital Delivers," the conference presented the audience of marketing and ad agency folks compelling cases for putting more attention on internet and mobile marketing.
Attending the conference had a PhP12,000 price tag, but thankfully, I got a free pass (Yey!) and that paved the way for my attendance. I was tweeting during the event, despite the spotty wifi at the venue. (You follow tweets at the event by looking for the #immap hashtag in twitter).
Day 1
The first day kicked-off with keynotes from Sandra Puno of Nestle, Charmaine Canillas of Petron, Bennett Porter of Yahoo. Morning sessions were more of a landscape snapshot of the digital marketing scene in the Philippines, with presentations on trends, figures and high level internet marketing. The afternoon session was led by Jim Lafferty of P&G and Kent Wertime of OgilvyOne Asia Pacific. The talks focused on the strength of digital marketing, and mindsets to be adopted when diving into digital marketing. The 2009 Boomerang Award winners were also presented in the evening.
The Good: The best talks of the day were by Jim Lafferty, Kent Wertime, and Bennet Porter.
- Jim posited that digital marketing is still expensive and the industry should be "hypercompetitive" to breakthrough and get bigger allocations in ad budgets.
- Kent Wertime shared several points on how companies should go about digital marketing, and one point that resonated was the concept of "branded utility," or giving your customers something actually usefull (as opposed to fluffed-up marketing messages), and just making sure they know you were the one who provided the service.
- Bennet Porter gave a very comprehensive case study on Yahoo's Purple hunt campaign and my takeaway there is that the offer should be very compelling and integration with offline activities can help drive both online and offline success.
Day 2
The second day talks were, over-all, more interactive as the afternoon sessions were more like mini-forums from bloggers and winners of the 2009 Boomerang Awards.
Speaking of the Boomerang Awards, here's the list of this year's winners:
Cyber Boomerang Category:
- Gold Award: Palistuhan by Proximity Philippines
- Silver Award: Marlboro Levels by Arc Worldwide Philippines, Co., Inc.
- Bronze: Honda Jazz: The Fun Utility Vehicle by Honda Cars Inc.
Mobile Boomerang Category:
- Gold Award: Quaker Oats Eat Well and Win Promo by Proximty Philippines/BBDO Guerrero
- Silver Award: Pampers Hearts Club by Proximity Philippines/BBDO Guerrero
Integrated Boomerang Category:
- Gold Award: Sandbox by: Smart Communications, Inc. and Wolfpac
- Silver Award: Madonna Mania by EGG
- Bronze Award: Pepsi 'Kada Can: Get Your Barkada on the Can by Proximity Philippines/BBDO Guerrero
Innovation Boomerang Category:
- Winner: Awesome Philippines Second Life Press Conference by the Philippine Department of Tourism and Media Contacts Philippines
Takeaways & Moving Forward
The conference had presented a few themes that suggested the climate of the Philippine digital marketing industry:
- The Philippines is still a "traditional" marketing country
- There are still no convincing metric and measurements presented to advertisers
- Digital marketing is still a risky proposition to a lot of companies
- Customer engagement in the digital space is still done best with putting the customer's needs ahead
- Customer co-creation was found to be a good way of making brand advocates
- Kent Wertime put it best: "Serve, not Sell" when it comes to digital marketing.
While the conference was far from perfect (too few sockets for notebooks, bad wi-fi connection from Smart, confusing seating arrangements, and ignoring micro-blogging), I imagine the conference opening the eyes of a great deal of people in the audience. To be honest, all of the material in the conference is covered in our Winning Internet Marketing Strategies & Tactics course at AIM, and I definitely would like to see more innovations and "things to come" talks in future IMMAP summits. :)
--
Here are some good blog posts on the 3rd Interactive Marketing Summit:
--
Here are some good blog posts on the 3rd Interactive Marketing Summit:
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment