• by Andy Oakes  @andyoakes, February 14, 2014

It’s with a certain amount of deep-seated gloom that I received the emails alerting me to the fact that it’s almost trade show season again here in London. If you’ve ever been to a major trade show in London, you will understand the issues. You can go to Earls Court (middle of nowhere), Olympia ( tube has actually stopped going there) or Excel ( there’s a reason arms fairs are held there). And when you get there, things don’t get much better. The inevitable registration fail, the non-existent wifi and the hugely overpriced food all contribute to my having an in-depth knowledge of the pubs in the vicinity of these venues.

Should you brave all that, what do you actually see? Row upon row of companies, all of whom promise to solve any digital issue you have. I would urge you to do what I do if accosted by a rep from one of the stands. Ask them to explain exactly what they do in less than 30 seconds. If anybody starts with the phrase, “Well, we are an end-to-end, full service solutions provider ...,” then just walk away.

We shouldn’t be surprised by this. Sadly, the digital marketing world has failed to market itself very well for many years now. There are a few honourable exceptions but the majority are very poor in terms of innovation, execution and strategy. I recall with a certain amount of horror a period in which I consulted various digital agencies on how to build their brand. Many were more concerned about how they appeared to peers in the market rather than potential clients. We slaved for days over company descriptors with senior execs unable to agree on what was the core activity of the company and who the target market was. And don’t get me started on the company that didn’t want to do any digital activity …

The importance of a high-profile, well-executed and well-defined marketing program has been highlighted by the recent IPO of the Rubicon Project. In the UK, they have marketed themselves incredibly well and forged a good brand personality, overcoming initial cynicism from the London market. They defined themselves well and have always been very open to the trade media. 

What stood out to me was that they described their core offering as the "Advertising Automation Cloud." It's interesting to see management position Rubicon less as a "programmatic" IPO than a "cloud" IPO, maybe noting the less-than-stellar IPOs in that sector in 2013. Obviously, this has sparked a wave of conjecture that this will pique the interests of potential buyers such as Adobe or Salesforce.

In another article on MediaPost, Tyler Loechner quoted Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wiese, who noted that he thinks having Rubicon in the public market "should foster a deeper understanding of programmatic trading and digital media and lead to more nuanced assessments of business models among ad tech companies."

And that’s hugely important here as the sector really needs to start defining itself in terms of the value it can add to either advertisers or publishers, not just the tech it has behind it. The rest of the digital sector can also take note. Tell the people what you do, how you do it and how it will help them. And whatever you choose to do, don’t go to trade shows.