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A daily podcast delving into the biggest stories of the day throughout the sports betting and igaming sector.
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Hello and welcome to the latest episode of iGaming Daily, supported by OptiMove, where we're having a little change of pace from the usual breaking news. And on today's episode, we're going to look into an upcoming SPC Digital Affiliate Marketing Day, which is set to take place on September the 4th. And I'm joined by SPC's Media Project Director, Martin Elliott, and Jack Howe, SPC's Digital Event Producer, to go through what to expect on the day. So first off, we'll start with... Jack, are you doing okay? Yeah, not bad mate, how are you? I'm good, how you feeling about the podcast? Yeah, a bit nervous, but you know. You do look a bit nervous. Do I? Yeah, you're shaking a little bit to be honest. Am I? Shame. Our producer, Rene, is gonna need to like, is gonna need to edit out the trembling of your voice. Great. As that fills you with more confidence with like the next 15 minutes or so. That'll be perfect. Martin, you okay? Yeah, very well. I'm enjoying your reassuring tone and nature there. Thanks. Thanks for putting Jack at ease. I aim to make people feel as comfortable as possible, but when it's their debut, sometimes putting the fear of God into them actually helps project them to a higher level. I need a bit more fear then. You need a bit more fear. Why not that intimidating? No, you're very lovely. Thank you. You said that was such a calm voice as well. I'm just a calming person. Perfect. Like I said, we're going to talk about the digital affiliate marketing day. But first off, cause Jack, you are relatively new to SBC. I am. And you're definitely new to this podcast like we've already established. So I like to do kind of a fun little segment before we jump into the topic. And what me and Martin did kind of talk about before you were hired is that one, you are a drummer. Oh yeah. You're a drummer in a band. Yeah. We will not give you a platform to pitch your band. That's fine. I couldn't pitch it for... for anything anyway. Cool. But we are going to ask you, and we're going to have a little discussion, who we think our favourite or best drummer is of all time. Both of yours? We'll pitch in. I mean, we haven't got your experience, but I mean, we have got his. Right, okay. So you want to know mine? Yeah, go on. Who's your favourite drummer of all time? Mine? Oh, I don't know. That's such a hard question. I know you asked me this earlier and I... That was your same response. It's such a hard question. I think the drummer for Chili Peppers is a big one. He's a fantastic player. Okay. Do you want to say, I think the Iron Maiden drummer is a fantastic one to go for. Very lovely man. Do we get names to these people? Yeah. So Chad Smith with Chili Peppers. Chad Smith. And then, Oh, Will Ferrell if people get confused. Exactly. And then Mr. Nico McBrain for Iron Maiden. Bit of a hero of mine. Lucky to have met him a couple of times. So. What a name drop. I know. Mine. Iron Maiden's drummer is always good. I think the Nico McBrain's predecessor. Clive Burr I think he was called on Run to the Hills. Those drum fills on Run to the Hills are absolutely brilliant aren't they? Yeah, I'll give you that one. But I don't know if I'm just picking one of my favourite bands here. I think Stephen Morris, Joy Division, his drum is sensational. Yes, he's brilliant. He's a fantastic player. Yeah. I'm going to go down your route Martin and I'm probably going to lean towards my favourite band but he is also a sensational drummer and you can really hear it in a lot of their music. and it's The Killers Ronnie Venucci Jr. He's really good. Yeah. He's a really good player. With The Killers, the fact that every song of theirs, they're trying to make such a big anthem, his rhythm and like, some of his solos as well, it's just off the chart and it's insane. Solos are something that I'm always jealous of because I can't do them. I can't do solos but his grooves are... Don't you just like, smack the hell out of the drums? I wish I could. Isn't that just a solo? But doing it in time is a completely different level that I can't really do. Grooving I can do. Chops no. Yeah. I also really liked Ronnie as well because I don't know if this might be a reference is quite niche. We've ever seen the show My Name is Earl? Once or twice. He looks like the lead in My Name is Earl, the lead actor. He does. Yeah. If you don't know him from that, you might know him from Alvin and the Chipmunks. Oh, right. Okay. The fact you knew that more than I knew Alvin. Yeah, I know Alvin. Does the shot want a hula hoop? Okay, we'll move on because I'm getting a little silly. Okay, so we're going to talk again about the Digital Affiliate Marketing Day. And before we dive into the main trunk of the conversation on today's podcast, now is probably the time to talk about another leader, not an affiliate leader, but the number one leader in the CRM marketing space, and that is OptiMove. For listeners out there, if you still want your first free month of OptiMove, make sure you visit optimove.com forward slash SBC. And I will leave the links in the description below. We're going to cover a few things. You know, what's on the agenda, the speakers who are going to be there. So, and I'm going