What went wrong?
Without going into too much detail, the designers had optimised the site for Internet Explorer 8 using a non standard font that looked fine on IE8 and all the other browsers specified in the documents. What nobody had picked up on was that all of the company staff, using thousands of computers around the world, were still on an old version of Internet Explorer – IE6. And IE6 displayed the font very badly.

Who was to blame?
Ermm, that would be me. In my defence I was brought in relatively late more as a fire fighter rather than a Project Manager and nobody could find the Functional Specification document or the Technical Specification so I concentrated on the big issues around content that were likely to delay the launch. But I should have spotted the risks in not checking these vital documents and the risk that arose from the distinctly frosty relationship between the Project Sponsor and the in house IT team.

I could go into lots of detail about how I should have avoided this problem, in fact I will – on the Digital Project Management course run by Andrew Gordon and myself on 5^th March in Teddington. See you there and learn from my mistakes… In the meantime, if you’ve got any of your own that you’re prepared to share, it would be good to hear them!

The good news is that mobile is delivering results and moving the needle for today’s pioneering mobile marketers. eBay announced that mobile transactions – tracking at one per second – generated sales of $5 billion for 2011. A five-fold increase on 2010. Other market leading brands which have already embraced mobile include Betfair, Bloomberg, British Airways, Diageo, GSK, Guardian Media Group, Heineken, Jaguar, M&S, Nike, NSPCC and TripAdvisor. Each presents mobile sceptics with evidence that mobile is a sound investment.  

Speaking at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January, WPP’s Sir Martin Sorrell pointed out the short term growth prospects for mobile: consumers now spend 7% of their time on mobiles, yet brands are investing only 0.5% of budgets on the channel. This represents a 15x shortfall in mobile spend by brands. So what’s the reason?

One of the biggest barriers to mobile adoption is knowledge about the mobile channel, its potential to transform businesses, and to transform the careers of those who succeed in becoming the “go to” mobile person for their company or their agency.

Here are some compelling reasons why marketers absolutely need to get to grips with mobile in 2012.

Reach
There are more mobile phones than people in the UK, and we carry them 24/7 in home and out of home. Mobile brings your brand into the hands of your customers.

Action
Mobile is a ubiquitous response channel to your above-the line, direct marketing and promotional marketing. SMS and QR codes allow your customers to respond immediately when they are considering product and service based messages.

Convert
All handsets now come internet-ready, and 40% of us carry smartphones, which can now access almost 1 million apps on Apple’s iTunes and Android Market. Mobile allows you to convert interest into rich brand experiences, concluding with transactions.

Engage
Respecting mobile users’ privacy is a core pre-condition to effective mobile marketing and mobile CRM. Brands must ensure consumers opt-in to receive mobile communication. Get that right and you should expect opt-out rates as low as 1% or 2%. 

Put another way, that means 98% or 99% opt-in rates.

Rob Thurner tutors on the IDM’s Mobile Marketing, Advanced Mobile Marketing and Complete Digital Marketing training courses and lectures on the IDM Diploma in Digital Marketing.

The world of data has also been turned upside down, albeit in less dramatic style and fortunately with no loss of life. But the reversal is still the consequence of its own actions, many of them just as self-regarding and reckless.

If it had not been for the disastrous decision by BT to allow Phorm to trial behavioural targeting on its network in 2007, the ePrivacy Directive would never have been amended in the way it has. New laws governing cookies – which many organisations are still struggling to work out how to implement – would never have been introduced without this ill-fated exercise.

Few subscribers to BT’s phone lines and Internet services realised that the small print in their contract granted permission for their calls and clicks to be tracked by police and security services. Even fewer could have foreseen that the Interception of Communications laws would be used to justify the use of cookies to track individuals across online advertising networks.

But even without this foolish test, digital marketers were busy intruding into the lives of unsuspecting consumers through the use of cookies (and the integration of search and other clickstream data). If you want to argue that there was nothing wrong with this practice, then consider the parallels with the way Electoral Register data was used for targeting for 17 years without giving the right to the consumer to opt-out.

