Digital Transformation is the key topic for this year’s Digital Congress, a huge gathering of marketing practitioners here and around the region. The Internet Mobile and Marketing Association of the Philippines (IMMAP) have attracted more than 2000 visitors to be engaged by a plethora of top digital marketing practitioners like Brian Solis of Altimeter Group, Greg Perez of IDEO Tokyo and DN Prasad of Google.
The con also had key heads of businesses that changed the business landscape like Brain Cu of Grab Philippines, and Lawrence Cua of Uber Philippines share their insights in engaging the Filipino commuters.
For a first time DigiCon goer, I was amazed at how big the whole event is. Spread over 3 days at the PICC, IMMAP’s Digicon is an idea hub for all things digital. Here, executives (regardless of your role in the company), can learn and engage with more than 40 globally acknowledged key opinion leaders divided across six curated tracks. The six tracks are what IMMAP considers to be the pillars of digital transformation, representing both internal (organization-facing) and external (customer-facing) competencies. These tracks are called: People and Organization, New Age of Storytelling, Living Streams, Customer Experience, Pivots and Unicorns, and Culture.
Simply put, these are the topics that needed refinement in any organization to truly embrace the digital lifestyle. See, there’s a misnomer that digital is simply putting your brand on Facebook or any other new social media out there– it runs much deeper than that. Digital is an age, it’s how businesses as a whole (and not as a department) should ultimately become not because of the advanced tech and software but because that’s the language the current generation knows and respond to.
Digicon 2017 explores how people consume media, how they filter it and how it changes behaviors (for the benefit or detriment of society). It also showcases how they fuse new and upcoming technology like 360, VR and AR with branded storytelling. Aside from this the con gives us an insight on the ins and outs of digital businesses and how the best practices of one country may or may not be applicable to the Philippines because of how we, culturally, accept or deject information.
Unbox’s very own Carlo Ople, who is one of the youngest VP of PLDT, shared a Hugot-filled talk about the Pinoy Digital Experience. In his insightful engagement entitled HUGOT_DX, Carlo mapped down the various Pinoy traits to overcome to truly propel ourselves and organizations to new digital heights.
And while this news has little to no bearing over games and geek culture, it also somehow navigates Ungeek to new opportunities of delivering our stories and, maybe, engaging the digital geeks of the Philippines. Hey, if at any, at least we got to see a Project Cars rig complete with hydraulic seats and a VR module on the con floor. Woot! Woot!:p
Image courtesy of Eason de Guzman of Hungry Geeks.Ph
So, what can we expect in a year’s time? Well, based on DigiCon’s talk and future trends prediction, we can be assured that brands will try to utilize as many of these new tools to tell meaningful human stories. Whether it be on a captivating pre-roll YouTube ad, or maybe a 360/ VR FB Viral Video or some new form of storytelling that we haven’t seen before, the Philippines is gearing up to be as digitally infused as it can be. Congrats once again, IMMAP for a super successful event!