Understanding Digital, A Creative Summit

Nick Suckley of Agenda21, Robin Grant of We are Social, Matt Butterworth of Folk Creative and Dave Birss of Ogilvy London will discuss the growth and possibilities of digital communication focussing on how to integrate digital into your business. As an industry hot topic, audience partcipation and questions will be welcome and the event will be chaired by Damian Ryan and Calvin Jones, authors of the recent Understanding Digital Marketing: Marketing Strategies for Engaging the Digital Generation. This event will suit creative advertising, design and marketing professionals as well as those in media, publishing, academia or any business hoping to utilise the power of ‘digital’. There will be a drinks reception to round off the event.

Speaker information:

Nick Suckley is Managing Partner at Agenda21 Digital in London whose most recent awards include New Media Age Effectiveness Awards 2009: Best use of search, Best use of mobile and Overall Grand Prix winner. Nick has over 10 years experience at the forefront of digital advertising in the UK. With long term business partner Pete Robins, Nick pioneered digital media in the UK with one of the first digital media agencies, media21 in 1998. Following a private sale to Grey Global Group and the successful turnaround of Mediacom’s ailing digital division Media.com, with agenda21 Nick aims to provide clients with straightforward answers in an ever changing digital landscape working with clients like Total Jobs, Epson Europe and Ministry of Sound.

Robin Grant is Founder of We Are Social in London and is a 13 year veteran of digital marketing, consistently producing effective and award winning work for the world’s biggest brands. Awards include (but are not limited to) D&AD, Clio, One Show and Effectiveness awards. Robin started blogging in ’97 and after a stint as Product Development Director at Habbo, created conversational marketing campaigns for Eurostar, Shell, GlaxoSmithKline, 3, Canon, STA Travel, Skype and Ford. He is a founding member of the governing council of WOM UK, the UK’s Word of Mouth Marketing Association and personal blog, Advertising 2.0, which can be found on the Brand Republic website. He recently founded We Are Social to help brands to listen, understand and engage in conversations in social media.

Matt Butterworth is Managing Director Director / Strategist at Folk Creative in Hertfordshire. He set up Folk Creative after leaving his Creative Director position at Arnold Interactive to fulfill his own urge to work in an environment where the creative work comes first and business matters second. Current clients on the Folk roster include, Philips, GSK, Unilever, The Conservative Party, Cartoon Network, ECB, King Sturge, Knight Frank and Kaplan.

Dave Birss is Creative Digital Director at Ogilvy in London. Dave has had an unhealthy obsession with creative expression for many years and as a result has ended up with the strangest CV. After working as a session musician, record producer, stand up comedian, university lecturer, poet, inventor and radio broadcaster, he fell into a career in advertising. He started as an art director before the internet was invented. And as soon as it was, taught himself HTML and ended up being the guy in the agency who did the digital stuff because no one else understood it. This led to him becoming Creative Director at MRM and Poke before finally making it to Ogilvy to become their Digital Creative Head. Entrepreneurism is what really excites him, which is probably why he’s helped to start up several web businesses.