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F5WebCorp - Digi Cafe

This week there will be a new session of Digi Cafe, at the usual location in Club Loggia, but this time talking about Advertising 2.0 and the efficiency of online advertising campaigns.

During this session, there will also be a prize ceremony for the Advertising 2.0 competition – Best online advertising. The categories explored in this competition are: online ads, online campaigns, rich media banners, e-mail campaigns, campaign sites (landing pages, microsites) and interactive applications.

The guest speakers of this session will be the following, with the note that the Google representative will be present via a Skype conference call:

Via Dragos Stanca .

Flagship electronic entertainment companies, such as Microsoft, Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, Nintendo, Sony and many others, will be on display at this year’s E3 show. As usual, video games will be kings and queens, with a long list of highly anticipated titles expected to be on display at this year’s E3.

Watch here Gamespot Crew E3 Expectations:

If you want to find out more information about E3, check out the following resources:

The official E3 page

Gamespot E3 page

G4 E3 page

The event was dynamic, entertaining as well as eye opening. Bogdan Naumovici faced a full room of online activists (publishers, agencies, bloggers, etc) and managed to challenge their core beliefs about what the online industry looks like in reality. Arguments around themes such as “internet is bigger than print” or “internet will soon overthrow TV” were heatedly debated by the audience, only to bring forth painful realities related to the small size of the online advertising market or its very incipient status in Romania.

As it is typical with us, Romanians, people started placing blames on various industry parts when faced with the challenges posed by Bogdan Naumovici. It’s either the clients’ fault because they’re dumb or uneducated, it’s either the agencies’ fault because they’re not educating the market enough and it’s even the publishers’ fault for not being able to sell their wares properly to the clients.

In my opinion, some of the most important issues are the inability to properly target the online audience and the huge discrepancy between the budgets directed towards offline media as compared to interactive media.

First of all, we are unable to fully target demographically, psychographically and based on the customer’s state of mind at a specific point in time and location in space. The idea is to be able to communicate your message to the client in the place, at the time and with the medium that he’s most receptive to. In this sense, I even think that the offline manages to pull this issue off better at this moment, although the online has all the tools to do it better, faster and less costly than offline will ever be able to.

If the above issue would be solved, maybe the huge discrepancy between the advertising budgets and the media they are focused on will decrease. In my opinion, almost 50% of the Romanian population is already online and connected to this interactive medium. Why is it then that only 2-3% of the total advertising budget makes its way into it (at least this was the situation in 2008 in Romania)? I mean yeah, there is still 50% of the potential customers that are not digitally connected, but if we were to properly profile the two major segments, I’m pretty sure most of the advertising clients will prefer the digital generation.

But I guess getting into heated debates about all these is a bit premature, since we’re still activating in a very incipient market that only now tries to define itself and grow, being still far away from anything that resembles a mature and well developed market. Maybe it will not take 20-40 years for it to reach a more stable and mature status, as Bogdan Naumovici stated, but, in my opinion, it will still take at least 5 more years until the online industry will function somewhere close to properly.

F5WebCorp - Digi Cafe

The second edition of DigiCafe will take place on April 23, 2009 in Club Loggia and will tackle on the issue of E-commerce and how during a crisis operations should not be diminished, but rather expanded in search of new markets.

This edition will also explore the differences between offline and online activities and will try to answer the question if the online can help during a crisis or not, in order to protect businesses from closing up.

The speakers invited for the second edition will be the following:

DigiCafe - Speakers

RoNewMedia 3.0

RoNewMedia, probably the largest event dedicated to Internet and New Media in Romania, is getting closer to its third iteration this year. Organized by F5WebCorp, the New Media Division of Realitatea-Catavencu Media Group, RoNewMedia 3.0 will tackle subjects such as online entrepreneurship, mobile web, marketing & communication, print & digital publishing, web tv, media planning, online strategy, IT & software, web development & design and e-commerce.

For those interested, the participation fee is 550 RON / person, but you can access various discounts, based on your specific situation (more than five people registering from a company, more than two individuals registering together, and so on). For more information about registering, please see here.

During RoNewMedia 3.0, there will also be a competition targeting online video productions and web tv. There will be several categories of prizes, such as video websites, video productions, viral video campaigns, advertising video campaigns and web tv hosts. For more information about the competition, please check here.

The main themes explored during this year’s RoNewMedia will be the following:

• Move your campaign from offline to online in a smart way
• Big and small screens – digital signage and mobile web
• Bloggers vs Journalists – facts or opinions?
• Online dating – can you make money out of it?
• From Web TV to IP TV – what will be the future TV experience?

For more information about RoNewMedia 3.0, keep an eye on their website!

Communication Olympics

Between March 23 and April 16 you can register for the 9th edition of the Communication Olympics, the most important national competition for youth interested in a career in Advertising, Public Relations or Political Communication. The competition is the best opportunity for young aspirants to get noticed by the professionals in the industry, because more than 70 of them have been invited this year to be part in the competition jury (you can find more information about the jury here).

For 2009, there are four main themes for the pre-selection of candidates:

Corporate Communication – Campaign to persuade the Romanian employees to do more sports.

Advertising – Campaign to convince the audience to buy mainly products made in Romania, as opposed to imported products

Political Communication – Campaign to convince the Romanian electorate to vote through a referendum for a change of the current republic into a presidential or parliamentary one

Public Relations – Campaign to encourage the population to recycle electronic waste

You can find more information about the competition here.

The teams that will pass the pre-selection process will have the opportunity to work on a real communication project for a company, a brand, a public institution or a public individual. After two weeks of work, the teams will be able to publicly present their projects and the best ones will be recognized and awarded prizes of 4,000 Euro in total. If you want to see examples of successful projects from past years, check out here!

For more information about the event, check out www.olimpiadelecomunicarii.ro.

F5WebCorp - Digi Cafe

F5WebCorp, the New Media division of Realitatea-Catavencu Group, is launching a new brand this year. Digi Cafe is a series of informal events where online specialists are given the opportunity to network, exchange ideas and even start business partnerships.

The first Digi Cafe meeting will take place on March 26th, in club Loggia, where Peter Barta, Marius Ghenea, Todi Pruteanu and Alioja Jenko will debate with the audience about how to build an online business from scratch and what are the challenges involved in this process. The event will also recognize the most innovative online start-ups of 2008.

The main discussion points will include, but will not be limited to:

• how to transform an idea into an online business
• what are the most efficient marketing tools for an online business
• what are the challenges of obtaining financing for an online business
• how can an online business be optimized

Digi Cafe - Speakers

When: 09:00 – 18:00, March 27, 2009

Where: JW Mariott Bucharest Grand Hotel

Who: Cristian Manafu, Evensys

Basically, for all those interested in Social Media and how you can put it to use in your marketing and communication business or job, Evensys organizes, during PR Forum, a one day training focused on this topic. During the whole day, there will be a lot of interesting topics explored in various formats, from presentations to workshops and from study cases to research:

Social Media Session

• Intro to social media
• Face to face with social media
• How to define your communication strategy in the social media
• How to use social media
• How to measure ROI in social media

PR 2.0 Session

• SEO PR
• Social Press Release

Blogging Session

• How to create a successful company/brand blog
• How to listen to the blogosphere

Main speakers will be:

• Cristian Manafu
• Marius Pahomi
• Ionut Oprea
• Victor Kapra