Yesterday I attended the second edition of the Webvertising Forum, an event for all those who are interested in digital marketing. So as you would expect, the audience was mostly made up of advertisers and digital agencies.
First to present, was Patrick Marcke from IAB Belgium, who said a few words about the internet population and how online advertising budgets are evolving. Most graphs and insights used, were taken from the MC DC study, an extensive internet study which InSites Consulting conducted in partnership with IAB Europe. (http://mcdc.insites.eu) So, from my point of view, that was a very good start to the day 
The forum went on to give a good overview of which digital marketing methods are out there and offered the possibility to do some networking over a cup of coffee and a copious lunch buffet. Miech Rolly from The Parking Lot presented the case study of Pearle, focusing on the fun aspect and the efficient way of using Twitter & Facebook for recruitment of actors/models and the promotion of the campaign. You can still check out the campaign on http://www.thesteamyroom.be and you’ll know exactly what I mean by ‘the fun aspect’.
Guy Makmel, Managing Director at Easyconcepts presented a technology, which acts on user intent to dynamically construct the content of an ad. This way, the ads that are shown to you on a certain site, are determined by certain semantic or behavioral factors. Applications for this technology are mostly on e-commerce sites, travel sites, etc. And the main advantage of it, is that conversion and thus ROI are very easy to measure.
David Warszawski from TradeTracker gave his view on performance based advertising with affiliate marketing and Bruno Van de Moortel from Medialogue spoke about crowdsourcing, giving some nice examples of how you can outsource content creation ànd even ad creation to your own audience.
A very interesting presentation came from Isabelle Driege from the digital agency Emakina. Without using research figures as such, she still threw some interesting digits around, speaking about 2.0, the 360° approach, but most importantly the 365 day conversation that marketers need to have with consumers. She explained that it is not so much about your brand site, as your brand presence. A brand needs to create a positive experience for consumers on all touchpoints, be they pre-sale or post-sale. Only by using a good mix of digital channels to market your products or services, can you achieve that. The main take-away for the marketer in this presentation: “it’s all in the mix”.
Kris Hoet from Duval Guillaume also spoke about touchpoints, focusing a bit more on creative ways to create new kinds of touchpoints, which take full advantage of our current 2.0 situation. Last presentation of the day was a duo presentation by Philippe Belpaire and Michel Tubbax from Roularta Media Group. It made me think of a short poem from “Poems on the underground”, that starts with the phrase “Not much cricket in Hamlet, I overheard a man say.” and ending with “To be honest, I like it that way, the absence of cricket is fine. But should you prefer work that includes it, please note that now, there’s some cricket in mine.” And well yesterday, I noted, that there was some “offline” in the presentation of Philippe and Michel… With this audience, it doesn’t seem very straight forward to mention your offline work and mostly focus on content. But it has to be said, they made a very convincing case. The new partnerships that they have with brands are inspiring. They allow the brand to contribute to the content and get visibility in return, but in a very subtle and natural way.
For me personally, the presentation on Online Educational Marketing by Geert Coppens from Instruxion was the most interesting. It’s a method that responds to the need of the consumers, rather than of the advertiser, by creating an online learning experience for the consumer before he or she is redirected to the page of the advertiser. Basically, the idea is that e.g. the bluetooth feature on a mobile phone becomes more appealing, if you give an animated explanation about what it is and what it can do for you, before prompting people to go ahead an buy it. Check out more examples on http://www.animatedexplanations.com/. What strikes me, is that this is a way of advertising that really responds to the insight that we need to start communicating differently with our consumers, ànd that web 2.0 offers limitless possibilities to do exactly that. It may not be the best way to pitch it, but I would say finally, you no longer need ’sex’ to sell your product
Last week I visited the 
Smartees are our free workshops for marketers and researchers. Led by experts, they’re a chance to get up to speed on the latest techniques in marketing research and practical techniques for better marketing.
Between mid-December and mid-January InSites Consulting conducted a pan-European research project on consumers’ shopping behavior during the holiday season in Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Germany and UK. The study was held amongst members of the InSites’ TalkToChange Community. The project consisted out of a survey part and discussions on the forum of the community.
In a continuous process of striving for quality, InSites Consulting set up a program to create better surveys called the Watsons. Who are the Watsons? They are members of the TalkToChange Community (
This Wednesday ESOMAR will showcase the diversity and talent within the market research industry at the ‘Best of ESOMAR’ event in Delft (NL). The program hosts an agenda of international speakers and topics ranging from brand authenticity and co-creation to healthcare and innovation.
In total 2,800 patients participated in the European Health study by InSites Consulting. Seven out of ten participants indicated the ability to differentiate generic medicines from brand medicines. While generic medicines contain the same active ingredients as patented brands, we still discovered that 44% of patients who claim to be familiar with generic medicines do not believe this.
Christophe Vergult, Director Customer Experience Research InSites Consulting is one of the keynote speakers at the next 
