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ZO dmexco reporters meeting Steve King

International ZO dmexco reporters with Steve King, CEO of ZenithOptimedia Worldwide

During dmexco 2015, the ZO reporters got the chance to meet the CEO, Worldwide of Zenith Optimedia – Steve King. It was a very inspiring chat which gave us new insight into the history of the company.

A few words about Steve King. He is one of the most experienced global network leaders. Before becoming CEO of Zenith Media Europe, Middle East and Africa in August 1997, he was appointed director of TV buying, overseeing the largest TV group of its kind in Europe. He was made Deputy Managing Director in 1992 and Managing Director in 1993. Following the creation of ZenithOptimedia in October 2001, he was appointed Chief Executive of ZenithOptimedia EMEA and subsequently Worldwide CEO in March 2004.

Steve emphasized that people play a very important role in the company, which is why he started our discussion with the sentence, “Tell me something about yourselves”. He was curious about our roles and duties, and this gave us a great opportunity to get to know the other ZO reporters better. After our speeches Steve talked about his career path and the details of his own daily work. He mentioned that he started his career in media sales; he told us how Zenith began operating in USA, and how Zenith and its sister agency – Optimedia – became part of the ZenithOptimedia Worldwide network.

During the conversation Steve referred to panel discussion about ‘Collaborative Growth”. In this very interesting debate, he led a discussion with Lisa Utzschneider – the Chief Revenue Officer at Yahoo –and Ralf Rau – the Global Director of Marketing Communication at SCA. They tried to answer the following questions: will collaboration become the catalyst in a transformational world? And who is leading the process of helping brands to transform their business models? Conversation with Steve King was an excellent opportunity to discuss this debate and expand on the topic.

Steve gave us a lot of tips and tricks, which we found particularly helpful. He told us, “Don't be afraid to take a risk; don't be afraid of failure”. Risks come with the acceptance that you will make some mistakes along your journey, but by making mistakes you will learn valuable lessons about your business, and this will help you build your self-esteem. Every career has its share of challenges and you will constantly be tested. Steve said also that going through tough times makes you stronger. He also mentioned that working with demanding clients is the best lesson.

During the conversation with Steve we talked also about his private life and passions. One of the reporters asked which profession he would had chosen if he hadn’t worked as a Global CEO. Steve replied that maybe he would be a sportsman. We asked him also about what he likes and dislikes in his job and how his typical day looks.

Steve talked also willingly about the company's future and which markets have the greatest potential. It was good to hear that he sees a bright future for ZenithOptimedia!

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Lucia - Things I’ve learned from Steve King

ZO dmexco reporter Lucia Ilie, Digital Communications Planner Zenith Romania, interviewed Steve King, CEO of ZenithOptimedia Worldwide

Steve King really took his time talking with the reporters team, in a very inspirational meeting. Here are my key take-outs:

1. It’s always better to make a decision than not make a decision at all.

2. Being innovative and transforming your business is crucial.

3. Joint ventures never work.

4. Successful companies fail for 3 reasons:

a. They lose their top talent.

b. They underestimate the impact of technology in their business (they  overestimate in the short term and they underestimate in the long term).

c. They try to diversify too far.

5. As a media agency it’s important to remain neutral, and don’t underestimate the impact of data and technology.

6. It’s much better to work on a challenging client, you learn so much more.

7. Focus on the core business. As a media agency it’s important to focus on media strategy, consultancy and leveraging data and technology in our work, rather than on becoming a tech company.

8. No matter where you are professionally speaking, keep setting new challenges.

9. If it was easy, somebody else would do it.

10. No job is perfect but perseverance does pay off.

11. Don’t be afraid to take risks.

12. Hard times make you tough, mistakes help you learn.

13. Read “The Economist”.

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PerfomicsAKM3: Doodle makes the planning process more comfortable

Doodle is about easy scheduling. It greatly simplifies the process of planning events, meetings, brunches – almost everything that needs to be planned. No matter what you want to plan, Doodle does it for free, it saves time and doesn’t require registration. Doodle is an internationally loved brand.

Doodle was founded as a start-up by two Swiss engineers from ETH Zurich in 2007. The Swiss media owner Tamedia bought a 49% stake in Doodle in 2011, then bought the rest in 2014, by which time it had 20 million users a month. The founders left the company, because it was no long a start-up, and Michael Brecht became the new CEO. Thanks to Michael and his team, nowadays Doodle is one of the most famous scheduling tools worldwide – probably the market leader, with 24 million users a month in 25 countries and 17 languages.

