Name:

Works: BeyondD – The Digital Marketing Group

Job Title: Group General Manager

1. Please highlight your industry experience and how, where and when you came to digital media?

I started my digital career in Military Intelligence, no really, it is relevant but if I told you I would have to kill you! Big budgets, all the latest toys - it was 1997 and trust me you did not get 1TB of storage for $100.

After building a couple of websites ‘on the side’ I travelled and ended up in New Zealand where I accidently started a web design company after helping a few businesses out with their websites. My favourite client of the time was based in El Paso, Texas selling $2,000 cowboy boots online. Believe me - once you’ve sold handmade cowboy boots on the internet in 1999 you realise anything is possible online. I also ran an online restaurant guide and enjoyed many free dinners at Auckland’s best restaurants as a result! I sold these businesses at the end of 1999 and founded First Rate which has become one of the regions most respected Search Marketing Agencies.

In 2007 I sold First Rate to Q Ltd (ASX:QXQ) The Digital Marketing Group, and by 2011 I was CEO of the group and running a Search Agency (www.firstrate.com.au), Creative and Development Agency (www.MarketUnited.com), a Media Sales Team (www.3di.com.au), a membership website (www.GreatSites.com.au) and a performance ad network (www.TPN.com.au).

Q Ltd recently sold all its digital marketing businesses, most of which were purchased by Beyond International and form the basis of their new Digital Marketing Division, BeyondD, which I now run.

2. Can you outline your role with BeyondD - what do you actually do?

As Group General Manager of BeyondD I am responsible for devising and executing the group’s strategy. I have a very talented team of digital veterans and so my role is to provide a focal point for the development of new products and services and to oversee our go-to market strategy and tactics. With over 60 staff the development and utilisation of skilled digital marketers and sales people is also a key part of the job.

In addition to the operational side of the existing business and assets within the group I also assist Beyond International evaluate new digital business opportunities.

3. Can you offer a brief insight into BeyondD - your market position and forward plans?

BeyondD consists of three main parts; Digital Services, Digital Media Sales and Digital Assets. Services is made up of First Rate, our Search and Performance Agency and Market United, our Creative and Development Agency. Our digital media sales team 3Di represents websites and marketing databases we own (TPN & GreatSites) as well as those of 3^rd party publishers.

First Rate is recognised as one to the smartest and most successful search agencies in the region and, supported by our Creative and Development capabilities, now offers its clients a truly contemporary full service digital marketing offering. We are known for our results-focused campaigns and depth of digital expertise which have been gained working for many of the region’s most successful digital entrepreneurs and established brands. We plan to capitalise on this experience and position to support a growing number of business that are becoming more and more “digital led” placing digital at the heart of their businesses.

3Di is team of digital media experts that sell media and data to all the major media agencies in Australia and New Zealand as well as numerous direct advertisers. In-house and 3^rd party media assets provide advertisers with a single point of contact to book; email, video, display, mobile, social, lead generation, postal and telephone campaigns. Under the new ownership of Beyond International 3Di is part of an Entertainment and Media business turning over $100m per year. We intend to use this position to continue to build our reputation as the go-to media team offering the best advice and the most contemporary and innovative suite of digital marketing products. Augmented by our own Performance Ad Network (TPN), our consumer rewards website (Great Sites), and access to unique video content and distribution channels, we are well positioned and will be bringing new and unique digital media products to the Australian and New Zealand market.

4. Please share your general views on the current state of the digital media market?

As always the only constant is change. Google, Facebook, DSPs and mobile devices continue to drive massive changes in the digital marketing landscape and with more and more creative and media agencies getting on the bandwagon we are seeing some big movements in how and where media is spent. Coupled with the fact that most of the new media channels are purchased and managed in a much more analytical manner we are seeing changes in the people and organisations that can really add value and those that are stuck with obsolete methodologies, business models and expertise.

