With a food theme throughout and a cravat-wearing CEO channeling Matt Preston from MasterChef Australia, digital agency igloo held its Digital Strategy Masterclass on Tuesday as part of the 2009 Digital Marketing and Media Summit. The 3 hour interactive workshop, entitled ‘Digital Masterclass – Bringing your digital strategy to life’ was designed to provide a simple framework for developing a comprehensive digital strategy. The workshop was presented by igloo’s Andrew Englisch (CEO), Tony Prysten (Creative Director), Adam Leys (Strategy Director) and Teall Barnes (New Business Manager).

The food theme was referenced throughout the workshop with logical tie-ins such as the benefits of thorough preparation, the importance of knowing your audience and the art of getting your ingredients to compliment one another to produce a brilliant solution.

Beginning with an explanation of the process, which included a generous sprinkling of practical tips and real-life examples, the workshop quickly transformed into a very interactive session. The morning culminated in a one hour practical exercise which involved the audience forming 4 groups, with each group developing a social media campaign strategy to promote Australian tourism. And although the teams were working with a fictional brief, the attendees quickly formed passionate views about what they could achieve in this new media environment, resulting in some highly imaginative solutions. These included:

askanaustralian.com – A travel portal targeting young backpackers that would allow prospective travellers to ‘Ask an Australian’ about key aspects of the country. This could be based around travel tips, safety concerns, social activities or getting a job. The concept was designed to address what was perceived to be the core needs of this target market, being flexibility, experiential engagement and limited budgets.

pureluxury.com – A portal based around unique lifestyle orientated experiences, it would provide planning, booking and travel information related to luxury travel. The approach is to bring the site to life through story telling and testimonials. The solution is designed to appeal to those looking for luxury, culture, eco-friendly travel, food & wine and the arts.

australianadventure.com – A loyalty program based solution which harnesses ‘Pester Power’ to educate children about the many exciting things they can do on an Aussie holiday. As the children interact with the site they earn rewards such as discounts to theme parks and free vouchers to child-friendly tourist attractions so that they are pre-committed to Australia on their next family holiday.

australiayoungatheart.com.au – Targeting mature travellers with a focus on safe, adventurous travel while being mindful of their health, this solution targets the travellers’ ‘inner child’ by providing ideas to stay young at heart. The campaign will be launched with a consumer promotion and supported with affiliate marketing, rich media and trusted communities to help them organise a pre-arranged, no fuss holiday.

Well done to the winners!

To also help the predominatly marketing people gain an insight as to how to use and engage with twitter, we ran an ‘open’ live feed during the session and explained how it all worked. Read the twitter feed. (Hence Tony on the mobile in the bacground!)

Keep an eye out for events like this in the future.

Pics courtesy Elite Media