If you’re going to get anything, Get Digital!

Our third, and final, conference as part of the DICE module was the Get Digital conference which was held the 11th of April 2017. I was expecting great things on entering this conference and I did not leave disappointed! Digital skills across the USA, UK and Ireland are all equally low (scoring 38% on average) and I knew on entering the conference that I was part of that 38% (Digital Marketing Institute, 2016). This is something I have always wanted to change as technology has obviously become such a huge influence in our society. I was incredibly interested to hear what the speakers had to say about there experiences with the digital world and listen to any advice they had for us as young people who will soon enter the business world.

“Everyone wants everything in the palm of their hand, and they want it now”

Our first, and in my opinion, our most influential speaker was Dr Johnny Walker, CEO and founder of Jinga Life. Jinga Life is a personal Electronic Health Record (EHR) for each member of the family, maintained and managed by one person in the family. Dr Walker believes that this app is a digital revolution, even going as far as to say it is the future of health. Dr Walker studied medicine in a remote area of Australia know as Hunter Valley. As a student doctor his first five patients were Aboriginal pregnant women. They were all diabetic which is a huge cause of death for both mothers and babies. His first crisis was his 38th patient, she was a mother who’s baby died in the delivery process. At that point, Dr Walker realised there is a glaring injustice in the world and poor health care is a big part of that.

Dr Walker set out on a mission to improve healthcare for all. He started small, helping out in local communities and consulting in a mobile unit. He was to stop people coming into hospitals unless it was absolutely necessary. He then realised that everyone wants everything in the palm of their hand so he went on to set up a mobile app which used simple, enabling technologies. This allowed many people to move from hospitals to their own homes. The app used tele-consultations so that there was no need for mothers to wake up their children at 2 a.m. to bring them into hospital and risk further infection. Dr Walker disrupted the medical industry and he believes that all of us should have the courage and step up, just like he did.

“We’ve come to a point in technology that if we can think it, we can make it”

Our next speaker was David Erixon, head of technology and consumer innovation for Ulster Bank. Mr Erixon spoke to us about how important technology has become in every part of our lives, focusing on his main area of knowledge, the banking sector. In Sweden, for example, banking is about to become completely digital in the next few years with the amount of notes and coins in circulation having fallen by 40 per cent since 2009 (Milne, 2016). While Sweden are the first to really consider taking this step, we can be sure other countries are going to follow. Even in Ireland three quarters of retail sales are now digital, this is something that we couldn’t have even comprehended ten years ago.

Technology is the reason everything is changing. The role of the bank and the way societies view it is now very different. With new legislation and new technology coming in we will now be able to control how and who can process and store our banking information. Erixon showed 22seven, a new, predictive app that gives you a view of exactly how you are and how you should be spending your money. This is new, disruptive behaviour that can actually track your spending and budget for you. There is a lot of emotional attachment to money and spending. Technology has now been created which tries to identify these feelings so it can learn from you and personalise your saving and spending. This technology has completely disrupted banking forever.

I can’t imagine my life without it

Our third and final speaker was Alistair Croll, an author and public speaker who works with Lean Analytics. Mr Croll spoke a lot about discontinuity when it comes to all things digital. Things are always changing in the tech world and we have to try to keep up with them as best we can. He spoke about the factors triggering this discontinuity, from the printing press to urban sprawl. Urban sprawl has changed our lives so much, even affecting our jobs. Farming land has now been redeveloped and turned into towns and building, meaning farms have become far more scarce. The printing press brought us democracy as peoples thoughts and ideas could be spread from one side of the world to the other. All these innovations have been led by technology.

Technology has even changed our everyday life by a huge amount. We can no longer imagine a life without our smartphones even though they did not even exist ten years ago. The average person now touches their phone 2,617 times a day (Nelson, 2016). This is an incredible figure and just shows how reliant we have become on technology. It has shown us that the biggest changes just sneak up on us, they cannot be predicted. Mr Croll made a very interesting comparison which stuck with me after the conference, in the past if you had a car you were rich and if you had a horse you were poor, now the tables have completely turned.