Doodle is a super viral product: it is in the top 1,300 sites worldwide, and gets about 80% if its traffic direct and from email. Every additional new user brings in several more. Doodle just needed some SEO from PerformicsAKM3.

Systematic keyword research showed that Doodle was not properly capturing either brand or generic traffic. SEO was done different for different countries and languages. In general, it is not necessary in this business to perform country-oriented marketing; language-oriented marketing is sufficient. But Doodle wanted to focus on specific markets for strategic reasons. Every client is unique!

Each case of international and multilingual SEO has its own “best practice” for long-term success. Sites can address different countries and languages with different country code top-level domains (ccTLDs, e.g. doodle.fr), subdomains (fr.doodle.com) or subfolders (doodle.com/fr). The choice depends on the time-frame and individual circumstances. Doodle chose to use subfolders, because many of the ccTLDs were already taken and would cost a lot to acquire, and it preferred to use subdomains for partners, such as exmpl.doodle.com. Subfolders already existed and were easy and quick to implement.

Written by Victoria Shayakhmetova, Media Group Head, ZenithOptimedia Russia

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Technology overview: Nugg.ad

ZenithOptimedia Germany has done great work with programmatic marketing, using the internal trading desk, AOD. We are now using our German experience to develop and grow programmatic marketing for Russian clients, based on the AOD suite. I was really impressed and inspired by what the German team has done. As one of the dmexco reporters, I decided to look deeply into what new technologies are available for programmatic today, and what will be available tomorrow.

First, I talked to Nugg.Ad.

Nugg.ad is a smart audience platform, founded in Berlin in 2006. They now offer a great variety of targeting options suitable for any marketing purpose. Looking at their capabilities from the top, I would identify three big groups of targeting options, with different levels of importance to us as a media agency. The first group – which is in general less interesting since it is pretty similar to what is available from its competitors – is their pack of consumer-related targets, based on demographic profiles, online behaviours, product interests and affinities. I specifically liked a proposed set of online behaviour targets linked to consumption of specific product categories. But overall this is a substitute for what can be done well by other vendors.

The second group of targeting options is very interesting. Nugg.ad can target users depending on how quickly they accept brand messages. In particular you may optimise your campaign towards specific communication objectives like Brand Awareness or Purchase Intent, using those people who already reacted to your campaign as the basis for further targeting. I loved it since in my market we use programmatic technology to target mass audiences as well, and this kind of approach helps to optimise the results you need from the campaign. That’s helpful when you are not able to track any digital metric as a success indicator.

The third group of targets opens a bright new future. Nugg.ad offers panel-based targets that enables cross-media solutions for your campaigns. A case study that VivaKi and Nugg.ad prepared for PayPal in Germany is a great illustration of this. Having access to GfK Media Efficiency panel, VivaKi and Nugg.ad created a single source technology called X-Cross, which enabled a fully integrated distribution of moving image campaigns on TV and online, to optimise the ad exposure across the different channels and to maximise the campaign’s net reach. Nugg.ad’s role here was to analyse the online behaviour of the target groups of the respective TV campaigns. Based on intelligent algorithms and machine learning, X-Cross creates a target group based on the TV audience, which it then addresses online. This kind of targeting isolates online contacts and minimises contact with people who have already seen the TV ad – the share of online video only contacts grew by 38% compared to the standard distribution. Aided ad recall grew by 17%, and brand trustworthiness grew by an incredible 18%. This case study is a perfect example of technology collaboration between agencies and one of the leading targeting technologies on the market. The fact that it enables a close link between online and TV ads makes it even more attractive, since it promises even deeper cross-media integration in the future.

Written by Yana Lagutina, Digital Planning & Client Service Director ZenithOptimedia Russia

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Guy Abrahams, ZenithOptimedia worldwide strategic marketing director: “The future of media agencies is to become curative, not creative”

dmexco – the digital marketing exposition & conference – is the best way to meet the greatest specialists from all over Europe. In the ZenithOptimedia lounge I was lucky to meet Guy Abrahams, one of ZenithOptimedia’s top experts. Guy sat on the sofa with his personal laptop and worked on a presentation: maybe for the world advertising summit or for his next visit to one of ZenithOptimedia’s offices around the world, who knows?

