iStrategy, London November 2012 Experience

December, 2012

Categorized in: Blog

I will start writing this article from my first day at iStrategy and hopefully finish it by the end of the week. I will share my experiences during my second visit this year to London and iStrategy which was held in Twickenham Stadium.

The conference welcomed a lot of inspiring speakers, but I will tell you about just a few 🙂

iStrategy London

iStrategy couldn’t have started any better as the keynote speaker was Ken Segall, the man who invented the ‘i’ @Apple. Ken worked closely with Steve Jobs as his ad agency creative director for 12 years in NeXT and Apple. This man was on the advertising team behind ‘Think Different’ campaign that helped revitalize the Apple brand. I was inspired when I met and chatted with him about the digital world and Cyprus, of course. Ken’s main message is that you have to keep everything insanely simple. That’s it, nothing more nothing less! With live examples from Steve Jobs emails and conversations I understood the message of ‘Simplicity’.

Ken Segall @iStrategy London

On one of the panel discussions, the marvelous Gillian Muessig was present for the second time in a row.

One of the key messages was influencers; you have to go out there and find your influencers, but never hire them at your company. You have to look deep to find your influencer in your industry. Find them and reward them!

Create campaigns that will put a real smile on your clients’ faces. The rest will come. I have mentioned it previously on one of my blogs and in one of my speeches, examples like KLM Surprise and Coca Cola Surprise Machine. Feeling and emotions are what touch people’s hearts.

Man of the match!

On the second day, we were inspired by Mari Smith. I liked her presentation that covered Facebook marketing and strategies. It was a pleasure meeting her in person. I like people who advise others to follow online guidelines and actually do themselves. I tweeted about Mari and what made an impression on me is that she actually replied to me and followed me instantly. This shows that this person doesn’t just talk, she actually does what she suggests to you. We had a pleasant online and offline conversation. Thank you Mari!

Mari Smith @iStrategy Sharing Knowledge And Facebook Strategy

Governments and the police should start using social media to help people and engage real time with them. We had the pleasure hearing Alex Coley from Metropolitan Police.

Brands should understand that there is a big difference between delivering a message and telling a story. You should understand it. To drive engagement takes a lot of time and knowledge.

Tell them your story!

Analytics, a huge chapter, but I will be brief. You should definitely go beyond your Google Analytics! You have to find your consumers’ behavior, how your users act, what do they do online.

I was in a session at Gary Twelvetree from Barclays Card. The message here is that you should come up with more creative games to engage your users. Create apps but less branded. Don’t add your logo at every opportunity you get.

Well these are some of my tips and there is a lot of information that I will use with our clients 🙂

Got Blocked four times from twitter!

At each iStrategy there are iSCARS, it’s an award that one person wins and gets to shake the hand of the legendary MC Adam Burns! For me, it wasn’t about the gifts, it was about shaking hands with Adam! One of the greatest presenters that I have ever met in my life! Well the award was the best use of Social Media and I won! Basically I was live streaming iStrategy 🙂 I had my Mac and iPhone all the time during the event and I was trying to educate people on twitter about iStrategy. The feeling was priceless, really! Magnificent! I won an iPod Nano, Amazon Kindle and Stretch Headphones!