That practice ended up in court back in 2002. Failure to get genuine consent for the Phorm cookies was dragging the UK government into court. European Commissioners took one look at what was happening and decided to act by introducing the ePrivacy amendments.

The same thing could happen with changes to the Data Protection Directive and for similar reasons – the EC has looked at how companies are using data and does not like what it sees. Requiring an opt-in for every time a piece of data is used is their first response (although it seems highly likely this will get diluted before the law is passed).

So are data users really so bad? For the most part, clearly not. But even those working with the best of intentions and to the highest standards can still cross the line. Using data mining and analysis techniques on big data sets that can follow and profile individuals without holding a piece of what would technically qualify as personally identifiable information is a prime example.

Bad guys in the data industry are much easier to identify – they cold call TPS-registered numbers, spam inboxes and mobiles and misuse the data they hold. Many of those operations are effectively “black hats”. What we need to be wary of in this new era of data regulation are “white hats” who do bad things by mistake.

David Reed is speaking at the IDM Knowledge & Networking event, Whose Data is it Anyway? on 24 January 2012

That’s a fair response because again, I would hazard a guess that most decisions within organisations of whether or not to run an event are based on the theory “we did it last year and it seemed to work well”, or the very similar “we have always run events, our customers expect it.”  These could be very valid reasons, especially if they create the bulk of your sales opportunities, but I challenge anyone involved in creating, managing, running or funding events to stop and ask a few simple questions before agreeing to run another event.

Questions like…
Are physical events more successful than virtual events, like webinars? When I say successful I mean with a positive return on investment for the company. Do we know the results? Have we got the metrics from previous events to give us insight? What role do these events play in the sales cycle? What has changed? Are customers, prospects, partners, vendors still coming out to events? What will the audience learn at our event? Will they actually turn up? Who is the target audience? and finally, can we actually resource this event?

In my opinion, webinars are popular with vendors because they are a recurring information resource that be accessed 24/7 on their website, but I do question how many people actually watch or listen to each and every webinar in its entirety? Whereas at a physical event, you can tell who is engaged and who is not engaged, plus your sales people should be able to focus upon building relationships with the attendees that look to be engaged. It’s a good test to see which of your sales people are natural networkers, and can actually sell. Another benefit of physical events is when customers sell to other customers or even better, to prospects; you can’t get that from a webinar.

So how do you make your events more effective?
First, think about the elements that contribute to successful marketing events. The three essential items are: venue, content and presenter. A successful event will be set in a great location, it will have character, be easily accessible and relate directly to the topic of the day. For example, if the theme is higher education, why not use a state of the art university or for architects, you would use an architecturally inspired building – it will be an immediate talking point.

Content must be current and relevant – plus, try and build in some type of exclusive content as this will answer the initial question of what will the audience learn at our event? Finally, please ensure you use tried and tested presenters; this can make or break an event. Ensure they are rehearsed and briefed not to go off script or make any inappropriate comments. Please also check all the slides to ensure they are legible and not repetitive. These three simple elements require preparation, as with any marketing activity, but the benefits will be enormous and measurable.

Making the event happen
Events can take a lot of time and resource, sometimes more than creating a direct marketing campaign. Here is a simple approach to actually making it happen. We can look at three main areas which are: planning & organising, running the event and post event.

Firstly, create a team and develop an actual plan that has dates, deadlines, budgets and areas of responsibility. Next, decide on a theme, venue and, most importantly, a date (try to avoid any holidays or anything that could harm your attendee numbers). On the day the team must all know their roles for an event to be successful, as once it starts. it cannot stop. Ensure you have the correct signage, the AV and presentations have been tested and the food and drink are suitable for the audience. Finally, post event, you may have decided to create a feedback form to hand out on the day, with an incentive for its return, or as an email the next day, either is acceptable.

