3XE Digital: Search and Social Highlights by Monsoon Consulting

The event accelerated with a branded content study on Carzone.ie by iReach and GroupM, which outlined the challenges of Search and Social when targeting specific user personas. BBDO’s Jonny Spindler explored ‘A New Era of Digital Creativity’, and highlighted the value of creating stand-out content in an increasingly cluttered world of technology and media. Key points included adopting a mobile-first approach and embracing mass-personalisation. 

We particularly enjoyed the presentation by Aleesha Tully (In The Company of Huskies) on ‘The Connected Consumer Journey’. As we know, technology has completely transformed how consumers interact with brands. Unlike the comparably simplified Don Draper era of traditional media, the contemporary consumer engages with a myriad of channels and touchpoints. The challenge for digital marketers is to understand the consumer, their journey, and their touchpoints in order to devise a clear strategy.

Another talk of interest was Darren McManus from Arekibo‘s analysis of ‘The State of Web Analytics in Ireland’, which shed some light on the issues of ‘Dark Traffic’ and ‘Vanity Metrics’. We were surprised to find that 67% of survey respondents do not use Google Tag Manager as part of their analytics. GTM is one of our favourite digital tools here at Monsoon Consulting.