FRONT - A Strategy, Design and Technology Studio

Thanks to everyone who attended last month’s Conversations event in London.  A special thank you also to all of our speakers (you can see their videos below) and to Jeffrey Peel for helping to organise the event.

We had a great evening, with plenty of thought-provoking ideas and some great discussion between the talks.  We’re hoping to build on this positive start by holding the next event in June (provisionally the 25th).  We’ll be confirming the next batch of speakers over the next few weeks and you can register online (but spaces are limited).

Speakers

Anne McCrossan, Visceral Business and Mark Adams, Conversation Group

The first conversation was about the broad context of social media, the impact its having for brand owners, and some of the challenges involved in managing the shift that’s happening - how to deal with lack of control and managing risk. 

Mark talked about change from brands as “monoliths” that people flocked to, to a situation where people have cut out the need for brands as providers of entertainment by engaging directly with each other; today, people want more from brands.

Anne talked about visceral reactions being something that is instinctive, beyond the passive and towards engagement.  Communication is about not just about thrust, its also about traction.  There’s also a leadership imperative for brand owners and marketing directors to be more responsive and receptive.

Paul McKeever and Paul May, Front

Paul and I talked about the change in focus from companies interact with the customer, towards how customers interact with each other around a brand.  So its really important that those interactions are positive and that customers have great experiences.

The web is fundamentally different to broadcast media: you can’t control what’s out there so you have to participate in an authentic way.  The web isn’t about destination websites - customers spend most of their time on the web elsewhere and experience brands across a social web.

Some of the examples we mentioned include Get Satisfaction (people-based customer service on the web), EveryBlock (making data relevant to a local neighbourhood) and 4IP (innovative public service broacasting via the web)

Peter Vlachos, University of Greenwich and Steve Loynes, Chameleon PR

Peter and Steve talked about the impact that the web and social media is having on the traditional marketing disciplines of events management and PR.

Peter argued that the move to an experience economy hasn’t had the virtual world displacing real-world events. Instead the live entertainment industry shows that as digital content becomes more freely distributed, live experiences are more and more popular

Steve talked about challenges and opportunities that social media presented. PR is now a whole lot more difficult.  There’s need to still engage with traditional media, but in an environment where journalists are themselves actively blogging and where up-front planning and consultancy is now completely critical.

Jeremy Brown, Sense Worldwide and Matt Rhodes, FreshNetworks

Jeremy and Matt talked about what social media means for research, addressing the question ”where and how do brands have permission to play a role in people’s lives?”.

Jeremy talked about masterplanning: the idea of starting byconsolidating insight in one place to then brief all of your agencies and deal with the challenges of a fragmented, best-of-breed roster.  Then, the challenge is socialise that research throughout the organisation so that everyone can understand the customer and contribute their ideas.

Matt talked about using research to create a base for open innovation, so that its not just ideas from the intern and the CEO, but more importantly from outside the organisation.  Its about helping people to make connections with each other around communities of interest.

Nick Donnelly and Gemma Cocker, tweetieandthebrain.com

Lastly, Nick and Gemma ended the evening by talking about what works on Twitter from a brand point of view. Being authentic, relevant and interesting.

Just joining Twitter isn’t enough. Brands can’t simply see it as another broadcast tool - it means really engaging with people.  Top tips included don’t use automated messages and to see Twitter as a long term investment.  Like all tools it needs to be used contextually - adapted to your brand, history and what you have to offer.