Mumbai Memories: Click Asia Summit 2011 Event Recap

For a brief moment in time (Jan 20-22), Mumbai was situated right smack in the center of the Asian Digital Marketing universe as people from all walks of the digital and mobile marketing landscape converged inside the gorgeous Taj Lands End for Click Asia Summit 2011. The event was a packed affair that included two hectic days of presentations and panels as well as a full workshop agenda and an exhibition that mirrored the hustle and bustle of downtown Mumbai.

Our field reports for Day 1 and Day 2 gave you the detailed and relevant bullet points of the presentations as they unfolded although we reckon that you would appreciate it more if we gave you the rundown of the event highlights. So here they are.

Note: Stay tuned for updates on this article as we will post some pictures of the event soon.

Day 1 highlights: The keynote address was delivered by Gurbaksh Chahal, founder of Radium One, and he talked about stories from his book “The Dream” and shared insights from his inspiring journey as a struggling immigrant kid to his transformation into one of the youngest and wealthiest entrepreneurs in the world. He summarised his life into three themes: Sacrifice, Struggle and Love. He also shed relevant tips and lessons that he learned from helming the companies that he started. Mahesh Narayanan focused on the exponential growth of mobile and the way that it is poised to become a threat to TV and the Internet.

One of our favourites from Day 1, Gillian Muessig’s presentation was a brilliant and spot-on look at SEO and the importance of metrics, analytics and action using the gathered data. An advanced view on PPC versus Organic was tackled by Jeff Adelson Yan. He discussed the key differences of paid placement search as opposed to organic search optimization and the advantages of a combined strategy. Sandeep Suvarna talked about the social media in a B2B context. He stressed that context and relevance are the main pillars of social media marketing for B2B.

Businesses that are thinking of leveraging on mobile would do well in taking heed to Neil Burton’s presentation centered on apps. He further illustrated a future wherein apps and mobile in general may one day supersede the relevance of personal computers in our mobile lives. A three man panel, composed of Milind Mody, Navneet Kaushal and Raghavendra Satish Peri, dissected the fact that search engine marketing is not dead and buried but has evolved into something that can work well alongside social media marketing and optimization.

Vivek Bhargava shared the best practices for online marketing while Alok Kejriwal and Palash Jain shed light on why content is still very much the king. The evening keynote provided another highlight for the day as Anupam Kher, one of India’s most renowned actors, graced the occasion to talk about marketing and technology from a different perspective as well as have an engaging Q&A with Gurbaksh Chahal about key instances and lessons from his life.

Day 2 highlights: The keynote for the second day was delivered by Gillian Muessig (aka SEOmom) and she explored deeper material from her Day 1 presentation. She stressed that reporting is not analytics and went on to say that analytics = linear programming. She then shared deeper insights on metrics and data analysis. Krishna Subramanian focused on the Digital Marketing campaign lifecycle which also included the media buying process. Mahesh Murthy shared what he refers to as “The New Rules for Brands and Digital Marketing” and it covered key ideas and concepts that are very relevant in today’s technologically adept marketing landscape.

B2Bento’s very own Anol Bhattacharya & Neil Burton presented together and talked about digital marketing, lead nurturing and social media for B2B Enterprises. Anol shed some light on the 3 main pillars of B2B Enterprise Marketing: lead nurturing, social media and content marketing while Neil added some key takeaways like the fact that you should talk business from the get-go and that you should always put importance on your strategy and not just on execution. Pradeep Chopra explored the subject of “Twitter for Business” while another three-man panel (composed of Achal Shah, Prashant Rao and Vishal Jhunjhunwala showed how to leverage digital media in targeting global audiences.

The penultimate session was done by Gurbaksh Chahal as he painted a picture of the future of advertising. He presented facts about the advertising industry and how the most important tier right now in the data hierarchy is Social. He stated that one of the most important platforms to partake in is Facebook and that if there is going to be a strategy that has a potential to go up against the social network juggernaut, it will probably come via the mobile platform. Capping the event is the last session with Benedict Hayes, Pradeep Chopra and Navneet Kaushal who showed us tips on how to integrate search and social into the marketing mix.

Parting shot: The presentations in Click Asia Summit highlighted the fact that SEM and SEO can continue to exist amidst the continued rise of social marketing. The decks showed that it is possible for both schools of digital marketing to co-exist in a post-Facebook world. It also gave a recurring emphasis that mobile is a huge force to reckon with and we can expect it to still grow at the light-speed rate that it is going today.

And like what was mentioned earlier, social marketing (especially one built around social giants Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn) will continue to prosper. We can only try and speculate at what is in store for the Digital Marketing landscape but one thing is for sure, social marketing and mobile is guaranteed to stay and prosper over the next few years. This wraps up our B2Bento coverage on the Mumbai event. Hope to see you all on the next one!