For me, this conference was by far the most beneficial. It really highlighted just how important technology is not just in business but in our entire lives.

References:

Digital Marketing Institute (2016). MISSING THE MARK: THE DIGITAL MARKETING SKILLS GAP IN THE USA, UK & IRELAND.

Nelson, P. (2017). We touch our phones 2,617 times a day, says study. [online] Network World. Available at: http://www.networkworld.com/article/3092446/smartphones/we-touch-our-phones-2617-times-a-day-says-study.html [Accessed 30 Apr. 2017].

Milne, R. (2016). Sweden’s Riksbank eyes digital currency. The Financial Times. [online] Available at: https://www.ft.com/content/0e37795c-ab33-11e6-9cb3-bb8207902122 [Accessed 30 Apr. 2017].

Don’t just be social, get social!

As a part of our DICE module I attended the ‘Get Social’ conference which was held in The Helix on the 14th of February. The conference was based on the use of social media for businesses and really highlighted the necessity of social media in marketing and how much it has evolved it recent years. The internet is transforming the economics of marketing and making many of the function’s traditional strategies and structures obsolete. For marketers, the old way of doing business is unsustainable (Edelman, 2010).

Because of this I was intrigued to learn about new forms of marketing. I had been really looking forward to the conference and was eager to learn about this field as it is something that interested me but unfortunately I knew very little about. I knew of many large companies that used social media in their marketing plans but I was excited to hear about the possibilities of this for smaller businesses and for start-ups.

“You’re only interesting once, and you’re not that interesting”

This is a direct quote from our first speaker and MC of the afternoon. Paul Hayes is the CEO and founder of Beachhut, a company that aims to deliver the best branding, marketing and communications to clients who want to compete in a global marketplace. While he very modestly claimed that he knows very little about social, he still managed to teach us a lot about what we have to do to thrive in the social world.

For me, the quote above was one of the most influential things Mr Hayes said during his speech. He was attempting not just to speak about the importance of social but instead teach us how to to use it effectively. He told us that for the media, we are only interesting once so we must make the most of the media attention we get. He made the very valid point that customers don’t really care about us, they only care about the impact we make on them and on the world. We cannot just talk about what we’re going to do, we must become the proof.

He also spoke a lot about the necessity of social. He really attempted to get the message through to us that we must always think about the future and not to think in the past or even the present; “know where the ball is going to hop, not where it is now”. As technology is constantly changing and developing it is absolutely necessary that we attempt to predict what the next big change will be and then to take the leap of faith before someone else does. Mr Hayes really tried to highlight to us that there’s no point in chasing the goal because by the time we reach it it will have changed. This speech really set the tone for the rest of the conference and gave me more of an idea of what the afternoon ahead would entail.

Listen, Learn, Reward

Our next speaker, Aisling Tobin, Jamseson Brand Manager, spoke to us a lot about content and pointing this content towards your target audience. She used her area of expertise (the whiskey market) as an example for this. The Jameson brand is attempting to attract a young audience and therefore are using certain content on certain platforms to do this. Location is key, they use Facebook and Twitter, among others, to to engage with their audience. They pay attention to their audience, listen to what they want and deliver this. They know the rules of engagement and they know how to get this relationship right.

“Content is King, Engagement is key” was am important message from Ms Tobin. Your brand’s content needs to be engaging and it needs to be quality. While businesses need to post reasonably often to stay connected with their audience, it is quality over quantity. For me, I would rather see one interesting post a day from a company rather than three mediocre ones. She made it very clear to us to stay relevant, try to get involved in things but always stay true to the brand, this is something that really stuck with me after the conference. Companies should attempt to stick to their area of expertise instead of jumping on the bandwagon every time they see something trending on Twitter. It won’t attract new customers and it may even defer existing ones. 

I think the best point Ms Tobin made was that what modern marketers should be trying to do is to bring human connection to an online audience. With the change to digital we have lost a lot of human connection and personalisation.  Ms Tobin wants us to bring this back by actually learning about the consumers and giving them what they want, when they want it. We must be relevant but also be disruptive, there is no point in sitting back and watching other people do it first, we must take risks but only on things we know something about.