to kind of pinpoint into both of yours. So first let's talk about the agenda and mine. Can you just discuss some of the main topics that they're going to be covering on the affiliate marketing day and some of the key kind of trends and themes that you'll, that people expect. Sure. Well, I think one of the things to point out about the digital conference that we have on September 4th serves three purposes. The conference itself, which I'll come back to in a minute. We're also looking ahead to the Affiliate Leaders Summit in Lisbon in September, which is part of SBC Summit. And we are launching our new Affiliate Leaders magazine, which will be published digitally on the 4th, and then you can pick up a copy in Lisbon as well. So we've taken quite an all encompassing approach to this. There's been a lot of research and so on going into it. And we've spoken to a lot of people in the affiliate marketing world about this. And then to come up with the agenda, where we're looking at a number of the key topics, obviously changes in the SEO landscape is normally number one issue for facing affiliates. changed all the time. Google is really, a really, really frustrating organization for everybody in the world to deal with. But you know, it's just a fact of modern business. You cannot get away from Google. So curse you Google. Yeah, pretty much. I've always heard of me either a Bing man or I go old school with Ask Jeeves. Ask Jeeves. Very good. Yeah. You have to look at duck, go to find Ask Jeeves. I think in these days. You actually remind me a bit of Jeeves. Thanks. That's probably why I like you so much, Martin. Yeah. Thanks, I'll... Just coming in a tuxedo next time. Yeah. I mean, I was a butler in a former life. Yeah. We're doing a good job of promoting this conference here, are we? But yeah, to get back to that, we have some real SEO experts coming in to talk about the latest developments and the trends on that. So that'll be interesting. Then, another big thing that the affiliate world is either embracing or worried about, depending on who you work for, is the role of generative AI. So we'll be looking a bit about that. I'll be hoping everyone is saying, no, it's not replacing writers because, you know, I would like to carry on working. That's helpful when it comes to paying the mortgage and stuff. We'll be looking at something slightly different. This is different to when we've covered affiliates in the past. The role of influencers on social media. That's a really interesting topic. How should I put this? Contempt is maybe too strong a word, but I just find influencer marketing really annoying. But we'll be looking at, because we know that a lot of people don't find it annoying and that's why it's so successful. So we'll be looking at how you might be able to use that to drive some first time deposits, which is a, I don't think people, many, many people have mastered how to do that in the gambling sector yet. And then we're also looking, you know, at general marketing techniques. There's a bit of a focus on real-time data for anybody who's quite technically minded, a little bit geeky, so obviously that'll be me. And we're finishing off with a really important session, which is titled, Who is Responsible for Social Responsibility? We all know there's a huge pressures on gambling operators to improve their sort of player protection provision. And we'll just be examining the role that affiliates have to play in the safer gambling landscape. So that promises to be an interesting discussion. Perfect. And Jack, I'm going to swivel over to you right now. Martin's already gone through kind of the what's on the agenda and what to expect. Part of your job is to kind of curate these panels and to get the speakers involved and pretty much glue everything together from strand A, B, C, D, C.5, and I'll bring it all together to make one coherent day of education. How did you go about choosing these topics? And also how did you go about kind of aligning the speakers to the current topic? Because it's, like I said, you are kind of new to this. kind of not new to this kind of job area, but definitely new to the sector. Definitely new to the sector. So first point of call is always researching what people are doing, just making sure that everyone's talking about the same thing. And if there's another position that can be kind of talked about. So I think influences at the moment is quite a big, big thing, especially with social media being so, so vital for marketing. So that was that was a big thing that I wanted to look at. And then obviously being new to the industry, I wanted to get as much information as possible about these different subjects. And like I said before, just what was popular and also who's talking about this, who's really involved with these companies, with these topics. So that's kind of where I started off my research. And I think, yeah, that's kind of how I started off and just who's talked about what, who's previously spoken with us as well and who's done a really good job and who's really given the information that people want, really. So that's kind of how I. I've put it all together. Yeah. I'm not going to big you up just because you're on the podcast, but you have done actually a stand out job. Thank you. At the current agenda, it's not happened yet, so we'll see how it goes. You know, not to tempt the fate, but you know, it's a