5. Is there any one person, digital business or sector you think we should be keeping an eye on?

I was asked this question a number of years ago and my answer was ‘ecommerce’. At the time I got the impression that the interviewer was looking for something more profound and visionary but I think I was spot on and I’m sticking with it especially for this region which only really got serious about ecommerce in 2011! Ecommerce has had, and will have, profound implications for many businesses in Australia and those that are not assessing and acting on the opportunities and threats ecommerce presents really need to get a move on! The other major sectors that are having a profound impact are mobile devices as the world moves closer to an “always connected” world. One saying I like is that “the impact of game changing innovations are often over overestimated in the short term and underestimated in the long term”. Ecommerce, social and mobile would clearly fall into this camp.

Another area I would love to spend more time on is virtual goods, a billion dollar sector where I’m always amazed what people will pay money for. Gaming is obviously the main sector affected but there are also non-gaming examples, for example Facebook is trialling “highlighted posts”, will people pay for that? Probably!

6. What do you see as the key challenges and opportunities in the digital media market in the coming 12 months?

With so much media that can now be purchased via real time bidding a smart marketer can get ten times the returns compared to old world media buying approaches. Also the cost of technology and bandwidth is so low that tracking, optimisation and video all become so much more cost effective and easy to do.

The challenges are twofold; firstly don’t forget the stuff that does work in your hurry to use the latest sexiest channels. SEO, Email, Lead Generation and Analytics are amazingly effective marketing tools but often overlooked in favour of the new stuff. Secondly the new stuff is cool but finding people who can actually use it effectively is another challenge and all too often business logic goes out the window in the excitement. I have no problem with the exciting part as marketing should be fun but digital media is sold short when its real value is not realised by an ill-informed campaign.

Skill shortages is obviously a challenge and although there are many keen digital marketers, especially in the social and mobile space, many lack underlying digital marketing depth and experience which can let the campaign down. It’s also true that with the breath of digital options available and with the rate of change it’s impossible for a single individual or even a small team to keep across everything.

7. How do you see digital and other media evolving in the next 5+ years?

Data is going to be a key story over the next 5 years and is likely to cause more controversy. In an “always connected” world we will see more integration of media and more opportunities for targeting once your “Google/Apple/Facebook” Email, Phone, TV, Radio, Music, Magazine, Car, Store and Fridge start collating data!

Google and Facebook are looking scary with their ability to grow and control a large % of media across the globe. If there are more restrictions placed on tracking and targeting consumers with cookies and alike then this will actually help companies like Google and Facebook as they can more easily obtain consumer permission for such tracking and targeting.

8. What does the digital/interactive industry need to do better right now?

Selecting the right partner is something marketing managers looking at digital could do better. Unfortunately competing agencies rarely say “we are not the right sort of agency for you” or “we don’t really have experience in that space”. Some agencies will provide this sort of transparent advice to prospects as they know ultimately it is better to work with compatible clients but many will not in pursuit of the allusive dollar. So, ultimately it’s buyer beware - ask the right questions and do the research.

There are a lot of agency models out there some old, some new and some evolving; creative agencies, media agencies, search agencies and digital agencies all offering clients a solution. It’s important for marketers to understand what supplier or mix of suppliers is best for them. For some, putting everything with a global agency is going to be best, for others a mix will deliver the best results and for some the digital world has so fundamentally impacted the way they will do business that a ‘digitally led’ strategy with a digitally focused agency will deliver the best results and competitive advantage.

9. Where do you get your industry information from?

Either online research via Google or talking to a network of digital entrepreneurs I respect.

10. What industry groups or networks are you a part of?

I don’t know what I would do without LinkedIn, the Facebook of the B2B world, it’s great for connecting with people in the know. IAB, ADMA and AIMIA are also great for meeting and networking with the industry.

Thanks for your continued support and interest in Digital People. If you have any comments please feel free to get in touch - denise@mediascope.com.au or phone: 0424 100325. I welcome your feedback.

In media circles most people saw Mobile as a “fad”, arriving with mass hysteria causing extreme excitement and leaving their lives not long after. How could such a small media device disrupt the behemoths that were TV, radio, print and of course the PC based Web? Well mobile is far from a fad and has been building a momentum for over 50 years and that is why there has never been “the year of mobile” and never will be.