“Be where your audience is”

Our next speaker, Hugh Curran, a digital transformation consultant, mirrrored much of
what Ms Tobin said. The theme of the day seemed to be relevance; focusing on your audience and giving them what they want. Mr Curran informed us that a study has shown that 84% of people expect brand to produce content but 60% of these say that the content produced in poor, this shows a lack of relevance. People scroll nine foot per day and they do this at speed, if you aren’t posting something that catches the eye and stands out from the crowd then you may as well no post at all.

Mr Curran tried to convince us that we must plan our content, figure out what we’re going to say and when we’re going to say it. We have to schedule, manage and track our content. Again, going back to what Ms Tobin said about personalisation, he wants us to communicate with our consumers. He makes the very valid point that unless you are a a very big company it is simple to reply to your customers comments or thank them for their posts. It is something that will take the company less than thirty seconds if I were the customer, it would be something I would always remember.

Mr Curran also made the point that you have to invest money in your social media, otherwise it will not work. If you cannot afford it, just don’t do it because you can’t afford to look cheap, it can ruin your brand. Research has revealed that 70% to 90% of spend goes to advertising and retail promotions that hit consumers at the consider and buy stages. Yet consumers are often influenced more during the evaluate and enjoy-advocate-bond stages (Edelman, 2010). This was something I personally would not have realised before the conference or before I did any additional reading on the matter. and it is something that may be very beneficial to me in the future. Mr Curran made me realise the importance of strategic marketing and the possibility of backlash if we fail to prepare.

A world of digital dependence

Next up was Paul Berney, managing partner of mCordis, a global mobile marketing, educational & advisory company. Mr Berney spoke a lot about the new world that we live in, the world of digital dependence. He made the point that we are all constantly connected, mobiles are now our external brains and have changed us. Marketers must
learn to adapt to this new world and become connected marketers. Engaging customers today requires commitment an a redefined marketing organization (French et al, 2011).

As distraction in the new normal, we now have an impulse economy. Things now appear in front of us faster as we scroll and make split decisions on whether we like a product or not.  We are now never disconnected from eachother and therefore customers are never disconnected from marketers. While this has come as a shock to many marketers, they must roll with the punches and get over this future shock. Once they have done this, they can begin to think about what new things are coming around the corner.

Mr Berney then went on to teach us how to become connected marketers – by creating a superior connected brand. For this, we must be constantly in service. In this new digital era, attention is a finite resource, it is hard to obtain and even harder to keep. He tells us that people have 3 types of needs; frictions, shoulds and wants. Consumers now demand a frictionless, personalised experience at any time, it is their choice. Mr Berney sums it up perfectly in saying that we are now witnessing the end of average, this is the age of perfection. I really enjoyed this presentation as nothing was sugar coated for us and  it showed how high the bar is when it comes to consumer demands.

Ready of not- here it comes!

Our final speaker of the day was Eric Weaver, VP Communication & Marketing Solutions at Xerox. Xerox is an American global corporation that sells document solutions and services, and document technology products in more than 160 countries. Mr Weaver spoke a lot about being ready for change and knowing how to handle this when it comes. He intrigued us with his first anecdote, speaking about a car factory he used to work in that
unfortunately let many factory workers go due to the implementation of new technology. This change meant that these factory workers were replaced by robots and people who new how to work robots. People who saw this change coming had trained to become engineers gained from the loss of those who were living in the past.

These monumental changes cause a lot of disruption, something that Mr Weaver claims no one likes. He showed us many examples of disruption that he new we would already be familiar with, Uber vs Taxis was an example that stuck with me. This development was incredible for the consumer but was a huge loss for 530 taxi drivers who lost their jobs in just one city in America. We will see this disruption occuring more and more in the future and companies are already anticipating this. In 2015, 74% of CEOs said they were
concerned about new entrants yet 47% of businesses haven’t started digital transformation. These are the businesses that will not be ready when change arrives at their doorstep.

