Overheard at a Key Industry Conference…

Posted in: AERIOS by admin on 09/14/2011

Aerios recently participated in a local symposium hosted by the Rocky Mountain Direct Marketing Association in Denver. Here are a few highlights and quotes …

DMA CEO Larry Kimmel is shown here (right) with RMDMA president Jon VanderWal (left).

  • ShopAtHome.com CEO Mark Braunstein noted, “Google may offer all its analytical tools for free, but it definitely takes a lot of time and money to learn how to use them properly.”
  • Troy Lerner of Booyah Advertising – “Search is great for when people are already shopping, but now it’s really Display ads and other channels that drive Search.”
  • 4 quotes from Larry Kimmel, former chairman and CEO of Grey Direct global agency network and current CEO of the Direct Marketing Association –

“I spent a lot of years ‘at the kiddy table’ in conversations with the old branding leaders – discussing  what they thought instead of what we direct marketers knew. As it turns out, we were right: It’s customer insights and quantifiable results that produce happy customers and business success.”

“The future is here. It’s just not very evenly distributed.” (Quoting William Gibson on the widely disparate rates of adoption and how “culture lags technology.”)

“McKinsey predicts there will be soon be a need for 100,000s of new data and analytics jobs.”

“Data is the new oil. It drives the new economy and all products and services within it. And in terms of it now being the impetus of most marketing campaigns, many say that ‘data is the new creative.’”

  • Mike Belasco, local guru in SEO and conversion rate optimization (CRO) – “Websites are like great salespeople. Marketing drives the traffic, but the website is what drives the sales.” And, “It’s always cheaper to increase conversion than it is to drive more traffic.”
  • Pat McGrew of Hewlett Packard in her presentation called “Paper or Pixels: Well… it depends!” asked the audience what “takeaway” they’ll use from IKEA’s marketing director Annie Boeckman’s presentation on the retailer’s impressive launch marketing. Someone from the audience answered, “We’re gonna serve meatballs!”

Speaking of meatballs, it’s time for dinner. Until next time…