We are delighted to announce that the Grand Prix winners of D-Day 2012 are Dr Challoner’s Grammar School in Amersham and their partner agency Netcel.

Check out their winning project and browse the category winners and highly commended projects at bimadday.org.uk/winners

The students from Dr Challoner’s beat competitors with their idea for “Yappy Dog” – a website and app to help plan dog walks based on your pet’s weight, breed and age. It also suggests walking routes and dog-friendly pubs nearby.

The idea was well-rounded and brilliantly captured the spirit of D-Day, an initiative that partners schools with agencies to inspire the next generation of digital talent. The judges said of Yappy Dog: “It’s the one Lord Sugar would have picked if this was a round of the apprentice!”

As part of the national D-Day initiative we asked participants to take part in a short survey and the results rather frighteningly underline the need for this event. They showed:

-Ÿ   A lack of awareness of the digital industry in its entirety and the breadth of career opportunities available. 63% of students surveyed were not aware of the many different jobs or opportunities in the digital industry.

-Ÿ   A lack of resources and teaching in schools to make pupils aware of digital as a career. 75% of students surveyed had never seen any information on, or been taught about working in, the digital industry and 49% stated they did not know where to find out more information about digital careers.

-Ÿ   A direct correlation between awareness of the digital industry and a desire to work within it. 74% of students surveyed stated that D-Day made them think more about a career in digital.

So sign up now to partner with a school on D-Day 2013 and take solving the skills gap into your own hands!

Our thanks to Amaze for their expert work in analysing the survey responses and to Andrew Henning (CEO of Redweb), Chris Kempt (MD of Kempt), Tiffany St James (Director, Stimulation) and Shaban Siddiq (Head of Digital Design, Weapon7) for judging the entries.

•    Brands must wake up to the need to spend media money to support owned and earned activity in social media
•    Digital becomes part of the in-store retail experience
•    Pure advertising campaigns are finished; they must instead be experiences that are genuinely useful or interesting

The interviews were filmed in December at a reception for the winners of the BIMA Awards. Each of the featured agencies took home a BIMA in 2012, including Grand Prix winner The Mill for its ‘DBA In Space’ campaign for Red Gate, as well as Agency of the Year, ais London, for its work on the One Direction ‘Save the 1Day’ campaign for Sony Music/SyCo.

You can browse all the winning projects in the Digital Book of the Night.

‘Top tips for 2013’ was produced with support from BIMA Awards sponsors Six Degrees Group, Exhilo, Digital Gurus and Transversal, with filming and video production from the experts at C21 Media and Territory Studio.

The BIMA Awards 2013 will open for entries on 1 May with an earlybird deadline of 14 June. Subscribe for updates at www.bimaawards.com

The summit was a great success bringing together senior level Digital Managers with leading digital solution providers for a series of pre-selected 30min meetings to discuss services and solutions required in the 2013 digital strategy.

The summit facilitated approximately 380 30minute meetings over 2 days.

The attending buyers held a collective Annual Digital Budget in excess of £40million.

The solution providers held a wealth of experience in all aspects of Digital marketing services making this an extraordinary event to be a part of.

I have no doubt that the testimonies will speak for themselves, the solution providers will see this as a major source of new business and the buyers will have benefited immensely by taking the opportunity to meet a number of solution providers of their choice. Networking in this professional and pro-active environment has provided the opportunity to review companies and services available, to obtain the views of industry specialists and make the necessary connections to take their digital strategy forward in 2013. There were also a number of highly informative seminars held making this a must attend event for digital professionals.

Look out for information regarding the iDigital Summit 2013 to be held on 23^rd & 24^th September at The Radison Blu Hotel, London Stansted Airport.