The mobile medium is now in the hands of most of the world population, for many it is their first screen ever and it was thought that it would pass the fixed internet in 2014 and in fact did so in 2011. The business models of companies like Google, Apple, facebook, RIM, Yahoo etc. have started a massive shift over the past few years because of it, in fact Yahoo’s future may rest in how they place their mobile strategy into the market. Facebook more recently purchased Instagram for $1Billion to attempt to add more weight to mobile against its fledging S-1 SEC filing and immanent IPO. Facebook has one business model and that is advertising, and what worked on the 3^rd screen (desk/laptop), does not carry over to the 4^th screen (mobile), the real estate and time on screen is completely different. The mobile device is used as whole bunch of tools that allow you to quickly find out things or be informed of things you need to know, browsing on mobile is rarely done unless you are on the mobile Web e.g. facebook or news site.

The term “there’s an App for that” came about because Apps were about tools that made your life, job, relationship, anything better, they are small in size, huge in functionality have a touch user interface and reside on your phone for you only. Mobile App and cloud innovation will drive real value in the years ahead for the Internet giants, characterised by consumers using devices to capture and share their lives with each other, and having no need for desktops or laptops to do so.

Web 2.0 is done. Over the past ten years people have arrived on the Net and setup accounts on Webmail, banking, travel and more recently Social sites like facebook. These Web services happened mainly because anyone could do it...setup a LAMP based Server in the corner of your bedroom, hack some code together and you could serve up anything. Facebook itself has enjoyed that ride however once they go public it’s a very different ball-game, one in which Mark Zuckerburg will not enjoy. When the exits start happing, shareholders to satisfy and board level voting, innovation dries up and users leave in droves. Google struggled with this however managed to keep progressing with new product development while the search opportunity hung on to survival.

facebooks new product development has waned as they struggle to maintain a framework which many are building on like Zynga. I personally see facebook as an “apprenticeship” for Social media allowing people, ad agencies and new developers alike once they have the hang of it they will transition to other platforms that fit the bill even their own in Zynga’s case. If Lady Gaga’s littlemonsters.com social network can attract 40 million people then where do you think the brands are going to go to attract that demographic?

Google co-founder Sergey Brin is worried about the future of the Internet, and not just because of censor-happy regimes like China and in the Middle East. He sees walled gardens like Apple’s iTunes, iCloud and facebook as deterrents from the Open Web and in fact believes that they would not have built Google today. It is impossible to robot crawl native mobile Apps and proprietary framework data today. Other factors like CISPA making it very easy for a company like facebook to hand over users private information to the government without any due process.

The most interesting markets to watch these days are the Asian markets, they are absolutely mind blowing. The Chinese market increased threefold over last year’s second quarter to $12.4 billion. In fact that falls just short of Apple’s previous complete year revenue from the prior year. And this is without the country’s largest carrier, China Mobile, offering the iPhone to its 600 million subscribers.

We now live in a world that is truly mobile where teenagers gaze at desktop PC’s in wonderment the same way I did at typewriters, where developer conferences are sold out no sooner than they are announced months before they open and Apple can sell 67 million iPad’s in less than two years where it took them 24 years to sell the same amount of Mac computers. With the imminent cover of LTE upon us the children of today will enjoy seamless communication with speeds around 100m/sec and wonder how we all managed in the wired world.

As always, the episode is available as a 15 minute video edit with the extended interview available on the Podcast.

Links

Government Digital Service
Air B&B

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1. When should you start a business?

One thing I will say: don't pay attention exclusively to the current market. The biggest opportunity for growth and disruption almost certainly lies in understanding those people who currently don't, won't or can't use your offering.

4. What feedback do you take and what do you disregard?
I'm not particularly interested in opinions. I generally disregard feedback that isn't backed up with a rationale, and a decent rationale at that. I like getting different perspectives, though, since that comes back to the notion of looking at the world differently. I'm interested in talking to people who see the world from a different viewpoint to my own - they are uniquely positioned to shed new light on the problem I'm trying to solve.