Guy has a wide role in ZenithOptimedia’s operational life: he leads the communication planners and is also in charge of the agency’s positioning in the market. It was no surprise that many people were crowded around him. I decided to ask this media veteran for his forecast of the development of the advertising market over the next few years.

“The development of the advertising market is based on the idea of brand communications,” said Guy.

“All of us should start to think about the advertising process not as media planners, or buyers, or strategists, but as advertisers. Agencies should give brand-focused service, concentrating on the needs of each separate brand.

“But it is not a good idea just to tell consumers what brands want. There will no longer be pure advertising as we knew it before, there will be ecosystems full of experiences, and we will tell consumers what they want to hear, what will be useful and interesting for them, across media channels.

“The advertising market is becoming more adaptive and flexible without any standard models of communications. We should think how can we orchestrate the delivery of experiences across the consumer journey – it’s not about being a creative agency, it is about being a curative agency.”

Written by Victoria Shayakhmetova, Media Group Head, ZenithOptimedia Russia

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Interview with Michael Kahn, CEO Performics Worldwide

ZO dmexco reporter Lucia Ilie, Digital Communications Planner Zenith Romania, interviewed Michael Kahn, CEO Performics Worldwide at the #dmexco2015

1. What did you like most at dmexco this year?

I’m amazed by the amount of energy here at dmexco, the attendance only seems to go up and up. I've been coming here for three years, and there are more people here than ever before, there’s more dialogue going on, the conversations seems to have more energy than ever before, and it seems like really serious business is going on here.

So it’s great to see all these digital marketers coming together with so much enthusiasm. Also, alongside businesses like Google, Twitter, Facebook, Performics, AKM3 and ZenithOptimedia, there are so many other types of businesses that come here, like Mediamath – emerging businesses trying to make a difference in programmatic, video or content. It’s an entrepreneurial environment, one that's great for big business.

 2. What is the main opportunity for Performics AKM3 on the market?

So much of media and marketing is becoming machine-based and machine-driven. We need to design systems to leverage the data we have, to make smarter buys and investments in optimization and connecting with the consumer. So programmatic is huge to Performics. They say that search was the original programmatic media, because it was all biddable, so I think that is got to be at the core of what we do. But Performics is not about optimizing to eyeballs, it’s not about being programmatic against clicks, it’s about being programmatic to meaningful actions on behalf of the brand.

We are moving in a world where advertisers expect that marketing of all kinds, including content marketing, will be programmatic driven, so we are using tools to connect with the consumer in the right way, in the right moment, at the right time.

 3. And what are the main things to look out for?

We can never be good enough. If you are a performance marketing agency, the client’s expectations are that you will deliver better results today than you did yesterday, and better results tomorrow, that you have roadmaps that will help them innovate and lead the market.

So we can never sit still, we have got to get better and expand what we do. We also have to be aware that we face direct competition – consultancies that want to get into the advertising marketplace, clients that can take work in-house – so we have to be very good at what we do to compete.

 4. Is this a real threat, clients taking work in-house from agencies?

Yes, it’s always been there, I think it ebbs and flows. Sometimes clients take more in-house, sometimes less. There’s a hell of a lot of business that’s under review right now in the world, and that business is under review because clients are saying: should I host that in-house, should I work with an outside agency, who’s the right agency to work with? I think in-house is always an option and a threat.

 5. Please give us short guidelines on how to launch Performics AKM3 locally:

You got to say to yourself,

- What platform, technology or partners am I going to use for this going forward?

- How am I going to build up, with what DSP? Do I have capability in-house, within my agency, do I have to work outside with a DSP?

- What kind of data can I get access to, and what DMP can I use to inform the demand-side platform?

- What kind of talent do I need to drive all that?

So I think you need to discuss technology, capability and talent. We ultimately set up a model where, even though you start small, you’ve got the right people leveraging the right data against the right platforms to make it all work.

 6. SEO influence in Performics AKM3 business:

I look at SEO differently. Programmatic is today about paid media and optimizing your search, social, mobile and display campaigns. SEO is about leveraging content and owned assets and search discoverability.

SEO is really in demand right now, because brands are realizing that, “great, I can do all this stuff with my paid media, but what I can really have impact on is my owned and earned media”.

