PPC RESTART 2020

The opening talk by Filip Kahoun dealt with the issue of attention. Filip identified drama as a strong factor in catching the recipient’s attention, though he doesn’t view it as a good building block for designing the identity of advertising. In his view, dramatic brands suffer from a comparatively short lifespan, and sooner or later their engagement drops. Instead, he recommends to focus on emotions, i.e. rewards as these are the most effective in the long term.

Petra Pacáková of PPC Bee was the second speaker. Her block mostly emphasized the issue of working with XML feeds and editing them so that they’d fulfill the needs of PPC campaigns. The presentation showed how feeds can be edited in PPC Bee in order to improve the performance of the advertising output itself. What was also greatly stressed was the fact that each campaign must be built on thorough quality preparation which should be considered at least as important as the implementation stage.

The topic of retention analysis was discussed in the third entry, courtesy of Honza Veselý from the Taste agency. Choosing specific examples, he demonstrated how much a quality retention analysis affects the performance of advertising campaigns. Using the STDC marketing framework, he defined C (care) as precisely this vital retention, one which is frequently and unjustly omitted.

After a short coffee break, Lukaš Matějček, the founder and CEO of the Bagind fashion brand, took the word to discuss how a fashion brand can be built in our current times, what role online advertising plays in business, and how the brand approaches promotion as such—these were the main points Lukáš introduced in his block. He was followed by the second female participant in the event, the lawyer Petra Dolejšová who specialized in e-commerce, marketing, and personal data protection. Using selected examples, Petra demonstrated various unfair competition or parasite brand tactics. PPC specialists in the audience appreciated how she pointed out potential legal discrepancies caused by wrong keyboards or when GDPR is handled incorrectly.

From theory to real-life application—that could be the name of the next talk by Marie Kaisrová, an RTB campaign specialist from the Taste agency. Using specific examples, she introduced attendees to the structure and principle of RTB ads, to new trends and options of moving vital audiences from different systems and platforms.

What requirements are currently imposed on PPC specialists and what kind of future do they have in this era of increasing automation? This was discussed by Jan Mašek, a PPC specialist and founder of the digicamp.cz project, once the afternoon portion of PPC RESTART kicked off. Feeding off questions posed by the audience, Jan presented the life of a modern PPC specialist, talked about what drives them the most or what makes the current online marketing environment different as opposed to that of roughly five years ago.

Visual aspects were an important part of the following talk. No wonder since Vojtěch Prokeš, a social scientist and founder of Behavio Labs, discussed brand symbols as a means of making advertising more effective. Prokeš pointed to our subconscious as a deciding factor that helps determine whether a campaign is going to be successful or not. Which symbols do brands use, how are they used, and how strongly does our subconscious connect them to a particular product or service? These are only a couple of questions Prokeš mentioned as an example of what any marketer needs to think about.

Jan Tichý, the chief product officer of the Taste agency whose presentation consisted of two blocks, was the final speaker. His entry, the most extensive part of the whole conference, dealt with a new marketing framework called PAVRD, created by Taste. PAVRD is the ideal tool for planning, managing, and assessing communication, campaigns, and other marketing activities. The letters which make it up designate the individual stages of approaching users—Povědomí (Subconscious), Akvizice (Acquisition), Výkon (Performance), Retention, and Doporučení (Recommendation). Unlike the STDC framework we mentioned above, PAVRD isn’t tied to the decision-making stage of purchasing, but to specific goals of individual stages.

We appreciate that this year’s PPC RESTART took place at all, considering the adverse situation brought about by current events. We’d like to thank all speakers and attendees without whom there’d be no point in holding such events, and hope we’ll meet in the Palmovka Theatre next year, hopefully without masks.