5. Who was the first person to believe in you?
Mum. I think I might have been 4.

6. What has been your biggest creative or business challenge to date?
Understanding the difference between a concept or idea and a particular implementation of that idea. I see a lot of organisations struggle with this daily, getting mired in the details before they've spent time exploring, testing and refining the concept. This amounts to a lot of wasted energy, and a final design that isn't hitting the mark.

If your 'big idea' isn't seeing the adoption or utilisation that you expected, chances are you didn't put enough time and energy into the concept.

7. What excites you most about digital media or technology right now?
I'm excited by the developments we've seen in processing power to the point where a small, handheld device can connect us to the world - physically and virtually - in a largely unencumbered and fluid way. But more than, I'm excited by the potential that flows from such freedom.

Moreso, we're starting to see the development of technologies in which our window into a device - the screen - is becoming divorced from the power, memory, and processing capability of that device. This dis-aggregation opens up a lot of opportunity for disruptive innovation in the form technology takes, as well as the ways in which it integrates into our day-to-day lives.

8. How do we encourage a culture of creativity and innovation?
There are so many facets to this, but I think a really critical one is to create an environment in which a lot of small, relatively low-cost, businesses can be conceived, designed, developed, launched, and evaluated, without an overly burdensome bureaucracy; with ready access to small-scale funding; access to spaces in which to conduct the business; and a supporting culture of "continuous learning" rather than "failure/success".

9. What do you believe is possible that many don't?
I believe Australia is on the cusp of a design-led innovation boom, impacting the way in which public policy, commercial, and social decisions are informed, made tangible, evaluated and brought to life.

10. What will you be talking about at X Media Lab in Sydney?
[I honestly don't know yet!, but...] How an understanding of the context within which customers, and non-customers, live their lives can provide rich grounds for innovation. Broadly, Souces of innovation.

I would say YES, for tall points. On the client question, a quick search on google would suggest that L'Oreal USA seems to think its a problem with its launch last week of the L'Oreal Women in Digital Program, This is s new initiative that will celebrate and nurture women working in technical and digital roles within the female-consumer dominated beauty industry.

"Our mission is to inspire and empower women to drive the advancement of digital technology to meet the needs of the female consumer," stated Rachel Weiss, Vice President, Digital Strategy, L'Oreal USA and Chair of L'Oreal Women in Digital. Translate that to - we had some geeky guys working on the account before this and they didn’t have a clue, so we are big enough to start a movement.

One of the key factors they mention is that Tech companies with more women on their management teams have a 34% higher return on investment; the presence of women on technical teams increases teams' collective intelligence, problem-solving ability and creativity (no source given).

There is no similar movement here in the UK that I know of, so its harder to see if the figures for women here are any different. However there are lost of stats on women in advertising agencies and today its all the one really. Looking at media agencies in particular Karen Blackett CEO of MediaCom, Britain's largest media agency for the past ten years recently stated in a recent Indepent article a USP for the company is 'they have more women in high positions of responsibility'.

She added that most of the competition have "quite male-dominated workforces" who are she suspects are asked to sell amoung other things household services. MediaCom's top posts are nearly all filled by women, including chairman Jane Ratcliffe, managing director Claudine Collins and chief strategy officer Sue Unerman.

What Karen seems to be sayings is that to really know the mind of the female consumer -the CEO of the household as she calls her - being a woman is a distinct advantage. It does beg the question of why dont women dominate the top flight of agencies it so many products are aimed at women? Are they just bad leaders?

The fact is the mix starts off with an almost equal split between the number of men and women currently employed in the industry overall – 51.3% and 48.7% respectively. But the number of women at managing director level or above in UK advertising agencies plummeted by more than a quarter last year, falling to the lowest proportion since 2003, according to a report by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising. The IPA found that women accounted for just 13.5% of the 415-odd executives designated as a chair, chief executive or managing director at a UK ad agency.