SEO is different from the media business, you can build a foundation quickly and get some pretty amazing results.

7. Recommend us a book:

I’ve read a great book about the entrepreneurial culture in Israel called Start-up Nation: a fantastic read, all about how you really drive innovation and scale, and how a whole society did it. My second book is very motivational if you are a runner, and one of the best books I’ve ever read, called Born to Run: all about a tribe of Native Mexicans who run hundred miles just for sheer joy.

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Tips how not to get lost at Dmexco

ZO dmexco reporter Elena Artemova, Head of Business and Marketing Analytics, ZenithOptimedia Russia

#dmexco has come to an end almost as soon as it started, and its seeds are already spreading across more than 100 different countries. One of the biggest challenges at the conference was not to get lost in the huge amount of information available. Because the conference is getting bigger every year I would like to provide several tips on how to make the most of it.

1. Self-organization, or how to plan everything in advance.

a. Check the dmexco website – dmexco.de – and mobile app, since they are extremely useful for planning your stay at the conference. You can print the timetable and have it on your mobile. Note that there are not just seminars, but also the speakers’ corner, debates, and many other interesting things that are well worth seeing. Check the variety of exhibitors – it will pleasantly surprise you!

b. Book a hotel in Dusseldorf if everything is full in Cologne. The RE local train will get you to Cologne in 30 minutes.

c. Come to the conference earlier and leave it late – otherwise you will have to stay in a huge queue for a shuttle bus.

d. Check the information displays hanging all over the walls at dmexco – the timetable is often subject to change, so if you’re hoping to visit something very important to you, it’s best to make sure that it is still on the list.

2. Make the most of your stay at dmexco – time runs out so quickly.

a. More than 75,000 square feet of area can make it almost impossible for you to get to the right place at the right time. We were lucky to have a booth where it was very convenient to meet people. It was also easy to meet at the key points of the exposition – near the Congress Hall or the Debates Hall.

b. If you go to a seminar, make sure you have enough time to get into the right hall and find a seat in the room. The hottest topics always gathered a lot of people in advance.

c. Your timetable, even if properly planned, can be very tough to stick to. Don’t try to be everywhere, it’s much better to have some “empty hours” to be able to meet new people. The value of these conversations can’t be underestimated! Be sure you have some free time to speak to the leading professionals from different companies.

d. Take copies of the trade publications the organisers have placed in the main hall, as well as the dmexco brochure, and note the most important events and people listed within them.

3. Know exactly what you can postpone to save you precious time at the conference.

a. Try to have a break from your day-to-day job – dmexco is just for two days, so it’s a shame to miss important people and events. I know this is almost impossible because some questions seem too urgent, but we should at least should try.

b. Take the brochures which exhibitors are happy to give you. You may read them at home.

c. Make notes and pictures during the seminars – you will fix the most important things for you forever.

 Though it seemed to be a very difficult mission, we managed to follow most of these rules this year. The main wisdom that came to us after the conference was that, even if it seems that you are missing something, you should relax and absorb as much as you can. Everything you see will be valuable and you will definitely see a lot!

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ZenithOptimedia panels and seminars at dmexco 2015

Review the panel from Wednesday 16, 16.15 pm at dmexco 2015 with Michael Kahn, CEO, Performics Worldwide about The Performance Debate: Tapping into the Power of Consumer Intent. 

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ZenithOptimedia panels and seminars at dmexco 2015

Review the panel from Wednesday 16, 14.15 pm at dmexco 2015 with Tomas Lauko, CEO, ZenithOptimedia Russia about The Global Perspective: Bridges into the World - Disruptive Business Models for MarTech. 

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At dmexco 2015, the ZO dmexco reporters got the chance to meet Steve King – CEO of ZenithOptimedia Worldwide – for a talk. Emilia Martinpelto from Zenith Sweden participated and shares her experiences with us below:

Steve King, CEO of ZenithOptimedia Worldwide and the ZO dmexco reporters at the Vivaki Lounge. 

For more than an hour we sat in the Vivaki Lounge at dmexco and had a chat with Steve King (CEO of ZenithOptimedia, Worldwide). Steve started by telling us about ZenithOptimedia’s history, starting when ZenithOptimedia was named Zenith Media Buying Services, and was the first agency to unbundle media from creative. He told us about when Zenith opened its first office in the US, and Steve worked as CEO of the US business for two years. In 2001 Zenith and its sister agency Optimedia became the ZenithOptimedia Worldwide Network. We talked about the exciting new companies that have joined ZenithOptimedia in recent years such as Newcast and Performics, which has just merged with the Berlin SEO agency AKM3.