For further information please contact the iDigital Team: idigital@forumevents.co.uk

Main Sponsor:

Media Partners:

Hosted by:

The Digital Business area within T-Systems UK develops Internet-based solutions for large corporations and mid-sized companies. The expertise is coming from T-Systems Multimedia Solutions GmbH, a 100 % subsidiary and an end-to-end web-service provider. The company’s 1.400 employees serve customers from all industries by translating web innovations into trend-setting services for the digital business and social ecosystem. These include solutions for e-commerce, mobile and social business, e-portals, cloud-based services as well as web IT management. With a wealth of experience our specialists create tailored approaches to enhance your digital presence in the market and keep you one step ahead of your competitors. Services include consulting, development, testing and operational support in many fields. For the tenth year in a row, we are the number one in the Internet Agency Ranking 2012.

For more information please visit our website.

The iDigital Summit is a B2B networking event bring together Digital Marketing Companies and Senior Marketing Managers of buyer companies actively seekng digital marketing services. The format is a series of 30min meetings over a day and a half with a pre-determined itinerary to ensure both suppliers and buyers have the opportunity to choose and speak with relevant parties and forge business relations. If you are a buyer or supplier interested in being a part of The iDigital Summit, contact us via the web-site, we’re here to facilitate the meetings.

For further information contact the iDigital Team  E. idigital@forumevents.co.uk

Hosted by:

Experian’s range of digital products, including Hitwise, CheetahMail and Alchemy, ensure you are ahead of your competition in search, analytics, email, mobile and social media.  And when combined with our consumer classification and segmentation tool, Mosaic UK, we can provide you with the data, insights and tools you need to execute multi-channel campaigns with successful results.

22nd & 23rd October 2012 – Brighton Hilton Metropole

The iDigital Summit is a B2B networking event bring together Digital Marketing Companies and decision makers of buyer companies actively seekng digital marketing services. The format is a series of 30min meetings over a day and a half with a pre-determined itinerary to ensure both suppliers and buyers have the opportunity to choose and speak with relevant parties and forge business relations. If you are a buyer or supplier interested in being a part of The iDigital Summit, contact us via the web-site, we’re here to facilitate the meetings.

For further information contact the iDigital Team  E. idigital@forumevents.co.uk

Hosted by:

The evening will give you the opportunity to network with digital marketing peers and representatives from Forum Events, whilst enjoying complimentary drinks and canapés.

Venue:Radisson Blu Edwardian Mercer St, 20 Mercer Street, Covent Garden,
WC2H 9HD, London
Date: Thursday 21st June 2012
Dress Code:Dress up or dress down
We hope you can join us!

RSVP HERE

BIMA’s chair Justin Cooke welcomed guests with his vision of the event, saying: “It’s about giving our winners the platform to tell their stories as well as giving the Awards a long tail. We’re positioning the BIMAs as so much more than just the celebrations on the night.”

And with help from the expert interviewing skills of David Jenkinson at C21 Media the stories flowed. Nathan Guerra, Director of Innovation at AMV BBDO took the opportunity to enthuse about his agency’s Grand Prix winning project for the Metropolitan Police, describing it as one of the most innovative campaigns he has ever worked on, using the iPhone in a way no one had before.

Profero CEO Dale Gall was still on a high from their amazing night at the BIMAs where they scooped up Agency of the Year and the Creativity premium award, as well as four category wins. Dale freely admitted that the BIMAs were a welcome punctuation point after a difficult period for the agency. “2010 was a very tough year for Profero and, I think, for many agencies. It was evolve or die. Some did, some didn’t.”

Monterosa and Endemol’s co-production for Channel 4 was another strong performer at the BIMAs and Simon Brickle of Monterosa said: “We’re absolutely thrilled to be recognised by awards in two categories. The Million Pound Drop Live has defined live 2-Screen play-along as a new entertainment genre, with millions of people participating in a synchronised game experience over the last year.”