So is having senior positions predominately male dominated really a liability. I would say yes and I suspect we lose brilliant female minds every year to other industries.

A famous 2003 Harvard Business School case study ‘The report, Sex and Power’ describes the efforts of the then boss of Deloitte, to stem the attrition among the firm’s senior women. Like the Advertising industry, women made up half the new intake at graduate level but only 10% of the candidates for partnership. Losing so many well-qualified people was costing the firm a fortune, so it commissioned research to find out why they were leaving. They got a big surprise.

The firm had assumed that most of the women had quit to start a family and spend time at home. It turned out that 90% of them were still working but for other firms. They had got disenchanted with a work environment which they found male-dominated and alienating, and felt that the whole system of advancement within the firm that worked well for the men—mentoring, coaching, counseling, networking—worked against them.

This may not seem a major problem, as the conveyer belt that is digital marketing tends not to appreciate too many ‘experienced’ minds anyway. We in the digital marketing space still have a youth equals ideas fettish, but that asside if we are to become more like a Deloitte business-consulting industry (respected by their clients and demanding hig rates) and less like the sweat shop economy we tend to opt for we need to stop the brain drain.

But before that we must also recognise the bigger GEEK problem :). Take a test here to start your first step to rehabilitation.

Name:

Works: Deloitte Digital

Job Title: CEO

1. Please highlight your industry experience and how, where and when you came to digital?

I started in the digital world in 1993 after experiencing the internet for the first time in an internet café in London, near Buckingham palace. I immersed myself in the web from that time

2. Can you outline your current role with Delloite Digital - what do you actually do?

Deloitte Digital is all about delivery of professional services online. We take innovative ideas from people across Deloitte and seek to commercialise them. We also help companies with innovation and social media. I tend to work mostly on new ideas and how we can get them to market quickly.

3. Can you offer a brief insight into Delloite Digital - your market position and forward plans?

Deloitte Digital aims to redefine how professional services are delivered using mobile and online. We have a portfolio of offerings and are seen as the market maker/pioneer of the digital business model in professional services. We also act as an incubator for new ideas coming from the Deloitte Innovation Program. Over the last couple of years we have seen rapid growth and international expansion with a number of our sister firms picking up the Deloitte Digital model, particularly US, UK and South Africa

4. Please share your views on the current state of the digital market?

It has never been hotter. Mobile is moving faster than anything I have ever seen and social is transforming the way people work and socialise. It is an exciting time.

5. Is there any one person, digital business or sector you think we should be keeping an eye on?

I am a big fan of crowdsourcing models such as 99Designs and Kaggle, and I am also doing quite a bit on the Gamification front. I am also keen on Crowdfunding like Kickstarter or GrowVC

6. What do you see as the main challenges and opportunities in our market?

I think the main challenges are maintaining currency and relevance in a rapidly changing environment together with access to talent. The opportunities are boundless as we move into the ‘clomosoda’ world (cloud, mobile, social, data) and organisations are struggling to keep pace with their customers and employees

7. What does the digital/interactive industry need to do better right now?

Be strategic and think long term, I don’t get excited by dinky short run campaigns, I am interested in how changes in society and technology can transform the way we do things. There also needs to be a lift in areas such as project management and QA if we are going to be doing the big stuff.

9. What are the big issues your clients are dealing with?

Keeping pace with change and trying to adapt to the mobile world.

10. Where do you get your industry information from?

Twitter.

You can follow Peter on twitter here (and check out his photo with Prince William!)

11. What industry groups or networks are you a part of?

I am part of the Creative Performance Exchange and I attend industry conferences regularly

See Peter discuss Social Media and Connectivity on SkyNews

Thanks for your continued support and interest in Digital People. If you have any comments please feel free to get in touch - denise@mediascope.com.au or phone: 0424 100325. I welcome your feedback.

Listen to the Podcast to get the extended interview, including how Lanyrd plan to monitise, plus Chris talks about accounting tools tailored for start ups.

Links:

Lanyrd
Xero
Free Agent
Sage