Our event in The Digital Hub was an astounding success. Judging by the exit poll (ok, we skulked by the exit eavesdropping on people’s comments as they left), the 230 attendees thought that the event was fantastic.

It kicked off with a welcome speech from our man, Gary, followed by a speech from the media veteran, Alex Gibson.

Then after a coffee break, it was the main act - Martin Bailie.

For those who have just come out of a 10 year coma, Martin is the planning Director and founding partner at Glue, London. Glue are the leaders in Digital, pushing the boundries in creativity and constantly evolving to make their work better. They have many awards for their work; they recently won a number of Gold pencil awards in New York for their work, the work they have done for addidas, the royal marines, Coca Cola, Mini Cooper.

Martin talked about how the consumer is now in charge, and how they expect certain commitments and ethics from your brand or product if they are going to give you their custom. How a brand has to be true, has to be loved, has to be honest, has to put itself out there and be big enough to take the bad criticism, to even want it and use it. He also talked about the power of the web in terms of “Open source”, how one can create communities to facilitate your brand or product goals.

Martin believes that digital marketing strategies and virals are largely irrelevant in that we come at them from the wrong angles - find out the business objective, find out the problems and work from there. Echoing an earlier point from Alex Gibson, it is a contradiction to try and create a viral (a bit like trying to tell everyone you are cool). Rather than try and create a viral, just apply the highest standards of creativity to all aspects of your brand communication, and let the World decide if it is worthy of the forward button.

There was much much more and it was a real pleasure to listen to such a thought leader. We sincerely hope that this day will be of benefit to all those captains of the Irish Digital Industry who were in attendance.

Jim - Prosperity.ie