We couldn’t let the day end without collaring our agency stars for their predictions for 2012 – some of which are set out below:

“For a lot of companies, 2011 was about learning about the power of social media and how to use it. 2012 will be the year it’s put into practice.” David Gamble, Creative Director of Saint@RKCR/Y&R

“2012 will be about games and gamification. We’re seeing a number of examples of people gamifying their sites… everyone from Photoshop to foursquare.” Matthew Evans, Director of Solid State Group

“For 2012 I’m personally interested in what marketing can learn from games in terms of fun.” Chris Kempt, MD of Kempt Ltd

“2012 will be the year for people who are bold enough to pioneer. People want rich experiences on their devices, they want content they haven’t seen elsewhere. It’s not a question of re-purposing.” Ian Wharton, Creative Director at Zolmo

We’d like to thank our headline sponsors Dedipower and Bing Maps from Microsoft for supporting the lunch and establishing it as a great addition to the BIMA Awards calendar.

The BIMA Award Winners' Lunch

The Book of the Night is live, photos from SoAmpd and Danny Higgins Photography are available here and you can relive the awards as they happened with The Drum’s live blog and our buzz aggregator, courtesy of the team at SoAmpd.

Congratulations to the winners – we hope your lovely new BIMA Awards made it home with you in the cab and are now taking pride of place in your trophy cabinet. If you’d like to order duplicates contact awards@bima.co.uk and we’ll sort that out for you.

Like all good digital insiders, we love social stats – especially when they show #BIMAAwards made close to 2million impressions. On top of this, we had almost a thousand people in Fabric – smashing! If you want to be part of the story next year, contact henrycarroll@bima.co.uk to talk about sponsorship opportunities for the BIMAs 2012.

But before we start thinking about next year we want to say thanks to everyone who made this year’s awards so successful. Jim Angell and the team at Swim Productions produced the event and we cannot recommend them highly enough. Ditto Tiffany, Charlie and their team at SoAmpd.

Our headline sponsors Dedipower were a pleasure to work with, as were all who supported the BIMAs: Microsoft, Digital Gurus and Green Square, as well as Futureheads, Results International, Round8, Sheridans, Puregenie, iStockphoto, Aditi, Webfusion, Sequence, Fortune Cookie, Courvoisier, The Blueprint, Norton Leigh, Net Benefit, Adobe, Propel, Traffic LIVE, Site Morse, Cookie Reports, Pluck by Demand Media and V&A.

Thanks also to our media partners – reaching half a million digital professionals: The Drum, Figaro, UTalk Marketing, Communicate, .net magazine, C21, Mixing Digital and Chinwag.

The BIMAs were established in 1985 to celebrate and showcase the greatest interactive work being undertaken in Britain, and have now become one of the most coveted Awards and the biggest nights in the Internet industry calendar.

With support from media partners including New Media Age, Figaro Digital, C21 Media, .Net Magazine, The Drum, Communicate Magazine and Utalk Marketing the Awards will reach over 400,000 digital media professionals across Britain.

2011 sees a total of 31 categories across a full range of verticals, platforms and channels sectors, as well as the addition of a new ‘Agency of the Year’ category, to reflect the incredible output of British agencies. Newly appointed BIMA Executive and Former Editor of Revolution Magazine Gareth Jones commented, ‘We have worked hard to try and develop a set of categories that represent the breadth and depth, effectiveness, craft and flair of British digital talent.’

BIMA Chair Justin Cooke added, ‘We are so excited at the prospect of building on the success of last year’s Awards, where we saw a record level of 350 entries judged by 65 industry heavyweights and over 1,000 attendees celebrating at Heaven nightclub. I am particularly excited by our new partnership with Internet Week Europe, now in its second year, and by our venue choice of Fabric – one of the greatest clubs in the World. Last year was so fun I didn’t want to leave, and this year we are aiming to make the BIMAs live and breathe our industry, with the most interactive Award ceremony ever!

