Headed to SXSW? Don’t miss OMMA@SXSW

As marketers make their annual pilgrimage to Austin for SXSW, the Unmetric team will be there as well as one of the lead sponsors for OMMA@SXSW, the conference within a conference produced by MediaPost. On Friday, March 7 and Saturday, March 8 MediaPost will, in their own words: “[b]ring some of its strongest editorial coverage to life across two days of in-depth discussions on the core challenges of digital marketing.

From programmatic and data driven ad platforms to automation that transforms agency culture, from navigating the scale and ethics issues of native advertising to new social, mobile and video strategies, we explore the a broad range of topics relevant to all in the media economy. In all sectors of online media, marketing and advertising … buyers, sellers and tech providers are being challenged to work in real time, with relentless iteration and the constant pressure to prove ROI.”

The agenda really is fantastic, featuring a tremendous collection of progressive thinkers, sharp strategists and leading practitioners from both the agency and brand side. Unmetric caught up with several of the participants and got a sneak peak at some of the more compelling panels that will be happening over the two day session.

On Friday at 5:00pm, Drew Neisser, CEO & Founder, Renegade will be hosting “The Best Mobile Ad Campaigns You Haven’t Seen.” It’s a great topic with a clever format, Drew will be asking panelists to discuss mobile campaigns from a rival agency they wish they had done and to explain why it was distinctly mobile. We asked how critical is a social component when building mobile campaigns, and what do you mean by ‘distinctly mobile?’

It is really impossible to separate mobile and social these days. Social media usage is increasingly mobile and that trend is only going to continue. A Facebook buy, for example, is more and more a mobile campaign. Distinctly mobile means that marketers are taking advantage of all the unique elements of mobile (location-based, SMS, photo, calls, etc) and making sure that all the other elements of the campaign are mobile-friendly (website, customer support hotline, SMS support, social, etc.).

Follow Drew on Twitter at @DrewNeisser for more great insights.

Mention the word data and the team at Unmetric perks up its’ ears. We believe that when you connect people with information great things can happen so the panel, “Is Data the New Media,” is one we won’t want to miss. Data now infuses every aspect of marketing, from programmatic buying to the competitive intelligence we provide around social media data. Jeremy Daly, Executive Strategy Director at Y&R New York will be sitting on this panel and shared some of his thoughts on the importance of data to marketers:

The possibilities with data are changing the rules of marketing online. Everyone is playing catchup in one way or another—on creative implications, consumer expectations, brand messaging and of course on privacy.

Also on the data panel is Steve Wirig, Social Marketing Evangelist, Digital Marketing, Adobe. He’s bullish on the power of data for competitive intelligence, and the need for brands to harness it through automation:

Understanding what your competitors are doing on social helps brands put their own social efforts in context and can be used as industry benchmarks for engagement and success.

Just looking at your competitors’ social profiles occasionally won’t give you the same level of insights and standards as consistently monitoring the publicly available data such as follower counts, engagement metrics, and industry related conversations over time. Automating that data collection is crucial to enable you to look at hundreds of competitive profiles at once, and quickly find the movers or anomalies. You can then dig deeper into what that specific brand did on that specific day or post to drive so much success.

This one takes place on Saturday at 11:30am.

Real-time marketing has certainly been the buzzword du jour so it makes sense that there would be a panel discussion devoted to it here. The OMMA@SXSW agenda kicks off with the panel: Should Brands Be Part of the Real-Time Conversation? Here’s what Rick Wion, Director of Social Media, McDonald’s Corporation, and one of the panelists for this discussion had to say:

My overall perspective is that since the Oreo moment too many brands have rushed forward under the banner of “real-time marketing” and flooded twitter with well-intended but too often misplaced content. Brands need to be selective in trying to find the right moment to connect with customers and then do so based on what the customer needs not what the brand wants to tell them. Our challenge as marketers is to figure out what those needs are and how we can use real-time engagement to fulfill them.

You can get more insights from Rick via Twitter at @rdublife.

There are several other great discussions lined up at OMMA@SXSW, you can see the full agenda here.

Make sure you stop by OMMA@SXSW on Friday to say hello to the Unmetric team. The event is being held at the AT&T Center and SXSW badge holders can attend both days free with registration. MediaPost members attend DAY 2 for free with registration.