really good, strong agenda for the day. And we've already kind of mentioned aligning the speakers, but let's have a look at who's actually speaking. And Martin, can you just kind of introduce us to a few of the main speakers who are going to be on these panel sessions and just kind of give a brief background to them all? Yeah, of course. So if we start where I finished the last bit on the agenda with the social responsibility session, we have a really strong speaker out there. And in particular, we'll be interested to hear from Simon Vince of Casino Guru, because they're running. Casino Guru also has a sort of a player protection element to it as well as being a standard sort of casino. So it'd be interesting to hear what he's got to have. That panel also Tom Galanis from Tag Media. Tom Galanis is always a fantastic speaker. Yeah. We actually, this is going back to, would have been just after you joined the company and we did the first COVID era digital summit. Caroline Harris. Yeah. Tom was on with, everyone in the UK and the gambling industry will know who Caroline Harris is. I was going to say Calvin Harris. Calvin Harris. I imagine you all know who Calvin Harris is as well. he wasn't taking part in our safer gambling discussion. But yeah, Carolyn Harris, an MP, quite outspoken on gambling issues. And she gave on this particular conference, digital conference session, which Tom was on, she gave a quite remarkable performance, it's fair to say. And Tom did a really good job at sort of countering some of her, how should I put it? unusual arguments on approaching it. So I'm interested to hear what Tom's got to say in a more relaxed environment. So that will be good. The SEO panel is great as well. We have Ivana Flynn, who I think anyone who works in SEO within the gambling industry will be familiar with Ivana. She's been on the High Game and Deal podcast quite a lot. Yeah, she's great and joined by speakers from Mighty Tips, Game Lounge and Bettson Group as well. So I think that'll be a valuable session for everyone. So I mean, all the way through I have to say, we've been running these digital conferences, we brought them back about a year ago and we've been doing them in various verticals, we've had things about casinos, sports book payments and so on. affiliate one maybe nine months ago, I think, as well. This is probably the strongest speaker line we've had overall, I think, in terms of the specific expertise we've got. It's not just about the brand name next to the speaker. And we have got, you know, better collective and game lounge and all the bigger players in there. And making Jack Bush here. Yeah. And the egos coming through the roof. just wait till we get off air and then I'll say something different. But no, it's a really solid speaker line up all the way through. Mason Hickman And kind of on that Jack, you've already gone through the process of how you kind of curated the agenda and the research you've gone into this, but just how was it securing these kind of big names? Because as Martin's already alluded to, these are strong names in comparison to kind of the last one that we did. being quite a short tenure so far. I think a lot of help from everyone in the team really helped, and like Martin was a massive help curating this. But I also think doing the right research was 100% the right way to go around this, just making sure that everyone's had a good amount of experience in the industry and just watching previous times they've spoken as well and how they've conducted themselves, I think was a really good way to kind of pinpoint who we wanted on board. That definitely helps a lot. Cool. We've talked a lot about what's going to be offered on the day, but actually a lot of the things I like to talk about when we discuss stuff like this or when we do the, we do Beyond the Reels for slot beats where we actually look at slot titles, I actually kind of like to see what happens behind the scenes because that sometimes, or a lot of the time, isn't really publicly demonstrated or, you know, provided to people. So Martin, a lot of extensive planning goes into this. a lot of thorough detail of who you want, the topics you want to talk about. Can you just kind of go into the organising of the digital event to this, to this scale, kind of from the start maybe and kind of how you work towards getting this final conclusion of the agenda? Jason Vale That's good. That's about four months work in there to encapsulate in two minutes. So, let's see. Mason Hickman Do your best. Not pressure. Jason Vale So from the, there's a bit of discussion the most compelling topics for the overall digital conference days are. Once we've picked one of those, it's a case of working with people from initially across SBC. In particular, we have our tech team who need to set things up. We have input from our design team who are involved in marketing assets and setting up the platforms and so on and make it. making sure the branding's right, all that kind of thing. For this particular event, we've done a lot of work with Julian Pitts and Brendan Spiteri, who are working on our affiliate relationship team. So they're the guys who have great contacts throughout the affiliate sector, and they have huge input into the Affiliate Leaders Summit in Lisbon soon, so. their contacts and their advice have been very useful in this. And then, you know, once you get that ball