I found Mr Weaver incredibly helpful is his attempt to teach us how to transform. He spoke about Google and their incentives for employees to submit innovative ideas. Google encourage fearlessness and this fearlessness means that 35% of Google’s revenue has come from employee ideas over the last 4 years. Google are open-minded, not digital and this is what he is encouraging us to do. If we don’t pay employees for their ideas now, they could be used against us in the future. I found Mr Weavers talk the most engaging as he used many examples that I could connect with which made me really focus on the points he was trying to get across.

As I previously said, on entering the conference I knew very little about the social world. Leaving the conference I felt I had far more of a grasp on what how to be an effective marketer and how to really connect with my target audience. For me, this conference was incredibly beneficial and thoroughly enjoyable.

References:

Edelman, D.C., 2010. Branding in the digital age. Harvard business review, 88(12), pp.62-69.

French, T., LaBerge, L. and Magill, P., 2011. We’re all marketers now. McKinsey Quarterly, 25(3), pp.26-34.

 

 

 

Take a chance and Get Started

The ‘Get Started’ conference was held in The Helix on the 8th of November. The conference revolved around entrepreneurship and tips for young people who are considering starting their own business. An entrepreneur can be broadly defined as an individual independently owning and actively managing a business (Carland et al., 1984; Stewart Jr. and Roth, 2001). Before the conference we had covered a lot about the theory of entrepreneurship so I was ready to hear how this theory had been applied by these successful entrepreneurs.

From a young age I have had an entrepreneurial mindset and I have always said that one day I hope to be my own boss so on entering the conference this was in the back of my mind. My problem has always been that I do not know what exactly it is I want to do. I hoped that these speakers would help me with this issue and put my mind at ease.

How do I differentiate myself?

Our first speaker, Philippe Brodeur, discussed this question and told us how differentiating himself enabled him to become such a successful entrepreneur. Brodeur is the CEO and founder of Overcast HQ, a storage and collaboration video platform which helps teams manage video files as easily as word documents. Brodeur noticed that there was a gap in the market for this type of service and he knew he would just have to figure out a way to differentiate himself from the others. He taught us that there are five simple reasons start-ups succeed:

• Team
• Idea
• Plans
• Timing
• Funding

 

Of these, Brodeur really emphasized the importance of timing. He saw the gap in the market and he went for it there and then. He made me realise that these are the kinds of risks an entrepreneur must take to become successful, they cannot sit back and watch others do it before them. Brodeur proved what our DICE class had concluded, that risk taking ability is the most essential characteristic of an entrepreneur, with 13% of the class voting for this.

“Be prepared to do what others won’t”

This is the message that really stuck with me when our second set of speakers, Brian O’Rourke and Alan Farrelly, spoke to us about their company, CitySwifter. CitySwifter is a modern, sustainable shared transport option whereby a shuttle bus picks you up near your home and drops you off at work. Richard Branson tells us to always remember that a company is simply a group of people (Richard Branson: Advice for Entrepreneurs, 2011). O’Rourke and Farrelly focused on how they, along with their other co-founder, Sean Byrne, had varying yet complimentary skillsets. But the essential factor for them was their shared vision. This made them a successful team which in turn helped them to set up a successful business.

Surprisingly enough the men really put my mind at ease about my future as a potential entrepreneur when they spoke about their failed ventures. They made me realise that even if you have an idea that you’re not 100% will work, go for it anyway. According to Bank of Ireland 66% of all business start-ups will fail in their first five years. Ulster Bank have put this figure at 50% (Why 80% Of Small Businesses Fail & What To Do About It, 2015). If your business idea fails then so be it but always learn from your mistakes. As the two men said, there will always be more rejection than success but you must learn to use the mistakes to your favor. Before CitySwifter they had two businesses which they themselves described as “complete failures” but it was these exact failures that led to this great success.

