The M-School: Institute of Marketing at LMU set the bar high for its new speaker series with digital advertising guru Dietmar Dahmen as its first guest. Dahmen’s rousing lecture, titled “The Fast Overtake the Slow: How the Digital Revolution is Changing the Way We Live,” took the audience through a journey on the digital revolution – with emphasis on mobile and how we now have 2.5 billion more mobile phones than we do toothbrushes! He addressed how this mobile revolution has completely changed our society…the way we decide…the way we buy…the way we live.
According to Dahmen, we are currently in a state of mind called “Generation Connected.” He says there are three different types of marketing being done today: Ad-vertising, which works to build up a brand until it’s essentially famous; Use-vertising, which is advertising created by people who have already used the service like Trip Advisor, Amazon stars or Yelp; and My-vertising, which uses individual preferences, individual information and individual behavior to essentially put the consumer in the center of the communication. Dahmen says My-vertising creates experiences – and experiences are the strongest content there is. People don’t buy products – they buy experiences.
Dahmen then took the audience through the various stages of the digital revolution – from Web 1.0 all the way to the soon-to-be Web 5.0. Web 4.0 is just now emerging and it is about total transparency. For example, if you take a photo of a product, you’ll immediately know what’s in it, where to buy it and/or where to buy it cheaper.
“When Web 5.0 hits, everything will be online,” says Dahmen. “For example, today you book a table at a restaurant through the concierge. Tomorrow you will talk to the table directly to book the chairs. I call this stage of the web “Digital Dust” and it will change the world as we know it.”
Austria native Dahmen began as a strategic planner in the advertising industry, then became a highly-decorated creative director at leading global advertising agencies such as Ogilvy and BBDO. He now works as a creative consultant in the television, videogame, fashion, hotel and organic farming industries, with expertise in the areas of marketing, branding, consumer behavior, digital trends and solutions. Dahmen has also taught at various universities, including the Film-Academy Ludwigsburg, EDCOM (the educational arm of the European Advertising Association) and the University of Staffordshire at Wifi, Vienna. He also co-published the book WHAT WE ARE WAITING FOR together with the University of Applied Arts in Salzburg, Austria.
