Bangladesh Brand Forum recently hosted the much-awaited fourth edition of the Digital Marketing Summit 2017 on Saturday, October 14 at a five-star hotel in Dhaka. Presented by Meghna Group of Industries, powered by Wizards Ad Networks and organized in association with The Daily Star, the daylong summit initiated the first Digital Marketing Award alongside. The event successfully promoted a platform where the local digital marketing communities engaged with four global stalwarts to share their expertise on marketing. Besides being well thought-out the summit revolved around a theme called ‘Strategy into Action’.
The Digital Marketing Summit consisted of four keynote sessions, three-panel discussions, five breakout sessions, two case study presentations, and two insight sessions. The assortment of activities was indeed a delight to the marketing enthusiasts present at the event. Since its inception in 2014, the summit gave an opportunity to a wide range of enthusiasts, professionals and experts in the marketing and advertising arena to interact and exchange the best and trending digital marketing practices. The Wizards Ad Networks also officially launched their venture at the event which has been operating as a beta for past one year.
Keynote speeches were given by Farhan Qureshi, Head of South Asian Frontier Markets at Google; Zaved Akhter, Director – Marketing Transformation at Unilever, South Asia; Dan Clarke, CEO & Founder, Disruptient and Sanjay Vaghasia, Chief Digital Officer at Banglalink Digital Communications Ltd. The discussions exposed the crowd to numerous digital marketing opportunities yet to be tapped by the local players.
In addition, fifteen local industry stakeholders also participated in three-panel discussions throughout the event based on the topics such as ‘Building the next digital marketing campaign – The Perfect Recipe,’ ‘Are we using mobile advertising effectively?’ and ‘Creating content that delivers results.’ Later, Wizards Ad Networks and Pickaboo.com presented two Case Studies in front the audience, who were further motivated by two insight sessions taken by Asif Iqbal, Executive Director of Marketing, Meghna Group of Industries and Ayman Sadiq, Founder of 10 Minute School. The insight sessions gave an overview on –‘Why music can be the next platform for brands?’ and ‘Digital marketing hacks without the technicality and boosting.’
Hosted by Women in Leadership, Bangladesh Creative Forum, Access to Information (A2i), Wizards Ad Networks, and The Daily Star, the five breakout sessions further helped the audience to engage more in-depth learning opportunities. The session called ‘Wonder of Technology for Women Leadership’ was held by Women in Leadership and proposed the idea of how Digital Media and online platforms can be used to support the agenda of women empowerment. Furthermore, the session arranged by Bangladesh Creative Forum, namely ‘Leveraging Creativity through Technology’ described ‘How creative professionals can make proper use of digital platforms to promote their skills and works’ whereas the breakout session by The Daily Star focused on the ‘Messenger Bots being the next media distribution platform’. And, finally, the session by A2i talked about ‘Taking 64 district stories to people’.
As a part of the auspicious event, the first Digital Marketing Awards were also distributed in the evening, where the most successful digital campaigns of 2016 were awarded across 13 different categories in ranks like Grand Prix, Gold, and Silver. 50 campaigns were awarded this year as a whole, of which 16 were Silver, 22 were Gold, and 12 were Grand Prix. Amongst the high achievers were Asiatic, Magnito Digital and Webable Digital with nine, nine and five awards in different categories respectively. The Grand Prix for Best Integrated Digital Campaign was awarded to ‘Aynabazi the Movie’ executed by Melonades.
