THURSDAY 16 MAY 2013 10:27 AM

CONNECT 2013 AND THE OLYMPIC LEGACY

Teradata and eCircle’s Conference Connect 2013 was held in London’s O2 Arena. The annual conference has been happening for 8 years, and this edition brought together over a thousand people, scaling up the event’s size in comparison to the average of 600 attendees in 2012. The event highlighted key issues for marketers, such as big data uses and how experimentation can lead to an understating of consumers’ preferences and as a result affect decision-making.

Hermann Wimmer, the international president of Teradata Corporation highlighted that big data is available online and it provides valuable information that should be tracked through social media channels via controlled testing to understand costumers and he believes “speed is important when integrating data across all channels”.

The event was marked by the speech of Lord Seb Coe. According to the “Olympics Lord”, the Olympics was successful because it delivered everything promised in time. "It was our ability to deliver against what we said.” To emphasize the success he highlighted how the London Olympics was “the first public transportation games. We created a transport plan that will stand the test of time and be the envy of other cities". "There was an element of criticism" in the way cross-coordinating between public and private national projects were done, since they don't tend to come together, but the system created safeguarded jobs in tough industries.

Coe also showed how London was left with a sports legacy, the facilities required to its practice, and it encouraged younger generations to practice sports. A survey conducted showed that 25% more young people practice sports. As David Beckham is from one of the communities improved, he was part of the team for being a living example of how sports can change communities. A final example used to show the Olympic legacy was how it gathered the greatest number of women working in leading positions – in crucial posts from sports director to international communications.

For Bruce Daisy from Twitter, another speaker at the conference, social media has changed how people communicate. “When things happen in the world, they happen in Twitter. Every tweet creates a moment” and brands need to be prepared and take advantage of them, as they are a simple way of monitoring consumer satisfaction and costumer preferences.