Over 60 attendees from the North West’s leading digital retailers, agencies, and media buyers were in attendance at Deloitte Manchester on Friday morning for the inugural Shopping Gurus event. Retailers represented included Missguided, AO.com, and Mozimo whilst media buyers and agencies included Mediacom, iProspect, Amaze, Latitude, and PushOn amongst many others. Bing were also represented by James Murray who made the trip up from London.
After an excellent breakfast, TMT Partner Jody Birkett kicked off proceedings with a warm welcome and a brief history of Google Shopping and its impact on the online landscape since its reintroduction to a paid model in the UK in February 2013. Elizabeth Clark, CEO of Dream Agility, presented all the latest developments in Google Shopping showing how portfolio based bidding can be applied to location, device, day of week, product ID, search terms and of course keywords. Mozimo’s Andy Speake, formerly of The Hut and JD Sports, then talked through how relatively small players can take on the big boys and win with a strategic approach to Google Shopping coupled with the latest technologies. Paul O’Connor, Digital Strategist at Amaze, discussed the chasm between agencies and retailers being caused by feeds. In a speech that resonated with a number of attendees both agencies and retailers alike, Paul advocated use of appropriate technology to fill the void coupled with the need for feed ownership to be defined. Finally, Richard Gregory, co-founder of SASCon and former CEO of Latitude roused the audience with some scintilating facts on Manchester’s incredible digital pedigree.
Once the talks were over, networking began over tea and coffee and lasted until well after the official finish at midday. After such a successful first event, the next events will be at London and then Birmingham with dates shortly to be confirmed.
Photo courtesy of Ned Poulter of Pole Star Digital.