rolling, the key contributions come from Jack putting the agenda together and that he's worked since joining the company. He's done this pretty much nine to five every day. I think it's fair to say about that. or two other projects running in the background at a smaller scale, but this has been his main focus. Fortunately, he's grasped it pretty much from day one. So I've not been able to let him get on with most of it, which is great. And then... Mason Vies More ego filling there, bro. Jason Vale Confidence is just rising. get this out, promote it and so on. They work extremely hard to bring in the numbers to make sure we have an audience because it's all very well producing content. That's great. That's what we do as a company. We produce content. We know how to do that. We know how to do it well. But actually there's no point producing content that nobody sees. So their role is also crucial in this. Yeah, Scott Fulton and Joe Beale. Won't be a surprise to anyone in SBCs here that, you know, Scott and Joe have done a really good job on this again. They are the, they're always the hidden engine behind anything, certainly multi-media-wise, that we push and I'm on my end. They're the hidden engine that just pushes us forward to grow and grow. So, well done Scott and Joe, there's your shout out. Later than needed, but very well deserved. And Jack? I'm not going to ask you kind of the behind the scenes stuff because we've touched on him. Martin's already touched upon that. He's already filled your ego up a bit too much from I like it. I'm loving it. You can keep going for a likeer. But I do kind of want to reflect on mainly your journey since joining SBC because it's been what? A month and a half, two months now? Nearly three. Time flies. Yeah, I just want to kind of reflect on kind of your role, how you found it and kind of the lessons that you've taken from your first big. digital day that you kind of want to take on to curating your next one, which we will talk about on our game daily when it comes. Yeah, so kind of my experience so far has been really good, really positive. Everyone's been really supportive. Anybody will ask any question that I need. Like the support that I've received so far has been class, to be honest. It's been top tier. Like Martin's really, like I said before, Martin's really helped me out so far and then- Is Martin Busham right now? Not as much as I was. Yeah, Scott, Joe, they've been a massive help. All the journalists who create the content as well. They've been really helpful with nice speaker suggestions, everything like that. I think just being here has just been really nice. It's been, yeah, I can't even get off anymore. Been a really good experience so far. Before we start breaking down into tears, let's move on to lessons learned. Lessons learned. I think my main lessons that I've learned are kind of who's... in the industry, sort of speaker wise, who to go out to, who not to go out to for certain events. And it's mainly learning the differences between, like, operators, affiliates, suppliers, and just getting really honing my knowledge in on that, I think, has been the main lesson that I've been learning so far. One of the first things I had to get my head around in this industry when I joined, what's to be about? a few years ago. Yeah. Just before COVID broke out. Yeah. I was in the office for about two weeks and then we got sent home. Really like working from home. That's kind of how I started. Yeah. But did you keep the big sports direct mug which you used to have in the office? No. The old office. Interesting story about that and I'm glad you brought it up Martin. My first two weeks I could not say no to anything because I was so nervous and Martin always came in and said what'd anyone like? brew or a coffee. And me being me, I was just like, yeah, I'll have one. Yeah, yeah, please. By the end of my first day, I'd had about four, five coffees in the big direct smoke. And I got into my car and I was shaking. I had to like sit for 20 minutes and just calm down. I was like, I need to stop saying yes to everything here. But yeah, I know one of the things I was saying I was getting onto is the terminology. in this sector is something you really have to get your head around. And once you understand what they mean, you can really push you forward. And A has given me the signs that we are running out of time. So quickly to round up the podcast, Martin and Jack, I'm going to ask you quick fire questions. Give me 10 second answers. What do you hope attendees take away from the digital day? Something they didn't know before that is actionable in their business. Perfect. And Jack? I want them to take away as much information as they can and how will it help them progress throughout the industry and how can they really get on it? Perfect. And when is it? 4th September. 4th September, perfect. To the listeners out there, make sure you register to sign up to the digital day. Yes, you do. You need to register and I'm sure James as our multimedia editor, you will be remembering to put that link in the show notes. I will do my best. There's a lot of pressure right now, but yes, the listeners, I will leave the links in the description below for you to sign up and register for the digital event on the 4th of September. But apart from that, I've been James Ross. This has been our gaming daily. Thank you for listening.