During the panel discussion about ‘Collaborative Growth’ on day one, Steve spoke about the two key points he has in mind when he talks about ZenithOptimedia: "hire the best people, and focus". He mentioned that we all sound happy when we talk about our jobs in each country where we operate. It was very interesting to hear about the other reporters talking about their markets elsewhere in Europe, and Steve showed great interest in everyone's opinions. For me as a junior, having just worked my first year at ZenithOptimedia, I have had an incredible amount of work experience in a short time.

The second key Steve mentioned in the panel discussion was focus. ZenithOptimedia focuses on Live ROI, and aims to always be top of mind when you consider the best Live ROI Agency. It´s our focus, it´s our agency's identity! According to Steve, ZenithOptimedia is still a young agency. He describes the company as an underdog, and divides ZenithOptimedia’s journey into two stages. The first stage was building the company, and the second state – where we are in now – is to develop ZenithOptimedia and make it the best Live ROI agency. Steve´s next challenge for ZenithOptimedia is to develop and find new markets in places like Mexico and Indonesia.

We talked about how to think when making decisions, and Steve said that he thinks it’s always better to make a decision than not make a decision at all, otherwise everybody will wonder what to do and you will have to live with the consequences of not making an active decision.

Steve has always worked with sales. His first job was to sell advertising for a TV company, and he worked there for two years after he graduated. This was during a recession in the UK, so it was hard to get a job. Sales have been a common thread in Steve’s career. “I’m selling and buying the whole time – I’m selling to you now, I’m selling you a dream!” he said.

We all fired him with questions such as, “What does a typical look like for you?”, and he kept a close eye on his diary when he told us what he would be doing for the next few days. He was also asked what he would do for a profession if he did not work as ZenithOptimedia’s CEO. Steve replied that he didn’t want to work anywhere else, because he likes his job too much, but that if he really had to it would be fun to be a sportsman; he really likes tennis and skiing. Steve sees a bright future for ZenithOptimedia and it was interesting to hear him talk in person about his vision for the company in the coming years!

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ZenithOptimedia panels and seminars at dmexco 2015

Review the panel from Wednesday 16, 11.55 am at dmexco 2015 with Steve King, CEO, ZenithOptimedia WorldWide & Ralf Rau, Global Director of Marketing Communication, SCA about The Magic Triangle: Collaborative Growth. 

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“The future is an adressable one”

Stefan Bardega, Chief Digital Officer, ZenithOptimedia Worldwide, and Robert Altendeitering, Media Planner, ZenithOptimedia Germany

Stefan, as we sit here in the agency lounge we are surrounded by this constantly vibrating noise flooding the halls here at dmexco. That seems to be the aggregated news of our media branch. Is there any change in development compared to previous years?

I´ve been here a few times now. The thing i noticed is that other than just the growth in volume of people, the growth in size of the stands and of course the volume of money being spent is the profile of the visitors you`re seeing at the stands. You are seeing more senior level marketers coming to this exhibition. That is interesting considering what you see here is basically 90% ad technology. I think there is a realization in the industry that competitive advantage can be gained through smart use of technology. Senior marketers, CMO´s and sometimes CEO´s as well are now taking a very keen interest in the technology side because they feel that in the future this will give them competitive performance advantage.

So is there a true innovation or a trend in technology you could point out? Is there a holy grail hidden at this year´s dmexco that we can take away?

I think there is innovation everywhere. Marketers today should not look forward for innovation but sideways; the opportunity to innovate is all around them. Mobile is a key driver of innovation today, affecting everything from UX to payment processing. There are some very interesting developments in programmatic; specifically programmatic technologies that are looking to turn traditional media such as TV  and Outdoor into a more dynamic, more addressable marketplace. In addition I’ve seen some very interesting technologies such as Mediagamma that are looking to turn media buying into a futures market where you can option blocks of media on behalf of a client then sell back into the market at a later date. This kind of transparent futures trading I think has a real future in digital marketing.

Can you describe the meaning of the often used, yet mystic term ”digital transformation“? 

