The sun shone and the breeze blew as Lucie, Karina and Craig arrived in
Toronto on the Monday and settled into the lovely Le Royal Meridien
King Edward in the heart of downtown Toronto. The sun continued to
shine as we reconnoitred the Distillery District, set up the office and
sampled the local shopping facilities (all in the name of research of
course). Come Thursday morning though, the heavens opened and the rain
came pouring down almost all day. But ICMA delegates are a tough bunch
and after a delicious Meet-and-Greet lunch in the beautiful Palm
Court/Pall Mall rooms, we all boarded the bus to the nearby Distillery
District where groups took the walking tour and learned to ride a
Segway, most for the first time! Apart from one slight mishap, everyone
took to it very well and, wrapped in plastic raincoats, trundled
happily around the collection of old buildings in the downpour. After
prising everyone out of the bar (and chocolate, ice-cream and jewellery
shops…), we returned to the hotel to dry off before attending the Welcome Reception and Dinner.
Jill Armer, Director of Operations of Buy & Sell Ireland and Chair
of ICMA, welcomed delegates to one of the largest GM's outside of
Europe, 110 delegates in total from 20 countries, and thanked our host
for their hospitality, and the exhibitors and sponsors for their
support. Unfortunately, John Francis of Trader Media Corporation had
been unexpectedly called away, but Cal Bosveld, Group Publisher,
Automotive & Generalist Publications, filled in admirably, and
extended a warm Canadian welcome to all visitors. Speeches over,
everyone filled their glasses and their plates, and ate, drank and
talked long into the evening.
Bright and early the next morning (largely because the jet-lag for the
Europeans made sure that we were all awake by 5am), Jill formally
opened the conference sessions with some thoughts on the conference
theme of "The Next Generation: Product Innovation". We were delighted
to welcome as our Keynote speaker, Garry Wiseman, Product
Unit Manager of MSN Live Expo,
Microsoft's foray into the world of classified media. Garry explained
the project background, objectives, rationale for Microsoft to enter
this space, the focus on community interaction, the challenges that
they're facing and some thoughts for the future. Whilst he dodged a
question on the numbers, he was remarkably open about Microsoft's
activities, which was appreciated by delegates. However, the fact that
only 8 people work on this product underlined the sheer efficiency with
which the online players can start to compete in our markets. Garry was
followed by George Brooks, President of Trader Publishing Company,
soon to be split into Landmark's Dominion Enterprises and Cox
Autotrader, was on next with a look at how Trader had exploited the
online channel from a largely print base. An entertaining dialogue
resulted on the exact audiences and overlap between Autotrader, Auto
Extra and Auto Mart, with George finally admitting that the success of
these operating in a single portfolio was largely happy chance.
After the coffee-break, it was one of ICMA's most regular and prolific
speakers, Peter
Rees of Trader Classified Media
who took to the podium. Despite having been given a brief by Head
Office to talk about Trader's top innovations, he had decided to talk
about making money - a subject very close to all delegates' hearts. He
focused on five key strategies - bundling, verticalisation,
regionalization, free circulation and merchandising - and gave examples
of how TCM had deployed these in various markets. And if anyone missed
it, Peter's email address after 30 June when he leaves TCM will be
peter.rees@gmail.com (but we may see him again in Munich...) A
completely different tack next, when Suzanne Raitt, VP Marketing for the Canadian Newspaper Association
presented some research on successful creative approaches for
classified ads. The ladies in the audience particularly liked the ad
for divorce lawyers of the Porsche Boxter with the numberplate Was-His…
Running a little close to lunchtime, Rajesh Navar,
CEO and Founder of LiveDeal
stepped up to engage us in "Conversation 2010" about the future of
classifieds. His argument - that classifieds could no longer be assumed
to be a direct source of revenue, but instead should be thought of as
content around which to package advertising - means that we need to
build best-of-breed solutions and create new revenue streams in order
to create a marketplace that will succeed.