To enter the BIMA Awards visit www.bimaawards.com. BIMA Members get up to two free entries and discounts on every subsequent entry. If you are not yet a member, join now from as little at £320 + VAT

If you are interested in judging the BIMAs please email henry.carroll@bima.co.uk, or if you want to reach over 400,000 digital media professionals and engage with them on the night, email henry.carroll@bima.co.uk

At the beginning of the 30 minute talk, Jaffe announced his three hypotheses for the new book:

1. Most revenue comes from existing clients – He claims for example that 75% of
   Zappos revenue comes from returning customers.
2. Percentage of spend on existing clients – What % of your marketing budget do businesses invest in existing customers?
3. The 20/80 rule – Jaffe claims that 3% of Coke customers are responsible for 80% of the sales

According to Jaffe there may be an epiphany here. What if we got all marketing wrong?  To answer the book’s hypotheses Jaffe proposed some strategies at SXSW:

1. Retention should be strategic – It should be a means to an end. For example, give
   customers cameras to depict product experience and then encourage them to share their experiences.
2. Customer service is part of a larger subset – Customer experience is key. Company A is better than Company B because it remembers the name of the customer.  On this theme Jaffe mentioned how he recently went to Atlanta on a repeat visit and the hotel handed him a written thank you
   note thanking him for coming back for the 3^rd time. They remembered everything about what he likes including the type of newspaper and chocolate. To top up the positive experience they gave him a hand written thank you note for staying there again.
3. Social Media – Perhaps the most controversial topic here, Jaffe advised businesses to use social media for retention and not for acquiring new customers. On this note he advised that businesses should stop chasing big influencers. The influencers that matter are the customers.

During  the talk Jaffe asked the audience “Who owns the customer?” Is it PR, Marketing? Possibly a new team should be created – A customer experience team. Jaffe was then asked by one delegate “how do I get my client who owns a carpet business to get his customers to come back to him after 10 years and buy his carpets again?” Jaffe answered (creatively) that there is no one minute fix and that the carpet company should engage in constant conversation via a solid CRM strategy and introduce the customer to new products during the 10 years and try to remind the customer what a new carpet feels like by offering them carpet samples.  Jaffe argued that testimonials from customers and naturally help to sell things like carpets.

Jaffe was asked about the importance of interactive media and in particular mobile. He recommended that a staggering 33% of today’s marketing budget should be spent on mobile. Another member of the audience asked Jaffe “How should a brand deal with crises?” Jaffe specified that negative comments are part of normality and businesses should not shy away from them. He then used Crox as an example. He mentioned that people complained about the horrible designs of the flip flops. This according to Jaffee, didn’t stop people buying them for their sheer comfort.

Back to the CRM strategies, Jaffe urged marketers to build databases of both brand lovers and brand haters. For dealing with complaints and crisis’s Jaffe asked organisations to  use phones to talk to customers and  take things offline. He claimed this is far more effective than tweeting or emailing. You can’t escape Jaffe’s wit, passion and charm – Flip the Funnel is most certainly on my Amazon shopping list!

Brought to you by Cyber-Duck – Web Design London

In this article, I will explore some of the latest apps, how the technology works and what implications they have on more conventional interactive media folk such as web designers, programmers and digital agencies.

Why Locative Media?
Global sales of smartphones increased by 50% during Q2 2010 and it is no secret that mobile Web access via laptops and phones will overtake the desktop by 2015 (according to the ITU). But there is a more important silent revolution happening. Locative Media is becoming increasingly integral to ‘new’ interactive media and into the app economy. Even desktop browsers such as Opera now include geo location and locative functionality. Certain websites are now using locative media – and so are plenty of mobile apps.

A Snapshot of Locative Media Apps
Gowalla and Foursquare are two mobile apps with gaming like rewards that take the technology one step further. The apps broadcast your location to social networks enabling all of your friends to see what pub you ‘crawled’ into. In addition, apps such as Lonely Planet’s new Android app introduce augmented reality experiences when you visit physical locations in major cities.

If you are out, you can use mobile apps such as Nru (Near You) from Last Minute.com to find the nearest attractions in the area. Looking for the best Italian? Simply use the touch screen interface to select the relevant category and results appear instantly. Nru is a clever app; it uses the smartphone’s built-in compass technology and a lifestyle database from Qype. Brands like Lastminute.com can now offer both conventional website experience and locative mobile app experience. This is clearly a good thing for the brand and increases user engagement.