Digital transformation is a massively over used term at the moment. The fact of the matter is that all businesses are required to be digital today. The speed and degree of digital adoption for a business though is dependent on three things generally. Firstly the category (some categories are more aggressive in their digital adoption) secondly the country (some countries infrastructure better enables digital business) and thirdly the audience (audiences adopt digital at different speeds). All businesses should have a long term digital roadmap though that takes into account these elements and prioritises the order in which tasks are completed based on effort Vs reward. I would say though that this roadmap is never complete so it is more about ongoing digital evolution rather than transformation, which assumes an end point.

You already mentioned mobile becoming the most important digital touchpoint. What about wearables pushing into the market right now, what is their share in this development?

Data is what powers much communication effectiveness. The more data you have the better you can target, the better you can target the more personalized your communication can be, and the more personalized you get generally the better the response and the better return on investment. So when we think about mobile and wearables specifically we should consider what new data sets are made available to drive improved targeting and effectiveness. Mobile & Wearables bring a whole new combination of data signals including speed of travel, direction of travel, location and a whole host of other signals that can be deployed. Brands should be thinking about how this data may be used from a tactical media targeting perspective but also from a service design perspective i.e what new services might I want to develop that can make the most of these new data signals.

As well as creating opportunities though wearables will also disrupt existing digital marketing disciplines. Search will be one discipline sure to change. As wearables take off human computer interaction will need to change due to the size of the screen. It is impossible to type a query on a watch therefore people will need to speak a query. As a result we will see the rise of voice engines. This is already happening with the likes of Baidu’s Duer engine and Facebook M. As this develops the search market will be reshaped around applications and devices rather than browsers.

Can you give us another example for a challenge the „Agency of the Future“ is facing? What can I do to be prepared for this challenge?

The future is an addressable one. Where every interaction with a customer or prospect is tailored based on data from previous interactions either with owned properties or 3rd party.

The moment you are dealing with this kind of ‘mass personalization’ you are in need of a technology and data, and people to manage both. A large challenge for the agency of the future therefore is to work out how to connect people, technology and data. If you want to learn about these areas it is always best to experience it. I learn much quicker by doing something rather than reading about it. So I would suggest people go ask a data scientist to show you how Hadoop works, go speak with your campaign management team and ask if you can traffic a campaign in an adserver, then head to your programmatic team and ask them if you can log in to DBM to see programmatic in action….perhaps don’t do this all in one day!

written by ZO dmexco reporter Robert Altendeitering, Media Planner, ZenithOptimedia Germany

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How to do content - An interview with Mark Waugh, Global MD Newcast

Newcast

Newcast focuses on driving innovation in communication strategy and activation. It originally started in non-traditional media, exploiting innovations such as sponsorship interaction, and live brand experiences such as field marketing, to deliver rich brand engagement to consumers. From this starting point Newcast has grown up: it has have moved away from a single-minded focus on advertising assets to a series of content assets and brand experiences. The message a brand conveys has to change according to the platform where it tells the story. And it has to reflect the features and strengths of the channel, so the brand behaves natively, reaching consumers in the same way as the rest of the content they consume on that platform. From 2009 onwards Newcast built up its experience of social media. That included producing and sourcing original content for social publishing as well as community management. This has changed over the last couple of years as brands have taken more community management in-house; what they now need is a clear content strategy. 

Clients are hungry

Mark states that clients are hungry to know the answers to two questions:

1.     Which territories should I play in?

2.     What stories should I be telling? Advertising stories do not always translate to the new richer content platforms.

Newcast has used these questions as the basis for developing its activities. Clients have asked Newcast to explore new platforms of interaction, and so it has moved onto them.

Newcast now provides clients with content strategy advice (where to play, how to publish, which channels to use, how to source assets), and follows this up by tying this owned content together with paid content.

Content. Are brands now best at telling their own stories?

There is still a role for the agency, for creating and activating a content strategy. As an agency you have a lot of experience of what works and what does not, built up across many countries and clients. There are still a lot of brands that do not know whether they need a content strategy, or how to set one up. The question for brands is: how do I add value for my brand in this world? Without being interruptive. Deciding on which stories you have permission to talk about is a crucial question for a brand. Consumers reject brand communication when it is not relevant. Good communication wins because it is relevant, answering an audience need and not a consumer need.

 What is so distinctive about Newcast?

