Hello…

I’m a digital strategist passionate about the intersection between technology and creativity.

I moved to London in 2022 after 11 years living in Dubai, UAE. I’m a Sitecore Optimisation Consultant at Sagittarius and a Sitecore Strategy MVP 2024, 2023 and 2022.

I write about technology and digital marketing and have featured in magazines such as Campaign Middle East, WIRED Middle East, Entrepreneur Middle East, Arabian Business, and Forbes Middle East.

You can reach me at rob@robertmcgovern.com

Digital Strategy

I’ve worked on both the agency and client side, for small web start-ups and larger international software companies and agencies, in a strategy, project management and business development capacity.

I have been involved in managing various digital activities for clients such as Emirates NBD, DP World, Danone Nutricia, BMW, MINI, Toyota, Emaar, Nespresso, Commercial Bank of Dubai and MAN Truck, involving projects across Web Design and Mobile App Development, Content Creation, SEO, CMS Management, User Database Management, Email Campaigns and Digital Display Campaigns. I’ve also been involved in pursuing new digital projects involving mobile technology and Virtual Reality among others.

In my spare time I freelance in web design and work with HTML, CSS, Graphic Design & UX/UI.

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International Development

I have significant international experience having worked across the Middle East, Europe, North America and Africa. I also have an MSc. in International Business Growth from UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School as well as having studied International Business at the University of Applied Sciences Wiener Neustadt, Austria.

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Achievements

During 2011 / 2012 I was part of Enterprise Ireland’s inaugural Graduates for International Growth programme having been included in the top 4% of over 1,200 college graduate applicants. I also have an MSc. in International Business Growth from University College Dublin and a BSc. in Marketing from Dublin Institute of Technology.

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My Blog

My talk at SUGCON Europe 2024

I was delighted to present at this year’s SUGCON Europe conference in my home town of Dublin last week.

It really was a fantastic event with some great presentations from the Sitecore team and Partners from around the world.

You can find my highlights on my other blog by clicking.. →

The London tube station Ai experiment

James O’Malley has written a fantastic piece on the results of a recent Transport for London (TfL) experiment in using AI to improve safety and the passenger experience at the Willesden Green London Underground station.

While the technology was initially implemented with an eye on detecting.. →

IKEA’s GPT Store Ai Assistant

It’s no secret that every forward-thinking organisation on the planet is scrambling around for use cases for Ai tools.
IKEA are traditionally quite tech-savvy and experimental when it comes to new tools, so it’s no surprise that they’ve been embracing Ai for a while. Now they’ve.. →

The end user perception of Ai-created content

There’s been a LOT of noise around Ai-generated content over the last twelve months with everyone and their uncle seemingly using Ai tools like ChatGPT to help them create content quicker and more easily.

And while a lot has been written about how to help people start using Ai content.. →

Stripe’s Black Friday live transaction dashboard

Stripe have launched a live dashboard to highlight all the real-time #BlackFriday transactions happening on their platform. What a baller move 👏 It’s up to nearly $4 Billion already and it’s only lunchtime in the States.

Check it out here 👉 https://bfcm.stripe.dev

As.. →

Community Notes are eviscerating Twitter’s scammy advertisers

Matthew Gault hits the nail on the head with his take on advertising on Twitter these days. Many of the big advertisers have left, leaving a bunch of scammy drop-shipping companies that Twitter users are calling out via Community Notes.

“Twitter has an ad problem. Mainstream advertisers.. →

Another personalisation fail

I’ve been doing a Personalisation experiment on Twitter for a few months.

My ‘For You’ feed is littered with posts from bullshit accounts like ‘No Context Humans’ and ‘CCTV Idiots’. Every time I see one, I click the ‘Not interested in this post’.. →

Free-returns might become a thing of the past

I came across this excellent article by Amanda Mull in The Atlantic about how free ecommerce returns might be going the way of the dodo.

Processing returns is obviously a massive expense to retailers. While letting customers return goods bought online for free was a much needed tactic during.. →

My latest talk at the Sitecore Strategy webinar

I was delighted to speak at the 14th SMAC webinar on 8th August 2023 about Sitecore Send alongside the fantastic Samantha Goble and Daulton Allison of XCentium and Kimberly McCabe of Perficient. The full line-up is below.

Samantha Goble and Daulton Allison, M.S. of XCentium on tips.. →

Humans are terrible drivers

One of the biggest roadblocks (pun intended) to the adoption of full self-driving – apart from getting the actual tech to work of course – is addressing the psychological barrier to putting your life in the hands of software to get you from A to B.

Autonomous driving is not perfect,.. →

Lessons from Guinness’s stellar rise

I love this piece from the great Mark Ritson on how Guinness has been winning lately – leveraging its distinctive brand assets (the white and black pint) and social listening (people missing pints of Guinness during Covid and seeing the white and black everywhere they went) and, in doing so,.. →

My Top 10 Funniest Moments of Elon Musk’s Twitter (so far)

It’s been less than two months since Elon Musk took over Twitter (let that sink in!), but it feels like a lifetime.

Ridiculous decision after ridiculous decision and row-back upon row-back, it’s dizzying trying to keep track of it all.

Here are my Top 10 moments (so far) in somewhat.. →