Today I attended CreativeMornings, a monthly gathering of creative professionals who assemble at SFU Woodwards to listen to a guest speaker, while enjoying a free breakfast and coffee.
The speaker at today’s event was Ryan Opina, VP of User Experience at Engine Digital. Interestingly, before the event started I didn’t know that Opina was the speaker, or that the lecture would be related to digital marketing. A friend had given me wrong information about the event, so I was pleasantly surprised when the actual topic of conversation was revealed.
Opina talked about how he came to work in digital marketing, a field he wouldn’t have predicted he would end up in after finishing a degree in Human Factors. His lecture was very interesting and engaging, and I thought that it really tied in to what we’ve been learning about in COMM 464, particularly with respect to user experience and usability design. Opina spoke about how his work looks at human behaviour and psychology, and tries to anticipate what the user will need in order to maximize their enjoyment of a website or app. He also talked about how consumer behaviour plays a huge part in the gaming industry, where the goal is to turn players into “whales.”
Having just taken a consumer behaviour class, many of the concepts that Opina spoke about were familiar and still fresh in my mind. What was interesting for me, was hearing Opina talk about how these concepts are applied in the digital realm. He spoke about online men’s fashions retailer Frank & Oat, and how it credits a small portion of each purchase back into the shoppers account, so they always have a store credit to apply to their next purchase. I thought this was a great example of an effective loyalty program for online shoppers.
Overall, I really enjoyed Opina’s lecture, and the way that it re-emphasized, for me, the connection between consumer behaviour and digital marketing.