Ai
Podge
takeover!
- Renegade Agency
- Andy Wood
Renegade takes creative tech lead at Podge Evolution.
2024 is the year of Podge Evolution. After 21 years of Flash, spinning logos, QR codes and augmented reality goggles, digital is well & truly mainstream. So from now on, no more Digital Podge – it’s all just Podge.
Which suits us fine. Because just like Podge, good digital isn’t really about tech, it’s about what good marketing has always been about, finding useful ways to connect with people. So as creative tech lead for the 21st ‘coming of age’ Digital Podge Evolution, that’s what we tried to do – use the latest tech to be useful and enhance one of the most iconic events in the agency calendar. No pressure.
As we say at Renegade during our daily incantation to the gods of agency success: powerful ideas connect people! So what better way to celebrate the evolution of Digital Podge than to use AI enabled tech to analyse some very insightful psychometric data (collected by the amazing Psychological Performance Coach Daryll Scott!) on 400 wizened old digital pros, and then use this data to match-make the perfect table plan.
Using AI to create new connections that otherwise might never have happened, connecting the online and physical experiences with joined up data delivered at the event through touch screens and a (super creepy) AI voice assistant is the BIG idea.
Touch screens sync with the website and event app for quick and easy access to Podger profiles so you can see exactly what makes your fellow Podgers tick and why you’re sitting next to them at dinner. Trusty QR codes link to social profiles for quick connections.
It’s a model we are testing and developing for retail clients together with our enterprise software buddies and fellow Podgers CoreMedia. So having the chance to run a live test at Digital Podge 2024 was great – thanks everyone!
Did we impress the battle hardened (quite a bit older than we were when Digital Podge started) digital pros? You’ll have to ask them. We certainly learned a lot and we had an awesome time, because with or without tech, Podge will always be great fun. Ultimately, good tech should solve real life people problems, or at least significantly enhance what’s already there, and I think we did that at Digital Podge 2024.
A big thanks to Clare Jones for the opportunity to be involved in a very special Podge Evolution, and to Tracy Wood, Paul Beacham, Ash Bryant and Robin Falke for their amazing commitment to make the idea happen.
Long live Digital Podge!
Andy Wood, Strategy Partner
20+ years bringing together business strategy, market insight, and technology to deliver business transformation, customer experience innovation and operational efficiency.
I can help you:
• Deliver next-generation digital experiences for customers
• Align enterprise technologies with operational & strategic goals
• Understand AI across business operations & customer experience
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