This final step is the most critical to the overall success of the event and the purpose of running it in the first place: lead generation. I would advise that the team have a verbal debrief – preferably face to face, to discuss all aspects of the event. What worked well, what didn’t work and how are the leads going to be handled? Event follow up is often forgotten, as most marketers think that an event is completed once you say goodbye to the last delegate and put the final box back in the car. This is actually where the real work begins – closed loop marketing.

And finally…
One final point to consider in the marketing mix is the number of events you plan to run in a given year, and what percentage of the budget and activity plan will they take up? Is it 30%? 50%? or even 80%? Just step back and think about it for a moment so it’s clear which events are essential and generate the bulk of the business, and what contribution these events are making to your business. It may help make the decision, along with the marketing metrics, on whether or not to run the next event.

With so many opportunities and so much to learn, it’s always great to get advice from others in the industry. Technology Marketing in Mind, a new, year-long video series from Marketing Options International and the IDM, features senior UK technology marketers sharing their insights and advice on some of the key challenges facing the industry today.

Available to view now, the first three videos focus on understanding and connecting with technology buyers in today’s tough marketplace. Here’s a quick flavour of what you’ll see in each one:

1. Understanding Today’s Technology Buyer
What motivates buyers? And how can we appeal to them in ways that make our brand and products stand out?

Old questions maybe, but still crucial as we head into 2012. Autodesk’s Miikka Arala offers some powerful answers, saying that naïve interest in new technology is long gone, and that in the light of the economic downturn, three basic motivations are driving most technology buying decisions:

• Cut costs
• Gain competitive advantage
• Increase revenue

 But appealing to reason is only one factor in the equation. Most of the marketers interviewed focus on the importance of addressing a buyer’s emotional side too. After all, people buy from people.

Microsoft’s Allister Frost adds some compelling evidence to the case for appealing to buyers as rounded human beings, highlighting the current ‘consumerisation of IT’ – our desire to take the technologies that make our home lives easier, and apply them in our place of work.

2. Communicating the Value of Complex Technology
With customer decision-making teams now including non-technical executives (CFOs, LOB heads, even the CEO in some cases), this video looks at how marketers can find stronger, simpler and more compelling ways to communicate product benefits.

IBM’s Pete Jakob explains how benefits must always be articulated in terms of what’s on the customer’s mind, rather than product features and functions:

“Our clients do not care about our products. They care about their issues, their own challenges…. we have to speak to them in terms, in language and at frequencies… that are relevant, pertinent and respectful…”

Silver Lining Solutions’ Mike Havard offers some practical advice on what those terms, languages and frequencies might be, outlining four top tips for making complex propositions simple:

• Tell stories to bring a product’s benefits to life
• Sell the vision, not just the specific solution
• Get your customers communicating for you, sharing their positive experiences in their own words, through user groups and forums
• Push the idea that investing in your product will promote ‘connectedness’ – helping the customer’s existing IT investments work together better

3. Building Relationships and Loyalty
Buying cycles in the technology industry are notoriously long and complex, and marketers need to understand where a customer is in the cycle in order to build productive and lasting relationships.

In this short video, Progress Software’s Andrew Barraclough suggests tactics for marketing around licence renewal times, while Saba’s Ian Baxter looks at how the cloud enables software customers to switch vendors more easily – and what marketers can do to encourage them to stay loyal.

Meanwhile Cisco’s Tony Hart explores the value of really understanding a customer’s business, and CompTIA’s Lisa Archer shares practical strategies for building stronger inter-organisational ties.

You can watch all three videos here – and we’d love to know what you think. Whose observations most accurately reflect your own experience? And are there important points and considerations you feel the featured marketers have missed?

1. Friends and Acquaintances
I wish I had had the sense to realise sooner that there is a huge difference between work mates, business acquaintances and friends.  It’s amazing how popular you become when you run a £20m+ account and I had a few heartaches in the early days at how fast ‘mates’ moved on as I changed clients accounts or jobs.  However, taking a professional approach and developing a solid professional network can be a lot of fun and a great asset to your career. But see it for what it is and, if you are lucky enough to make some genuine friends along the way, as I have, then all the better.

