Three inspiring, informative days of dmexco 2014 are over. Yesterday was on the same high level as the first two days, even though the aftershow-parties on Wednesday were intense and made everyone’s night short.
A huge amount of famous, popular speakers shared their inspiring thoughts with us. But to give you a short summary of the last day, here are the best insights:
“It’s time for a change!” – Georg Berzbach, COO GroupM Germany, concluded that media agencies need to redefine their business models. Content is king, but where is the value for the customer? The ongoing challenge for media agencies as well as companies is to focus on their strength as to many buzzwords are confusing the customers.
There were a lot of speeches yesterday focusing on the topic “Big data”, e.g. on the panels „The high price of smart data“ and „Rethinking advertising after the cookie crumbles“. All experts came to the same conclusion: Big data offer a lot of opportunities – especially for start-ups. But therefore you need a trustful relationship with your customers as well as transparency while dealing with Big data.
“The CMO Talk” about the art and science of digital marketing underlined likewise the current issue: Big data, customer engagement and customer experience are signs of the ongoing digital transformation. Again, this affects every business model. Therefore companies definitely should have in mind that not only their own business sector but also that other industries can easily come up with the latest trend.
Creativity has always been a big issue at the dmexco in the past years. However, some experts realized a slight decrease in the quality of creative content based on the rise of new technologies and tools. Hence, this years’ creativity summit was all about technology and creativity. Jeff Benjamin – chief creative officer at JWT, Steve Simpson – EVP & MD Data & Analytics of Starcom MediaVest, Victor Wong – CEO of paper g and Karl Woolley, Creative Technologist at Framestore discussed about the impact of technology on creativity. There have been fallen a lot of smart phrases in one of the best summits at this years’ dmexco – you can look them up on our twitter account. ‚Between technology and creativity is data‘ is probably the most memorable one – said by Jeff Benjamin. In the end all speakers agreed that individual and creative content matters more than pure numbers and measurable parameters.
Over 430 venture capital firms, accelerators and incubators are nowdays responsible for the most important investments in start-ups – mainly from the U.S. But how is the situation in other parts of the world? Which business models are appropriate for investments and how do investors think? Marvin Liao – venture partner at 500 start-ups, Stefan Gross-Selbeck – managing partner at BCG Digital Ventures and Murli Ravi – Co-Founder of Unicorn Venture Capital cleared the main elements of the venture capital business up. Unlike in the western world, Asia’s emerging markets, such as
India and South East Asia, are less noted for their VC firms. In fact only 25 Venture Capital firms are based in this region spending about 9 billion dollars in Start-ups. Nevertheless, Murli Ravi commented that most of the exits there have been successful. Regarding Germany, Stefan Gross noticed a slight but positive change in the start-up scene – led by the IPO of Rocket Internet. In general the speakers were quite positive about the worldwide Start-up scene – especially Scandinavia impressed the speakers.
Besides the speeches and summits there was a lot more ongoing in hall 6, 7 and 8 of koelnmesse: With nearly 32.000 visitors, dmexco reached a new record. Beside the speeches the huge and impressing exhibition stands from 806 exhibitors, made you feel a spirit of business mixed with different kind of people who altogether created this kind of great atmosphere. One of the highlights was the exhibition stand of Google and YouTube, with a live video slow motion production of people blowing glitter. Moreover everyone felt more than welcome with all these goodies of ice cream, snacks and drinks combined with interesting talks and shows everywhere.
We are definitely sure, you all used the last three days to connect with each other, get inspired by the latest trends and enjoyed this years’ dmexco equally as we did!