How to build a tech business for free, without being a ‘techie’

This is a skill that our third speaker, Elva Carri, founder of GirlCrew, has managed to master. GirlCrew is website which tapped into a large market of women with small social circled who are interested in making friends. Carri spotted the gap in the market as she noticed there was an epidemic of loneliness among women.  She noticed that so-called ‘social networks’ are not actually all that social and she decided she was going to fix this problem. Carri spoke of the four ‘magic ingredients’ that her website has and that she believes all companies should have to be successful:

• There was a need for it
• It appeared to be scalable
• It didn’t really need her
• She could scale it for free

Carri inspired me in a very different way to any of the other speakers of the day. She is different to the other speakers in that she isn’t a ‘techie’, she didn’t know a lot about the area she was going into but she saw an opportunity and she went for it. This, to me, is a real sign of entrepreneurial spirit and is something I really admired about this speaker. She made me realise that it’s not all about the skills you have or the things you know but that sometimes it’s all about the things you do and the chances you take.

“If not me, who? If not now, when?”

This quote from our fourth speaker of the day, Gavan Walsh, CEO and founder of iCabbi, is the thing that stuck with me most after the conference. iCabbi is a cloud-based taxi dispatch system which Walsh created himself. Walsh is a classic entrepreneur who began trying (and succeeding) to make money from a young age.

He spoke about his first experience as an entrepreneur when he decided to cut down Christmas trees with his cousin and sell them door to door. This is when he first experienced the “point of no return”, the moment when you have poured all your time and money into something and now there in no going back. He spoke of the rush he felt as he drove away with a van full of trees knowing that nothing was certain, he could be wildly successful or he could crash and burn but he would just have to wait. This is the one thing that really differentiates entrepreneurs from all others. They could decide to play it safe and take a stable salary which will allow them to have a comfortable life but they don’t. They choose to take the leap knowing they could either win big or loose it all. This is what inspires me to become an entrepreneur.

Why, What and How

Our fifth speaker of the day was Adrian Mihai, co-founder and CTO of ‘Opening’. Mihai set out to find a problem which he considered meaningful and in doing that he co-founded ‘Opening’, a company which writes software for recruitment. Mihai has a deep interest in technology so used this to his advantage when choosing what type of a business he wanted to create. 

Mihai is a different type of entrepreneur to the likes of Elva Carri. His endeavour was far less risky as he had already racked up quite a lot of experience in the tech industry. He was looking for something specific to create, whereas Carri just seemed to have struck gold. Mihai tried to teach us the ‘how’ of setting up a business, teaching us the best way to set up a team but more importantly to look in many different sectors when building your team. He tried to show us that business ideas do not have to be as complicated as creating your own software but can be as simple as a problem that is right in front of you.

Enterprise of a different kind

Our final speaker of the day, Iseult Ward, co-founder and CEO of FoodCloud spoke to us about social entrepreneurship. Social enterprise has emerged as a businesslike contrast to the traditional nonprofit organization (Dart, 2004). Foodcloud is a company which allows food businesses to easily contribute food to their community and to reduce their impact on the environment. Ward was frustrated by the fact that a third of all food produced worldwide goes to waste and she set out to do something about it.

For me, while Ward was probably the least experienced speaker of the day she was the most relevant. It is fantastic to see someone not much older than I already have a successful company up and running. Ward is a testimony to hard work and is a true inspiration to young, budding entrepreneurs. She also showed us that entrepreneurship is not all about making money, it can even be used to change the world.

As I said earlier, I entered this conference with an entrepreneurial attitude and not much else but when I left the conference I had a lot more under my belt. I no longer worry that the right idea will never come to me. I have now seen just how big a small idea can grow and these speakers have inspired me to find that idea, take the risk and pour my blood, sweat and tears into it.

References:

Carland, J.W., Hoy, F., Boulton, W.R. and Carland, J.A.C., 1984. Differentiating entrepreneurs from small business owners: A conceptualization. Academy of management review, 9(2), pp.354-359.

Stewart Jr, W.H. and Roth, P.L., 2001. Risk propensity differences between entrepreneurs and managers: a meta-analytic review. Journal of applied psychology, 86(1), p.145.

Richard Branson: Advice for Entrepreneurs. (2011). Big Think.

Why 80% Of Small Businesses Fail & What To Do About It. (2015). [Blog] Action Coach Ireland. Available at: http://actioncoachireland.com/tag/irish-sme-failure-rate/ [Accessed 17 Nov. 2016].

Dart, R. (2004). The legitimacy of social enterprise. Nonprofit Management and Leadership, 14(4), pp.411-424.