2. Do more than your job description
I have noticed that those that get promoted the fastest are the ones who are actively ‘walking the talk’ as they say, but more than that, they demonstrate that they can do many of the jobs that their manager can do. they take the initiative to go a step further and are proactive in finding solutions.  Managers have to feel confident that you can accept the responsibilities that go with promotion, that you can up your game and think more strategically, act more corporately and deliver the results.   If a manager has to make a decision over who to promote, it’s a no brainer to choose the one who is already demonstrating those skills.

3. Never be afraid to ask for help
Of the mistakes that I have made, and there have been a few, the biggest lesson I learned was that the sooner you tell someone who might be able to help you resolve it, the better.  The fact is we all make mistakes, but more senior managers often have the experience, or the contacts, to sort the situation out.  I have witnessed people getting fired as a result of trying to resolve an issue themselves, leaving it too late to resolve and a complete disaster unfold before them.

4. You’re working to support your life, not the company
I believe in working hard and being professionally loyal, but if you are not enjoying what you do, you shouldn’t be doing it. If you are being asked to sacrifice too much, you shouldn’t be doing it. Life is short.

5. Never stop learning
I enjoy my career because I have always loved to learn about new things. As a media planner, I started working with TV and radio, then press, then posters, inserts and direct mail. After a short reprise along came the internet, banner ads, data planning, search marketing and affiliates. More recently still, social media and the rapidly developing mobile opportunities. On top of that working with the IDM and undertaking my MSc have enabled me broaden my knowledge further, adding layers of marketing theory that help put a lot of my work into context.  I believe I am a far better planner today than I was 20 years ago, but I still have lots to learn … which is why I am embarking on a PhD. 

6. Keep a ‘day book’ and take notes
I was very lucky to have a great mentor when I joined the industry who advised me on a number of pointers, among them: 1) don’t get drunk with reps whilst trying to negotiate;  2) take notes of everything you say and do as it is your lifeline to explaining your actions.  Prices negotiated, deals secured, options, bookings, confirmations from clients, instructions from managers, it is all in my day books along with a ‘to do’ list which is updated every Monday.  It is a great habit to get into and has saved my bacon on a number of occasions – I have also seen people come unstuck because of not having one (aka point 3):  It doesn’t matter how brilliant you are if you are not organised.

7. Sell the benefits
Whether it be in presenting my capabilities via a CV or the organisation via a pitch, it took me a while to understand that people buy benefits. How does my knowledge and skill, or what I am proposing, benefit them?  Therefore one of the key things to understand when ‘pitching’ to someone is to know what their goal is… and that can be very difficult to ascertain.  This rule also applies whether you are trying to propose change, recommend one of your staff for a promotion, or develop a new service which needs investment.   In short, never forget the phrase ‘What this means to you Mr/Ms Jones is…’

8. Don’t try to change things as soon as you arrive
It is a common trait amongst new recruits to think things could be done better.  Unless you are brought in at the top, although you may be right, you are probably not in the right place to explain it or to make it happen.  In a junior role such enthusiasm can be misinterpreted. Interviewing graduate employers recently, I found a high percentage said things along the lines of ‘I wish grads didn’t think they know it all’.  Keep your council, get promoted and then make the changes, or leave and set up something better yourself – why do you think there are new agencies and companies borne every month!

9. Don’t get involved in politics
Easier said than done, because the problem is often spotting politics.  But generally if you keep your counsel  and don’t talk about everyone, you will not be seen to take sides.  Get noticed for your work, not your gossip.

10. Don’t be afraid of change, personally and within organisations
When I started I thought I was going to be a medical secretary forever! That changed when I found out about advertising. Then I moved into education.  In today’s market you are likely to have at least three major career turns, therefore your portfolio skills are important and as mentioned above, constant learning is vital.  Changes within organisations can be disorientating and may make you feel vulnerable, but if you are supportive you will be more successful than if you sit and snipe about the good old days.  Likewise the regular, tried and tested solution to a problem or brief may not be the best response.  If you think change is needed, embrace it.