The content audit is the engine of our content strategy. The content audit is a strategic product, which we can conduct for any topic relevant to the brand. What we do is this:

- We start with a workshop with the client and planners from ZenithOptimedia, and narrow down the areas we want to explore that are currently valuable to the brand.

- The topic areas that are interesting are put into a research phase. This phase comprises analysis of search volumes, and social listening within the topic areas.

- Thirdly, the audit works out a landscape analysis of what is actually being published on each topic, by anyone, at that point in time. We look on websites, brand competitors, and at any individual assets that are performing well. We look at the source of the content (e.g. is it a blogger, a brand, etc.) so we know who is telling the story. We look at the assets they are using, and what is working.

This content audit produces a rich understanding of the defined category, the topic area and also who is active. From there it’s possible to spot gaps and places where the brand could win, and topics nobody is talking about. The analysis produces opportunities to jump in.

 So we have a content audit. Now?

After the content analysis Newcast creates a few different deliverables:

- A meta-story around these topic areas

- Identification of individual content themes that have high interest and scaled interest

- A playbook for each channel. The topics that have been chosen tell us which channels we should start on and expand onto.

- A publishing plan with a content calendar, which lists the planned content over time, the target audience, and what happens to this audience over the year. It concludes with a budget sheet for responsive content.

 What are things we can learn from Europe and other countries?

There is no question that the most powerful content is local content. Even with a central strategy you need to tailor it to make it fit with the subcultures you operate in. Humour and channel choice, for example, can vary widely by market, so the playbooks are different in response.

 What topics should we keep an eye on for content in 2016?

According to Mark, there are two important developments:

1. Mobile. How to tell stories to audiences through (non-branded) apps. Young people aged 16 to 24 are using their smartphones more and more. Research shows that by 2018 the majority of people will interact on the mobile internet. And the majority of their interaction will be in-app. The main question is how to be relevant and not disruptive.

2. Consumers expect a local approach. To meet their expectations you need to have a network of local correspondents who know the local culture and who are specialists on the topic in question.

written by ZO dmexco reporter Stefanie Goddijn, Senior Digital Consultant, ZenithOptimedia Netherlands

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ZenithOptimedia panels and seminars at dmexco 2015

Review the panel from Wednesday 16, 11.20 am at dmexco 2015 with Mark Waugh, Global Managing Director, Newcast about Gunning for Market Share: A New Intersection of Media, Creative & Consultancy.

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Andre Alpar, Managing Director at PerformicsAKM3, about the status quo of SEO and SEA.

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Looking back on Dmexco

They were two overwhelming and intense days. Over 43,000 visitors! A crowd of digital marketing lovers swarming all over three halls in the Koehlnmesse.

The organisation and participants are calling it a success. Which of course it was. Attracting, informing and inspiring so much people is a true victory. But being part of such an immense amount of people determined to get the best from the two days, and finding their way among so many different locations, also created jams and chaos. Finding your way was a puzzle, going to the toilet challenging, and queuing for food made you question whether you were really that hungry. But seldom have I experienced so many people being so friendly and interested in each other. I am looking back on two intense and very interesting days.

Some sessions really told me about new developments. Sometimes the message was obvious. And some topics were repeated by several speakers. Do you want to know which topics are still with me?

Top 10 trending topics

1.  Content is king. It is not about storytelling. It is about story living. You cannot make up content. You have to be genuine.

2. Creativity follows media. Media follows data analysis. It’s all about consumer behaviour and identifying audiences.

3. Finally and definitely, 2016 will be the year of mobile.

4. Sales and marketing people have to have excellent listening skills. You have to be able to shut up and listen.

5. To be able to interpret data, it is essential to set KPIs and know what you are looking for in advance.

6. Discover a media ecosystem for your brand: find out how your target group behaves and which touchpoints it uses. Integrate these touchpoints and channels in a media ecosystem.

7. A local approach is a must in content creation.

8. Programmatic buying and selling has become the standard. Premium formats and digital video will make the programmatic market explode.

9. With the growth of the programmatic market, scandals have also grow. Fraud and low viewability are key concerns.

10. The role of the agency is changing. Insights from data, consumer behaviour and programmatic knowledge require a more intense and individual approach to brands.

written by ZO dmexco reporter Stefanie Goddijn, Senior Digital Consultant, ZenithOptimedia Netherlands