Montreal 2004: First page Agenda-at-a-glance Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Speakers Sponsors Reports

These are reports from IMC Montreal 2004. Reports courtesy of Barry Welford, StrategicMarketingMontreal.Ca

Wed Apr 21, 2004

IMC 2004 - Footnote - the most memorable quotation

One of the most memorable items for me from IMC 2004 will be a quotation. There are very few quotations that will pass the test of time. Some seem good at the time but are forgotten. One for me that is never far from my thoughts is one by Peter Drucker. "Help is defined by the recipient." That's about 50 years old but I still find situations where it is very appropriate.

I heard a quotation for the very first time at IMC 2004 and it struck me as a phrase that will persist. Christine Perfetti, User Interface Engineering, mentioned it in her session. I believe it's Jared Spool of UIE who coined it. "The Back Button Is The Button Of Death". Several members of the audience immediately showed this was a phrase they knew well. For me, it was a revelation.

Mon Apr 19, 2004

Fri Apr 16, 2004

IMC 2004 - A website is a website is a website.

Helicoptering the IMC 2004, one impression that hit me was the different perspectives of the speakers and the majority of the audience members. The speakers are accustomed to dealing with websites of 1000's of pages. Many members of the audience were business owners dealing with websites with less than 50 pages.

Any website is complex and different people will see different aspects as being important. It's almost like those 6 blind men touching different parts of the elephant and trying to describe what they're feeling. (It's a tree trunk. It's a wall. It's a hose. etc.) My mental picture of this assembly is of 12 blind men. 6 of them are around a huge African elephant and trying to explain to the others what they perceive. The other 6 are grouped around a sleek antelope and trying to explain what they perceive. Clearly the confusion may be even greater than if a website was always the same entity.

A natural question then becomes, "What can either group of 6 blind men learn from the other group?" To use a technical term, what are the scaleable features that apply to both. Scaleable is defined as follows, "A scaleable system is capable of growing through additions of modular increments, without necessitating major modification to the original system."

My own view is that one of the most important scaleable features is one that the antelope group will more easily recognize than the elephant group. This was illustrated by a fascinating question and response that was raised about an IBM website

Wed Apr 14, 2004

IMC 2004 - Customer-centric is not just being Customer-focused

Customer-centric and 1-to-1 marketing are becoming the preferred descriptions for websites that are designed for today's market place. Both terms were widely used in different sessions throughout the 3 days of IMC 2004. However as I tried to get that "helicopter vision" of what the phrase Customer-centric really means to this crowd, I see it isn't what I mean.

Customer-centric is now often used to mean a rifle-shot approach to contact customers rather than the shotgun approach of traditional marketing. The phrase Customer-focused could work equally well for most marketers. However Customer-centric means something radically different from Customer-focused.

Wed Apr 07, 2004

7th International Internet Marketing Conference - Montreal - Final Day Report

The IMC 2004 concluded today and from a straw poll of some of the participants they found it a most practical conference with excellent speakers. It was just the right size for great networking opportunities with an interesting group of international Internet marketers. OK it slipped a little on time-keeping but sometimes that was because an audience wouldn't let a speaker go!

That was made even more difficult by a format where often there were 3 sessions running in parallell. Today again covered the full array of issues associated with Internet marketing. Indeed some related to strategic issues that might have been better on the first day, since they must be tackled first for maximum effectiveness.

Tue Apr 06, 2004

7th International Internet Marketing Conference - Montreal - Day 2 Report

The upbeat message on the potential of Internet marketing continued apace today. Craig Snyder, Marchex, in his Keynote Session, confirmed the trends with some striking US Dept. of Commerce Data. This showed that E-commerce has more than tripled over the last 4 years to reach 17 billion $ US in the 4th Quarter 2003. Surprisingly Internet advertising peaked in 2000 at 6.5 billion $ US then dropped and is only slowly returning above 6 billion $ US. Search advertising did not see this fallback and has seen spectacular growth to perhaps close to a 50% share of this total.

Luckily despite this pleasing reality, the Conference did not immediately morph into a simple Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Conference at this point. It continued to explore the wider theme of what I continue to call Holistic Marketing.

Mon Apr 05, 2004