What is Smarterer?
Smarterer tests and scores people on their digital, social, and technical skills – everything from Excel and Powerpoint to Google Analytics and Salesforce to JQuery and Javascript – using crowdsourced test design and a scoring algorithm similar to the one developed to rank chess masters. Users take tests and get a badge that’s designed to be shared anywhere they express their professional identity (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogging platforms, resumes, etc.) Our goal is to enable people to validate their skills and show the world what they know.

What are you trying to achieve with Smarterer?
We’re reinventing the skills section on the world’s resume. Professionals are rapidly accumulating digital and technical skills that make them effective in the workplace –but the primary way they communicate those skills to the world is on the skills section of their resume using vague, often exaggerated buzzwords that mean nothing to employers.  Smarterer is giving people a quantitative measure of their skills and fundamentally changing the way professionals are evaluated.

What made you excited about working with the IDM?
The IDM is the world’s leader in marketing training, training tens of thousands of marketers in the digital marketing skills they need to succeed. This deep expertise makes them a perfect partner to create tests on social media and mobile marketing – two of the most important new digital marketing skills. We also knew The IDM’s members would be great Smarterer users – a passionate community of talented marketers who would help create the best tests by adding great questions, and use their Smarterer scores to market themselves!

You have some very interesting investors, the likes of Hubspot’s Dahrmesh Shah and Google, what do you think attracted them to Smarterer?
I believe our investors saw that we are solving a very big, very interesting problem, and using data and analytics to do so in a brand new way. We’re finally giving professionals a simple, smart way to validate what they know and articulate that to the world. Proficiency in digital technologies is also critical for employers – they need to be able to find professionals who have the critical skills.  We solve this problem for employers by giving them tools to evaluate their candidates.

What can we expect to see from Smarterer in the future?
You’ll see professionals taking tests, getting scored, and using their Smarterer badges as a core part of their identity. Everywhere you look at a professional, whether it’s on a profile, a resume, a portfolio, a social networking site, you should be able to see their Smarterer scores and understand what skills they have.

Want to have a go for yourself? Both IDM quizzes are here. See how you do – and if you’re not happy where you rank, you can keep trying until you are. Warning: the questions will change – and get harder each time

These days most companies are struggling to keep up in the digital space rather than setting the pace. It’s easy to set the pace if you have deep financial pockets you may say but that doesn’t explain why small companies enter the market and succeed? They see an opportunity and run with it, they take bold risks and understand future trends for the larger companies to be left behind and realise the threat after the nimble company has succeeded.

Organisations today need to take time out to experiment more but with budgets slashed in our current climate it’s hard to justify this. However, those that are willing to take risks will benefit in the future.

Take a risk
It struck me that I needed to go back to taking risks when I completed the Leadership Course at Harvard Business School. The course put into perspective how successful companies large or small are sustainable in our current economic climate, one key driver is to keep moving with the times and take small risks and experiment with the confidence that one will work out and not to be afraid of failure. We had one amazing thought leader called Clay Christenson who challenged the idea that we need to stop chasing our short term profits that we are all guilty of in today’s climate but instead to forfeit this to nurture our long tail for the longer term gain.  In order to be sustainable we need to challenge the current model and look to spend time disrupting the model. We need to look ahead to the future, we cannot rely on what has happened in the past as an indicator it will be successful going forward.

Experiment
To overcome this we need to experiment. With the fast pace of all our lives we need to ask several key questions in times of uncertainty. Instead of jumping on the bandwagon and doing every new technological fad we need to ask can it work for our business? Does it address our customer needs? Does the market size justify the resource? At what cost and what is our future return? Does our culture foster taking risks?

