On 30 April 2013, the DMA held a Technology Summit -a slightly odd and (to your correspondent) not particularly enticing title for what proved to be a fascinating half-day, show-boating the technical guru who had masterminded Obama ' s re-election campaign last year.Readers of this Journal may recall that, in July 2010, Mark Pack wrote a piece on the marketing lessons of Obama ' s fi rst election campaign. 1Now we were to hear, from the horse ' s mouth, how the second race was won.Before the keynote speaker, we were treated to three warm-up acts.The fi rst was delivered by Phil Klaus, Professor of marketing strategy and customer experience (CX), Cranfi eld School of Management (among many other places).Professor Klaus asked what it was that drove customer behaviour and concluded that it was CX, which, he claimed, was the next competitive battleground of business.Eighty per cent of CEOs believed that their companies delivered a great CXonly 8 per cent of their customers agreed.Companies could be divided into three categories: preservers, who were trying to maintain their status quo ; transformers, who were struggling towards new methods; and vanguard, who were in the lead.These produced net profi ts of 1.1 per cent, 4.1 per cent and 8.2 per cent, respectively.He regarded technology as the enabler of mass oneto-one marketing.Klaus was followed by Steve Forde, Head of Viewer Relationship Management at Channel 4, who estimated that by 2020 two-thirds of TV viewing would be on connected devices.He described how Channel 4 (a not-for-profi t company) collected customer data on whose use it was determinedly open and transparent -its primary value was in the opportunities it gave for segmentation.Finally came Steve Plimsoll, Chief Technology Offi cer for Mindshare Worldwide and WPP Data Alliance.He recalled how business had gone through a phase of being product-centred, had progressed to being channel-centred and now required to change again to become customercentred.He decried the existence of customer silos, based on the products a customer bought, or the channels (s)he used.Businesses must start with their users, not with data.Steve used data-rich slides and live examples to demonstrate the sort of insights that properly-constructed data (measured in terabytes) made possible, at every level of segmentation from an individual upwards.After a short break for coffee and networking came our keynote speaker, Harper Reed, Chief Technology Offi cer for Obama for America 2012, described as a tech engineer, innovator and entrepreneur from Silicon Valley who had engineered the most sophisticated political How the presiden al race was won How the presiden al race was won Preservers, transformers, vanguard Preservers, transformers, vanguard Channel 4 open and transparent with data Channel 4 open and transparent with data From product to channel to customer From product to channel to customer Technology just there to achieve goals

During October and November 2009, the IDM conducted a survey of readership for the Journal.The survey was primarily conducted over the Internet, with emails sent to IDM members and students currently studying for the IDM ' s professional qualifi cations, inviting recipients to use the imbedded link to access and complete the questionnaire on the IDM website." This audience could also follow links reminding them to participate in the survey on IDM emails and the journal pages of the IDM website.A hardcopy of the questionnaire was also despatched with Volume 11 Number 2 to mail back to the IDM.The incentive for taking part was the chance to win a lifetime membership of the IDM.

Journal of Direct, Data and Digital Marketing Practice ResultsThrough new leads, and converting enquiries into confi rmed sales, IBM obtained £ 26 m in revenue, at a campaign cost of £ 171 thousandequating to an ROI of 152:1.The Seer video was watched on YouTube by tens of thousands, and there was widespread blogging about it everywhere from the USA to Japan.There was extensive press coverage in the UK press -particularly the marketing press -and in the Washington Post . ConclusionThis is not a case study that readers can readily replicate in their own companies.But it does give an indication of the myriad niches -or avenues -that recent technology has opened up to ingenious creativity.

BBC TV Licensing has for years faced a problem in persuading university students on campus to purchase a television licence. Although some 45 per cent of a stable (over the years in question) population of 300,000 students on campus take a television set with them, evasion of the licence fee had been the norm — a result in part of ignorance, in part of lack of belief in consequences. This campaign set out to change this, and did so to the extent that evasion is now the exception, not the norm. It is indeed a textbook example of improved business performance attributable to innovative marketing — including the use of humour, and an integrated strategy including interactive use of the internet.

This case study deals with the problem of a promotional strategy that has become too formulaic and tired over time, while the product itself (‘Which?’ magazine, published by the Consumer Association), saddled with this repetitious approach, has assumed an image in the minds of consumers that is no longer consistent with its developing persona. The aim of this new strategy was to revitalise both the brand image and the promotional message: this involved moving from the selling of prize draws, as had become the custom, to 100 per cent focus on the product. The success has been overwhelming, as the results quoted below show.

The winner of the Diamond award in 2005 for overall business performance was Gala Group, with its agency Perspektiv Marketing/ISD Computer Services, for a campaign that used direct marketing to enable a retail business philosophy. Gala's use of direct marketing is unusual for a retail business in two respects: instead of adopting direct mail (as increasing numbers of retail businesses in recent years have learned to do) simply as an add-on mass-communication medium, it has created and used a customer database to select and target small specific customer segments with customer-relevant messages designed to drive footfall; it has also used the power of the computer not to centralise decision making — as is so often done — but, contrariwise, to devolve power and responsibility within the business to local managers, giving them improved tools to do their job with considerably greater speed and flexibility than could be achieved by a centralised operation.

In 2003 M&G, with Harrison Troughton Wunderman, won the gold medal in the IDM's Business Performance Awards for an integrated campaign leading all the way from market research to sales. This programme achieved all its objectives of improved response, increased sales, higher share of market, reduced promotional expenditure and improved brand awareness — on the back of a shrinking market.

This is the story of how Tesco.com, advised by EHS Brann, came to dominate the UK's online grocery shopping market, with a 65 per cent market share, at a profit, becoming in the process a worldwide phenomenon. It records the areas of challenge (recruitment, conversion, retention, loyalty, reactivation, modelling, distribution, measuring), the ways in which each challenge was met and the results in each area, against target and/or control. Tesco.com has not yet achieved its objective of overtaking Amazon to become the UK's number one online shopping site, but it has no competitor in sight for the number two spot, and claims to be closing the gap on the leader as well as outperforming it on profitability. In Vol. 2, No. 4 (April–June 2001) of Interactive Marketing a Best Practice paper by Peter Sleight took a broad look at the online grocery business through the medium of Tesco.com. This case study (which won the bronze medal at the IDM Business Performance Awards for 2003) looks with a narrower focus at the recent performance of Tesco's phenomenally successful online business.

Free Gift Inside by Stephen Brown reviewed by ROBIN FAIRLIE. The Customer Loyalty Solution by Arthur Middleton Hughes reviewed by PETER MOUNCEY.