There is a massive demand amongst brands and clients requesting dedicated mobile apps which are genuinely useful for the end user.  For example, developers in Seattle have already created an app ‘One Bus Away’ that tells you when the next bus will arrive saving users invaluable time.

The Technology
The current generation of smartphones pack in some incredible technology. GPS mobile phone technology has been around for 4-5 years and identifies where the user is located globally. This allows software developers to broadcast your location to a web service which in turn allows the app to react accordingly.

For the latest generation of smartphones, there is the Gyroscope. This piece of technology is aware of the direction you are pointing your phone in and detects your orientation. Working with the Gyroscope is the Accelerometer which figures out the speed in which users change their movement.  Other cutting-edge technologies in mobiles include HD cameras, ambient light sensors and proximity detectors.

The ‘Layar’ Augmented Reality (AR) App on the Android and iPhone platforms utilises the latest location based technology to create its own interface: The Layar Reality Browser. It uses the phone’s camera, GPS and Gyroscope and overlays relevant layers (that you choose) on the phone’s screen. You can manipulate the interface to view the history of landmarks in real-time, find users who are tweeting ‘live’ in your area and find restaurants all with an augmented reality like experience.

Implications for Interactive Media professionals
Where does all of this leave interactive media professionals?  There is no need to panic – we are already seeing the desktop and laptop embrace locative functionality. Opera, like Google Chrome and FireFox, are supporting the W3C’s geolocation API which enables desktops and laptops to broadcast location. This unleashes more opportunities such as ‘photo tagging’, location based form ‘fill-ins’ and extra geo-information for social networks when users next log in.

Traditional PC’s and laptops will continue to be used for many years to come as they have a huge advantage in immersing users with information more quickly and being less fidgety to navigate and type on. Many of us will also be creating new apps and ‘spin offs’ of existing websites for iPads and other HTML5 interfaces, reusing existing content.

There are of course dilemmas and pitfalls involved with app development; Do you produce native apps or Web apps? If you go for native apps, should they be specific  to iPhone,  Android or another platform?

Web apps VS Native apps
Below is a chart which highlights the pros and cons of each type of app:

Conclusion
Brands and agencies can all leverage the huge opportunities of locative media. No matter what industry you are in, there is an app being developed or one that could be developed with location based technology to engage users in a new dimension.  According to Tech Crunch, it took Foursquare’s locative mobile (native) app just over a year to get one million users, with some 120,000 new users signing up in just 10 days (straight after a developer’s conference). 

On the 8th September 2010 Danny will be talking about common mistakes in interactive media production.

Don’t forget to vote for your favourite Blog
This year the Best Blog award will be decided by a public vote. Please consider the fantastic nominees and vote for your favourite at http://www.bimaawards.com/categories/best_blog/

It is one of the longest established courses in its field and this gives it an exceptional wealth of experience upon which to draw. This year twenty students from sixteen countries have come together to create five eclectic projects.

The very apt theme this year is ’searching for a contemporary definition of Interactive Media’ which the students believe to be ‘the SYNERGY between data, technology and humans.

We think this sounds like well worth a visit.

Location:

School of Media
London College of Communication
Elephant & Castle
London SE1 6SB

Nearest Tube: Elephant & Castle (Northern & Bakerloo Lines)

For more information visit http://www.synergy0809.co.uk/

Two specific topics came up again and again – what is our planning currency, and what is our measurement currency? Clearly better business cases and sharper understanding of ROI is getting more important. Everybody talked about that. Not one of the attendees put a hand up to ’spending more’ in 2009. In fact, it’s how to spend less, but get more. And this is where we need to think more clearly as an industry on what we do and how we do it, in order to decide and price our value. I worry that we measure ourselves often on how we do things rather than the absolute value of what we do. (we delivered the project on time – great. But what was it for, who was it for, why is it good, how many consumers does it influence, does it change behaviour?

if the role of marketing is to determine the market the brand will compete in and to manage the incremental growth or defence of share – what does the interactive activity do to support that? Ask yourselves the question. Let me know what you think.