{"id":103717,"date":"2013-03-12T00:34:00","date_gmt":"2013-03-12T05:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dacgroup.com\/dx3-canada-spotlight-part-1-the-great-debates\/"},"modified":"2024-12-31T06:36:05","modified_gmt":"2024-12-31T11:36:05","slug":"dx3-canada-spotlight-part-1-the-great-debates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dacgroup.com\/en-gb\/insights\/blog\/strategy\/dx3-canada-spotlight-part-1-the-great-debates\/","title":{"rendered":"Dx3 Canada Spotlight Part 1: The Great Debates"},"content":{"rendered":"

Note: This is the first of two posts about Dx3 Canada 2013<\/a>, which took place on March 6th<\/sup> and 7th<\/sup> in Toronto. <\/i><\/p>\n

This year\u2019s Dx3 Canada conference featured a lot of great questions. It was a conference about where things are going, about challenging conventional thinking and looking ahead. But it was also about debating some of the thorny questions.<\/p>\n

The Engagement Debate<\/b><\/p>\n

Is there value in consumer engagement? Or is it just another overused buzzword? Presenters were pretty clearly on one side of the fence or the other on this question throughout the conference.<\/p>\n

In the engagement camp, Chris Knoch of IgnitionOne argued in favour of \u201cengagement optimisation<\/a>\u201d, claiming that marketers were losing too much valuable data by focusing on the converting members of the audience <\/a>\u00a0and ignoring the potential of those who hadn\u2019t yet converted. Andrew McCartney of Tribal\/DDB argued in favour of driving engagement via brand authenticity. He presented his agency\u2019s recent campaign for McDonald\u2019s Canada in which the company answered questions from the public about its food quality and products via social media. Despite enormously successful engagement and brand perception metrics, McCarthy admitted that no corresponding increase in sales has been seen as of yet. And in his first-day opening keynote address, Benjamin Palmer <\/a>of the Barbarian Group argued that the single most valuable metric in his opinion was brand sentiment \u2013 a position that clearly supports his agency\u2019s storytelling approach. He urged companies to appoint a \u201cbrand editor-in-chief\u201d to manage the production of unique content that would tell interesting brand stories and engage with audiences.<\/p>\n

On the other side of the fence, Ian Cruickshank of Wishpond presented results of a retail study that showed that marketers have a skewed perception of why consumers connect with them in social media: While over 60% of marketers believe that consumers want to \u201cengage\u201d with their brands in, only 22% of consumers feel this way; most are there for the deals, contests and promotions. And Renny Monaghan <\/a>of Salesforce Canada claimed that the c-level executives he talks to are all looking for ways to optimise the ROI of their social marketing efforts, calling it \u201cthe biggest change to marketing in half a decade\u201d. \u00a0Engagement is not the end but the means, he claimed, pointing to a 15% average increase in customer churn among companies who fail to respond to customers via social media channels.<\/p>\n

Multi-Channel or Omni-Channel?<\/b><\/p>\n

Of the many buzzwords that were featured at Dx3, \u201comnichannel\u201d was perhaps the most prominent. In his closing keynote address, Alan Huggins of Lowe\u2019s Canada took a stab at defining it as \u201ca seamless experience across all brand channels\u201d.<\/p>\n

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