I have come back from a very digital week in London, UK. It was a wonderful and hectic experience that comes in life rarely. And in this post, I will be offering a bit more info on the agenda and my impressions of that particular week.

• The second Face to Face period with my Masters in Digital Program at Instituto de Empresa – wrapping up some of the courses from the first semester and starting new exciting ones. I got to see my peers again, discuss future projects, learn new things and naturally party like crazy.
• AdTech London 2009 – The Digital Marketing venue of the year for the most developed digital country globally – UK.
• Company visits and presentation offered by professionals of Microsoft, FT.com, Accenture’s Marketing Sciences, Nielsen, Sponge, BP and Ogilvy – in those we covered pretty much all the aspects of digital marketing from mobile, SMO, research and others, on both the client and the agency side.

At first, it was a bit challenging to try to make it for both the class sessions and the visits of companies scattered around London. But soon we got used to it. There was an issue with the AdTech exhibition, though. One would expect it to be all flashy and well presented in all areas of digital marketing. But it was not really like that. We clearly saw the mainstream of current fashion – SMO, SEO, SEM and Campaign Management Tools. After all, the money is there, and everyone is trying to make some, right? But Google’s workshops on paid search was fundamental and definitely not targeted at professionals. Mobile marketing firms were also presented, and, I actually set in some of the presentations. In one particular one of the – “Where is the money?”, it was hilarious, where the public was served with the views of an ex-Ogilvy director, who was blabbing for half an hour and left us with no near to the question-answer. Well, let’s hope that next year it will be a bit more valuable content offered.

The real fun part though was the company visits. FT.com, Sponge and Accenture are doing some exciting things and talking to them have broad a new perspective on matters. Microsoft and Nielsen shared their approach to ad serving and data collection. BP shared knowledge on their digital marketing strategy, and Ogilvy showed us all there new gadgets, their incredible office and the mobile advertising they have been creating. Thanks and kudos to all of them!

Copyright © 2009 Borislav Kiprin. All Rights Reserved.