What do your customers want?
Armed with all these facts, how do I process them? For me it always goes back to the customer. We need to listen to the customer and understand what they want. A classic example of a company challenging and disrupting the current model is the Daily Deals phenomena. Who would have thought that email would be front of mind again for marketers and break all the rules of engagement by sending it every day and have little relevancy? These days we are so time poor it shows that people want information now and in short sound bites but how would we have thought to do this? We need to listen to our customers and experiment with what they are telling us. If we communicate with our users on email but they only have 5 seconds to read it why are we sending them streams of content? Let’s give the customer what the customer wants and open our eyes to what they are doing. Daily Deals is Twitter in an email and we need to understand how our consumers are absorbing information and join up our classic marketing methods with the right channel for our customers and not use each in isolation or chase channels that are not relevant to us.

More on this
This is one topic we will be discussing for our new Multichannel Marketing course with the IDM in October and letting delegates know the mistakes we have made along the way but also what we have learned to put into practice for the future.

These are exciting and challenging times and I for one am going to stop losing sleep by asking myself will the risk pay off? I am going to put my thoughts into action so watch this space at Nectar.com!

  On October 28 Maureen will present a Nectar case study as part of the IDM’s new 2-day Multichannel Marketing course. She’ll describe how multichannel marketing was used to increase customer engagement, acquisition and value for Nectar.

Monday
Having made it through the tough application and tougher assessment day, on Monday 27 June twenty-seven bright eyed and bushy tailed university grads headed to the IDM for the commencement of the Barrie Spelling Top Student Summer School 2011.

With the (un)usual ice-breakers getting us all giggling and bonding (over some of the bizarre facts we’d revealed about ourselves in the application process), it was time for our first of many seminars with none other than IDM founder and MD Derek Holder.  Proving to be both an enlightening an eloquent speaker we were all brought up to speed with the discipline of direct and digital marketing.

After a lunch of a much higher calibre than most were anticipating, the moment that we’d all been wondering about for so long was upon us; the brief. 

This year’s pitch was, excitingly for us, Bacardi Superior, provided by Rapp’s ever friendly and helpful Gavin Hilton and Louise Morgan.

Following a brief period for our groups to discuss initial thoughts, Monday was finished off by a chance to meet and grill some of last year’s IDM Summer School graduates, accompanied by dinner and drinks at The Park Lodge Hotel next door.

Tuesday
Getting straight into it on Tuesday, we were given the task of producing a full campaign for O2 Priority.  Each feeding back to the group, everyone came up with some fantastic and wildly differing ideas.

Next up was a wonderful talk from Martin Troughton, founder of Harrison Troughton Wunderman (among many other ventures).  With a career tale packed full of anecdotes and advice his presentation made for a truly enthralling experience, and showed us the many twists and turns a marketing career can take.

After lunch was the big trip out, this year to the Willy Wonka’s Marketing Factory of OgilvyOne.  Packed full of technology and gadgets, the best way to describe it would be as a more purposeful kids section of the Science Museum (though its client-wooing abilities are undoubtedly evident).

After being given a tour round the Design Labs, we were given an audience with such moguls as friendly UK Chairman Paul O’Donnell and the ever tangential Rory Sutherland, alongside the recent Ogilvy Fellowship intake.

Our minds reeling and full of inspiration from what we’d seen and heard, it was time for (you guessed it), drinks!  Heading down to the in-house bar, we had a great time chatting with some Ogilvites before heading off for a group meal at Wagamamas.

Wednesday
Wednesday morning changed the pace a little, with Wendy Pearson of Direct Line giving us a crash course in segmentation.  Whilst not perhaps the most exciting area of marketing, we all appreciated that it’s not all glitz and glam, and any half decent plan is founded on good segmentation.

This was followed by EHS 4D Group taking us through the recent rise of digital, its necessity as a marketing medium, and how it’s progressing as a marketing tool.  Providing numerous examples of successes such as Intel’s “Museum of Me”, Nike’s “1948″, and O2’s “3D rugby” (produced by Archibald Ingall Streeton), we all received some interesting insight as to what’s being done at the moment, and the vast possibilities of digital as a discipline.

The morning’s events causing all of us to become excited over the prospect of being the minds behind such successes, our heads were brimming with ideas for our afternoon of case study work.

