DigiCon 2019 highlights bravery and digital transformation in the post-digital world

[Editor’s note: Were you also at DigiCon 2019? Below is their press release.]

MANILA, Philippines – For three days, 3,500 attendees (82 of which were international delegates)  lead, explored, applied, and practiced (LEAP) what they needed to learn in the post-digital world.

Organized by the Internet and Mobile Marketing Association of the Philippines (IMMAP), the fourth installment of DigiCon opened with speeches from IMMAP president and Unilever Philippines head of media Dennis Perez, who challenged attendees to be agile as we adapt to the future, and DigiCon LEAP co-chair and MullenLowe Philippines chief product officer Leigh Reyes, stressing that “reinvention cannot happen without learning, doing, learning again, doing again, learning more things.” 

Building a great team in a time of change starts with being a great leader

Seats at the PICC Plenary Hall were filled for the much-awaited DigiCon LEAP 2019 keynote of Patty McCord, former chief talent officer for Netflix and author of the book Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility. She shared her unorthodox approach to building results-oriented teams.

“The world is a really different place. But it makes me a little crazy that we keep managing people like it’s 1971,” Patty McCord said. One of her points for leaders: “It’s your job to build amazing teams that get incredible work done, on time, with quality, that serves your customers – and that is it.” 

Organizational development partner for Google Martin Gonzalez talked about the significance of being a good manager that will lead a team on the path towards success, saying “people don’t leave companies, they leave managers.” People in the workplace put good managers on a high pedestal when they’re able to “bring out the brilliance in the people they work with,” said Gonzalez. 

DigiCon 2019 also hosted the second year of YouthCon, a separate track within the 3-day event aimed for students and aspiring digital marketers. Young professionals from different brands and agencies were front and center to share with budding creatives some tips on what it takes to forge a successful path in the industry. 

The closing plenary for DigiCon 2019 day 1 was given by MB consulting founder Matt Biespiel, who stressed the importance of creativity for brands and encouraged each person in the room to drive a culture of creativity. “You need the right people in the room to get the right results. Have a clear, shared understanding between client and agency about expectations,” he said.

Being ‘brave’ in the post-digital world

DDB Worldwide CEO Wendy Clark gave the opening keynote on day two, where she highlighted how brands adapt to digital transformation to stay relevant and up to date.   

“Agencies now should become like bamboo. We have to propagate quickly, we have to be agile, we have to have endurance, we have to be modern and beautiful. The bamboo is a model of an innovative, modern agency,” said Clark. 

The buzzword at this year’s DigiCon was digital transformation, and one of the speakers who talked about the new norm was Cobena CEO Francis del Val. “Digital transformation is messy. It’s not clean because you are creating the future that there are no rules for engagement; you’ve got to be more collaborative as a culture,” he said.

Day two of DigiCon 2019 ended with a fireside chat between media personality Korina Sanchez-Roxas and Belo Medical Group CEO and medical director Vicki Belo where they talked about how the Belo Medical Group utilized social media to promote their innovative services to a much younger, more engaged online audience. 

‘Data’ is key

The last day of DigiCon 2019 opened with a powerhouse panel of CEOs discussing the impact of technology and digital transformation in their organizations. McKinsey Philippines managing partner Kristine Romano moderated the panel, which featured Benjie Yap, chairman and CEO of Unilever Philippines, Lisa Gokongwei-Cheng, head of digital Transformation at JG Summit, Carlo Katigbak, president and CEO of ABS-CBN, Anthony Thomas, CEO of Mynt, Stephanie Sy, founder and lead data scientist at Thinking Machines, Merlee Jayme, chairmom and CCO of Dentsu JaymeSyfu, and Ashish Thomas, chief executive adviser at Summit Media. 

A crucial point of discussion was how important and powerful consumer data can be for new business opportunities. “The changing habits of consumers, the people that we serve, it requires us to follow where the people are,” says Yap. For Lisa Gokongwei-Cheng, data enables you to “reach your audiences better, know your audiences more, and build new businesses using this data.”

With Generation Z looking for content that moves people and with more human stories, VICE Media president of digital APAC Myki Slonim gave a stirring talk about capturing the attention of today’s youth, “Experiment voraciously; we wanna push things forward and try to embrace failure as much as we do success,” he said.

The DigiCon 2019 closing keynote came from EVP head of innovation at Zenith Tom Goodwin, who said that we’re now at “the start of the post-digital age; we need to be constantly aware of technology as a thing.” 

Goodwin concluded by saying, “This is an amazing time to digitally transform, but a lot of digital transformations are much more about behaviors. It’s to entirely rethink your business at the core and to build in around more than behaviors, but the possibilities that technology makes possible.” 

IMMAP is gearing up for a bigger and better DigiCon 2020 with early bird tickets marked at 50% off already sold out on the first day of DigiCon 2019. 

To buy tickets for DigiCon 2020 visit their website. – Rappler.com