GDS International's iStrategy London Lays Down Marker for Top European Digital Conference

LONDON, June 11, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

On 22-23 May 2012, London, Stamford Bridge - home to the European champions Chelsea FC - hosted the fifth iStrategy Europe, the region's leading digital marketing strategy conference. And inspired by the sporting heritage of its stunning venue, iStrategy Europe reached new levels of excellence in terms of delivering a world-class event.

An innovative, two-day event held bi-annually at regional locations across Europe, Australia and North America, iStrategy curates invaluable content for senior executives who believe that the success of their business requires a progressive digital strategy. Combining keynote speeches, panel discussions, interactive workshops and live interviews to deliver the highest quality programme to its delegation and sponsors alike, iStrategy welcomed presenters from leading brands, both European and further afield.

Setting the tone, Brian Solis delivered an engaging, electrifying opening keynote centred around how brands must 'adapt or die' in the ever-growing digital arena. Known as a visionary, Brian challenged the 550 attendees to think not in terms of ROI from 'likes' and followers, but the user experience that leads them through to their ultimate goal - a better digital experience. Brian turned heads when he explained that he thought General Motors pulling their 10 million Facebook advertising commitment wasn't because of the Facebook platform, but because of a lack of originality on where users would end up once they had clicked the ad. Brian left us with this thought: 'Marketers are no longer marketers, but digital architects,' an important lesson for all of us as we tackle the uncertain, but infinitely rewarding new media revolution.

EMI, McDonald's, Mastercard, Twitter, Google, Nestle, Facebook also gave engaging and insightful presentations and panels, and over the course of the two days there were some notable highlights. On day one, Ebuzzing's Andrea Febbraio used a number of pointed analogies to highlight the tipping point for viral video; Neal Schaffer gave a whirlwind tour of how to get the most out of an underrated platform, Linkedin; and iStrategy MC Adam Burns orchestrated an entertaining Social Club, bringing the best digital insights from digital veterans Gillian Muessig of SEOmoz, Kerry Bridge from Dell, and Azeem Azar of PeerIndex.

Day two was bookmarked with RedBull - voted the third best brand on social media - and Ford, both massive organisations doing social in very different and effective ways. Whereas RedBull have grown out from simply a beverage company to publishing and other arenas, Ford has stayed insular - literally with their epic 'Doug in a car' ads among others - and established a strong, market-leading position by focusing on their product. As Ford speaker Alex Hultgren said: "Product comes first. If you don't have a great, market leading product, social media becomes a lot more challenging." Clearly Ford has both - a great product, and a great social strategy.

As with previous events, iStrategy London was designed to help forward-thinking digital marketing executives - from C-suite to digital manager - take charge of their offline, online and mobile strategies in ways they never deemed possible. London attendees also benefitted from an entirely new programme format: with over 15 new sessions, from masterclasses to case studies it continued to push the standards of digital conferences and became the UK's second trending topic on Twitter within the first few hours of the conference. In addition, it surpassed previous standards set at iStrategy Amsterdam last year by producing an online Twitter reach of over 10 million people on day one alone.

Richard Stirk, VP of Conferences for GDS International, feels the event was a huge triumph. "We've held iStrategy in Europe on four previous occasions, and at every conference we get better - without question this event was our biggest and best yet. With top speakers such as Brian Solis, Alexander Koppel, Alex Hultgren and Neal Schaffer, our content provided attendees with great takeaways on how to implement and execute on a whole range of digital marketing strategies.

"With over 8000 tweets and an impressive reach of 15 million people with our hashtag #iStrategy, we feel like we offer a wonderful interactive conference for attendees to not only network and converse in person, but online as well. Couple that with the best speakers, the biggest brands and an all-encompassing, well-rounded programme and we think iStrategy is a best-in-class event. I cannot wait for our next European event in Westminster in November, where we promise to raise the bar once more and offer attendees our best programme yet, with a speaker line-up to match."

The next iStrategy event will take place in Westminster on the 27-28 November 2012. To book your seat now, please visit http://www.istrategyconference.com/events/westminster/

About GDS International

GDS International is one of the most innovative events and media companies worldwide and a globally renowned producer of business-to-business summits, conferences, online information and advisory group gatherings.

Founded in 1993, GDS International specialises in meeting the B2B marketing needs of our clients. Having a strong presence in mature industrial sectors but a finger on the pulse of emerging markets - as well as up-and-coming B2B business verticals - means we are perfectly placed to capitalise on the exciting developments brought about by the advent of a globalised economy.

Our value proposition is simple: we deliver tangible business results from world-class events. http://www.gdsinternational.com

Contact: Helen Hawkins, Marketing Manager, at helen.hawkins@gdsinternational.com, +44-117-9261450