The IDM’s 8pm closure meant we had to search further afield for wifi, some even resorting to sponging off of Pizza Express.  Despite working late into the night to get the pitches as done as possible, everyone’s spirits were high.  This felt like the real thing.

Thursday
Thursday wasn’t a time for tired eyes, when straight away we were given the task of improving Laithwaite’s Wine’s direct mail.  After all scratching our heads for a while, we all put on our thinking caps and the ideas started flowing.  Before long everyone had come up with loads of (hopefully useful) ideas.

Next up the social experts Sam and Felix of Essential Communications gave many a rude awakening on how easy it was to unearth unemployable info on you on social sites.  After this shock, they went into how to effectively brand yourself and utilise social media for furthering your career – something useful both now and in the future.

Soon after, the main event of the week had arrived; the IDM Patrons’ reception at London’s Goring Hotel. 

Heading off in our Apprentice-style suits and black cabs, we were soon greeted by drinks and the obligatory event photographer.  Derek Holder then disposing of the pleasantries, it wasn’t long before we were mixing with all the senior marketer patrons and having a great time.  Representing both clients and agencies, the multitude of experienced and knowledgeable marketers at the event meant that everyone had a fantastic, rewarding and fruitful evening. 

Unfortunately however, as all good things do, it had to end.  So at 9pm we were unwillingly shepherded back into the black cabs back to Teddington, to get ready for our pitches the following day.

Friday
Not quite believing that the big (and last) day was already here, everyone turned up with mixed feelings of nerves and excitement, presentations at the ready.

Each group pitched their campaign idea for Bacardi Superior to a panel of 12 (as well as to all our fellow Summer School delegates), all subsequently receiving highly detailed and useful feedback.  Overall, everyone did brilliantly.  We were all amazed at the variety, depth, and quality of work produced by all, with everyone’s presentation skills matching the content.

This sadly marked the end of the week and it wasn’t long before we all had to part ways to get our respective trains and planes to take us back to all corners of the UK.

Speaking on behalf of others, I think it’s safe to say we all had a fantastic time.  We all learnt a huge amount, met some fascinating people, and got the opportunity to do some brilliant work with some like-minded friends. 

With such a high calibre of delegates, agencies and clients all involved in this year’s summer school, I would highly recommend to all getting involved in any way possible in the future.

Find out more about the IDM Education Programme and if your organisation would like to get involved, please email education@theidm.com

When you are in your next meeting with the FD and he asks for better visibility and ROI, don’t just nod your head and then turn up at a conference with other marketers to complain about how hard and unreasonable it all is, use the meeting as a chance to get what you want. If the FD wants better reporting you might need better tools, if the FD wants ROI you need sales to report back to you, if The FD wants better financial reporting you might need him/her to give you a lesson

I was talking to a conference delegate last week and he complained the marketing skills he hired last year are now 60% irrelevant to what he needs now, to cut a long chat short we concluded he had not hired ponies and they have the ability to learn.

The companies and markets we work in change, so marketing departments need to make sure they have the resources that allow them to keep their knowledge up to date and to continually develop their skills and capabilities.

For example, a current trend in marketing departments is the need to be more analytical, and turn data in to insight – but has the person given this responsibility been trained in analytics? Do they know what they are looking for and what to do when they find it?

I understand that marketing is under scrutiny from a budget perspective but this does not mean that as a marketer you should be hiding under your desk. You need to understand the business plan and then say what tools and skills you need to deliver your part. And if the business is not willing to invest, you must work on a compromise of what can be delivered.

So I recommend that you take the business priorities and map them against your department’s current capabilities. Then you can have a serious conversation with the business on where time and investment are required.

Don’t be scared to say “With what I have I can deliver X” – and if an honest evaluation of your department reveals an obvious skills gap, then look internally and externally for resources that can help you fill it.

If you have any war stories please do share and I leave you with thoughts from a great philosopher.

“I have heard there are troubles of more than one kind. Some come from ahead and some come from behind. But I’ve bought a big bat. I’m all ready you see. Now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!” – Dr. Seuss