Kicking off the afternoon, we welcomed a late stand-in, Mark Gideon of Scarborough
Lexus,
a real live customer from a major car dealer in Toronto, to talk about
how he made his advertising decisions and why they had changed over
recent years. The audience seemed slightly stunned at the prospect of
questioning a customer about how he viewed their products… And then it
was over to Craig Donato, the CEO
and Founder of Oodle.com,
to explain the concept of aggregating and to answer the age-old
question of 'so how do you make money from this?'. The answer seemed to
be selling enhanced listings to the publishers who had agreed to feed
ads into Oodle.com so that their listings were displayed with more
detail, thus delivering more value to their advertisers. Craig denied
that he would ever sell ads into the environment that Oodle.com had
created through 'scraping' but afterwards, the consensus amongst many
publishers was that he would find that option hard to resist in the
end. However, Dan Rindos of Bargain News endorsed the Oodle.com model,
saying that it was delivering 4000-5000 extra visitors to the Bargain
News site since he started the regular upload.
Sadly, Naval Ravikant of Vast.com
experienced some travel hiccups and wasn't able to join us in Toronto,
but we hope he'll be able to make it to Munich.
After putting Melanie's group in another room (for noise reasons!), the
three workshops kicked off on time. It was the first time we had done
the Website Show-and-Tell,
and delegates really seemed to get into 'showing you mine, if you'll
show me yours'. We'll make a few changes next time, and ask delegates
to focus on a specific feature of their services rather than absolutely
everything, but thanks to all volunteers (and I was particularly
impressed with the Autotrader.ca multiple image manipulation technology
as well as Friday-Ad's specialist website, aviationjobsearch.com). By
all reports, the Search Engine OptimisationPrint Sales Initiatives
workshop, led by Colin Smillie, was excellent and gave delegates many
concrete ideas and techniques to take home and try out. Melanie's
workshop was also very well attended, and Melanie generously shared
many of Loot's most successful print initiatives with all attendees.
A quick wash-and-brush-up later, and it was off to the CN Tower,
the world's tallest building, to eat dinner in the 360 revolving
restaurant and play on the glass floor. The food was delicious, the
view spectacular (even more so from the top viewing deck).
Interestingly, the group divided into the imaginative ones who had a
healthy respect for heights and then those who coldly rationalized that
they were not going to fall. That makes Saija Katajamaki the most
imaginative, and Lucie the least!
Nursing a few sore heads the next day (and there was more than one
delegate who simply never reappeared), we reconvened for the Publishers' Meeting, chaired by Josef
Kogler, and the Sales Managers' Workshop, chaired by Beverly Crandon.
There will be separate minutes written up for the Publishers' Meeting,
available from the presentations database shortly.
Finally, interested members met together for the Business Meeting
to discuss the internal business of the Association, approve the 2005
audit, appoint a new auditor and elect some new Committee members to
serve on the Committee until May 2007 - full minutes will also be made
available in the presentations database and also in the Library.
The formal part of the conference over, Head Office (okay, mainly
Karina) quickly packed up the ICMA office, and everyone rushed to get
changed for the Gala
Party.
We arrived at the Liberty Grand Renaissance Room where we were greeted
by two beautifully turned out Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers
and had the opportunity to have our photos taken with them. After more
than a few drinks, Cal once again welcomed us all and Karina presented
bouquets of flowers to Jennifer and Roseanne to thank them for all
their help in making the conference happen. After a delicious meal, and
way too much to drink, the dancing started and we all trickled back to
the hotel bar around midnight.
Thankfully considerably later than in India, the tourists amongst us
struggled out of bed to catch the coach for the day-trip to Niagara
Falls (we were slightly disappointed not to see any elephants at all on
the way!). A great day was had by all with a boat trip to the foot of
the Canadian Horseshoe Falls, lunch overlooking the Falls (and a sneaky
stop at Starbucks en route), a view from Table Rock at the rapids at
the top of the Falls, a stop at the Whirlpool where the water actually
loops under itself, and an all too brief shopping visit to
Niagara-on-the-Lake. After dropping Felix, Inge and Brent off at the
airport, we were very glad to see our hotel again.
Thanks again to Trader Media Corporation for being such great hosts (I
always think a host can't possibly match the previous one but I'm
always proved wrong), the Committee for all their input and ideas, the
many speakers and members who gave their time to help, Karina and Craig
for all their hard work up to, during and after the event, the
exhibitors and sponsors for their support, but most importantly to you,
the delegates, who at the end of it all, really make the event what it
is.
Lucie Hime
Executive Director
l.hime@icmaonline.org