Today’s guest post is by Kelly Teng, Outreach Specialist at Switched on Media.
This is what normal people must feel like when they meet the One Direction or The Spice Girls.
Simon McDowell from Coles, Melissa Barnes from Twitter, Janine Allis from Boost, Lorna Jane, and of course, Tim Burrowes from Mumbrella – all together in one conference. If there was any way to top last year’s fantastic lineup, flying in the head of brand and agency advocacy at one of the world’s biggest digital companies is the way to do it.
Alas, if only they would all get together and sing a song (I vote for Spice Up Your Life).
Unfortunately, that song might not be appropriate for the Hilton Sydney, but danishes, strudels, and water in wine glasses served to 1,000 attendees definitely is. Held in the conference rooms of one of Sydney’s most lavish hotels, mUmBRELLA360 consistently attracts the industry’s leaders, prominent journalists, budding entrepreneurs, and marketing moguls.
With over 60 sessions, panels, and presentations, it’s physically impossible to listen to everything that’s going on (unless someone has invented a device that allows people to be in four places at the same time). Like a good brand, though, there were some great trends and themes that came about…
Some pretty key keynotes.
As far as keynote speakers go, these two were as much a motivation as any to roll out of bed before 7am.
It turns out that supermarkets are not a very sexy topic to market. At all. And this was Simon McDowell’s challenge. Rather than continue with the self-professed “tired” image of Coles, this CMO had a different philosophy which he discussed on Day One – complete with cardboard cut-outs of One Direction for their latest promotion. McDowell talked about Coles’ passionate focus on their consumer, and on doing something attention-grabbing, creative, and DOWNright different (get the pun?).
Apparently, working at Coles is like playing a high-impact sport. They are always generating new ideas (“thousands a day” – his words, not mine), and don’t accept ideas that are less than a 9/10 – and even that only might get considered. Interestingly, although most of Coles’ ideas are generated in-house, McDowell’s attitude capture an almost perfect verbalization of what it feels like to work at in the Creative department of an agency (sans the world’s most popular band).
Coles may be generating thousands of new ideas, but Twitter users are generating 1 billion tweets every 2.5 days (plus, One Direction is on there too).
With so much untapped potential and so many different ideas out there, it makes sense that someone should be there to guide brands to do remarkable things on the platform. Enter Melissa Barnes, whose job is to help brands and agencies utilize the platform in new, innovative, and exciting ways to drive brand awareness and improve business.
Images and videos speak louder than words, so here’s some Twitspiration for your Friday afternoon:
- Oreo’s infamous tweet during the Superbowl.
- O2’s response to a network shutdown.
- Mellow Mushroom HQ: follow us and we’ll follow you.
Being a social socialite
So Twitter is powerful, Twitter is great, and ideas + brands + Twitter = #winning. Social media in general still holds so much potential, but there have been a few questions floating around for a while: how do we, as practitioners, measure ROI in social media, and how do we mitigate the risks associated with social media?
According to Samantha Yorke (IAB), while a brand is not legally required to moderate all comments, if a brand comments on or endorses questionable content, they may be held legally viable – and user-generated content is still a murky grey area. Agencies and brands also need to draw up clear guidelines around social monitoring and community management outside of hours: after all, if a staff member checks a brand’s Facebook, falls over and injures themselves, are they liable for worker’s compensation? Perhaps it’s time for us to stop checking our client’s Facebook and start checking our own more (you have the IAB’s permission).
Aside from the risks and regulations, there’s another big R that was hot: ROI. Greg Joy from Lithium Technologies declared that social for social’s sake (number of ‘likes’, shares, and reach) is dead, and a new kind of ROI should be explored. So how do we measure this? Perhaps we should be talking about increased spend per customer, how many new customers a brand has received, and how many customers they have retained.
Digital marketing, or digital and marketing?
In the Battle of the Media: Outdoor vs. Online, a surprising verdict occurred: after an audience vote, it seems oustdoor marketing has the X-factor. It may have been because some attendees were still sleepy, but Richard Herring’s winning argument made a very good point: technology amplifies outdoor marketing, and outdoor marketing can be a complement to a digital strategy.
Touche, Mr. Herring – and that brings us to another recurring theme of the conference. Cadbury’s GM for chocolate, Ben Wicks, also touched on how outdoor marketing was amplified by social in their various campaigns for Joyville. In one campaign last year, led by Saatchi and Saatchi, a giant purple train traversed Sydney’s railways, handing out free chocolate; the campaign was amplified and reached over 2 million people through various mediums – one of which was social media. Social media, then, allows people to share in the experience of a campaign when they can’t actually be there themselves. If only Willy Wonka’s chocolate transmission machine was real.
Even Lorna Jane’s digital and social strategy strongly integrates offline and online experiences: Derek Laney from Salesforce talked about how the fashion retail giant translates her bricks and mortar business into a great digital experience for consumers. Lorna Jane’s area managers and store managers are all aware of the brand’s social strategy and networks, and the brand’s digital strategy focuses on a principle of continual improvement by listening to the customer’s thoughts and ideas.
The agency: to infinity and beyond?
These days, there are hundreds and hundreds of agencies out there in agencyland and many bill using head charge – a model that was established for the 1960s agency. Do we still know how to get paid for what we do?
If we deliver a commercial or a website, do we charge for the final product, or the service we provide? This panel, with Rowena Millward (Johnson & Johnson), Aaron Michie (Zenith Optimedia), Clive Burcham (The Conscience Organisation), Damien Damjanovski (Common Ventures), discussed the idea of best practice in charging head hours shifting to an experiential “next” practice.
And the rest of it…
Since no human being can be in four rooms simultaneously, this is just a spoonful from the massive pot of ideas and information that mUmBRELLA360 2013 provided its attendees (they also provided us with a massive amount of food – hence the metaphor). If there are two points this conference raised, it is that:
- Technology is the biggest challenge of our industry. Brands, agencies and practitioners need to use this opportunity to innovate and generate new and different ideas, and
- If in doubt, One Direction always helps with marketing.
PS. Self-affirming quote of the conference.
Haters gon’ hate…as long as your mum, your boss, and yourself think you’re doing all right, you’re probably doing ok.
- Michael Beveridge, radio broadcaster at SAFM and Big Brother 2012 contestant.
For more news and information about mUmBRELLA360 2013, visit the mUmBRELLA website. Kelly Teng is an Outreach Specialist at Switched on Media. Follow her on Twitter @tellykeng. Her last post for Nextness curated what’s on her mind.