TFM&A - Notes from an Exhibition...

I visited TFM&A yesterday and ran the gauntlet of tall young men in suits selling email marketing to make it to a few of the keynotes and seminars. As I'd promised my final year undergrads a briefing session on the latest trends, it forced me to reflect on some of the key themes at the show.

It seemed to me that there was a heavy 'data' bias this year, which is unsurprising considering the likely squeeze on budgets and push for performance metrics that most marketing professionals will be facing at the moment.

It was also a classic case of lingo-bingo in many of the sessions.  Put the word 'social ' in front of any marketing term you can think of and you've made yourself a buzz-word.

Social CRM
Social Gaming
Social TV

There, we've created three new industries! What a wonderful world 'social' is; far better than those single letter prefixes like 'i' , 'e' and 'm' eh?

In all seriousness there was some interesting discussion about how Twitter, Facebook and the also-rans can be integrated into CRM systems and processes.

Tablet inertia seemed to be another problem.  The day before the iPad2 launch there was a distinct lack of any clear direction where tablet optimised advertising was concerned.  Wiser to sit on the fence!

An area where I did see some really good work was in 'in-text' or contextual ads.  Less controversial than behavioural targeting, there appears to be some really thoughtful customer-centred  work going on in this field.  I was particularly impressed by the folk from Vibrant Media who presented some compelling work.

The Microsoft / Experian keynote was something of a disappointment.  Clearly they are able to offer an integrated approach through the combination of MOSAIC and online profile data, but I remain unconvinced that anchoring everything to postcode is going to continue to work as our family structures and approaches to home-ownership become more complex.

Just a few random observations for now; if you're interested in the slides from my briefing session today, drop me a line or tweet me @lgsmu.