Conferences

Last Thursday the Gravytrain team were in full force at the Figaro Digital Marketing Conference. With hundreds of digital marketers all converging on one place, this was one of the biggest conferences of the year and one not to be missed. We certainly enjoyed the day, whilst the after party drinks were an added bonus!

The conference was packed full with talks from a wide range of the industry’s professionals, both agency side and client side, while the conference also included the fabled Figaro21’s – this is where a series of speakers rattle through 21 slides, each of which last just 21 seconds. It’s an intense struggle against time and it makes for very entertaining, yet informative viewing! Billed as the session to make grown adults weep, we nominated our own Head of Search, Matthew Oxley, to kick off the 21’s.

Matthew’s talk detailed the rise of mobile and tablet and how device segmentation is now key for all paid search campaigns. Matthew outlined that by the end of 2013, it is predicted that mobile web usage will actually overtake desktop web usage. Mobile is seemingly dominating our lives more and more as we have a constant need for information and data.

The mobile phone has become such an integral part of our lives and with the addition of the tablet, searching while on the go has become even easier than ever before. So, it is little surprise that mobile web usage will soon surpass desktop web usage.

Furthermore, there were other notable presentations, such as Jack Lundie, from Save the Children, who acted out a conversation with himself. The slick nature of his delivery and creativity of his presentation made for compelling viewing!

Then there was Peter Wood from Steak who deserves a mention simply for his incredible jacket! It sparked quite a response on Twitter…He did give a fantastic presentation too about the merger of SEO and Social Media, what he called “SEOcial”.

With the digital marketing landscape constantly evolving and more digital marketers becoming savvy to the rise of mobile web usage, the overriding theme of this year’s Figaro Conference truly was device segmentation and the importance of it. “Ignore mobile at your peril” was one particular quote that stood out for me!

Last week the Gravytrain team took a trip to the Online Marketing Show 2011, based in Kensington Olympia’s Grand Hall. The two day conference was held by New Media Age and explored the latest digital media and marketing trends. For all of us in digital marketing, this event was a great opportunity to find out about new innovations and stay ahead of the fast changing environment.

We also get invited to give presentations at industry conferences. The most recent was Gravytrain’s Managing Director, Kevin Taylor, who was a guest speaker at last week’s Social Academy’s seminar. However, it’s great to attend conferences ourselves and hear from other industry experts.

The Online Marketing Show had an impressive speaker line up from global brands such as Dominos, Nokia and Expedia talking about their campaigns which enabled visitors to learn from them and apply the latest thinking to their own projects.

We were also able to catch up on what’s new in mobile and apps, email and more. E.g. how 4G will soon cover rural areas in the UK that don’t currently have access to broadband and how we will be able to pay for our shopping using our mobile phones in the near future.

It was particularly pleasing to see so many brands adopting a multi-channel approach and finally looking at different attribution models.

In an era where some companies operate in as many as a dozen channels, it’s never been more important to understand the value each channel contributes.

We had a great time engaging with some of the best people in the industry, and we’re looking forward to visiting the Online Marketing Show 2012!

Gravytrain visits the Online Marketing Show 2011

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