One of the best aspects of attending industry events is the opportunity to exchange points of view with other participants.  This was brought home during the last panel I watched at SIME, where some of us in the audience didn’t necessarily agree with the panelists in one small point.

Don’t get me wrong: great creative is fundamental to a well-run campaign.  However, as a former sales guy I’m a little tired of the intense focus we have as marketeers on the creative and winning awards. Cannes Lions are a beautiful thing and definitely don’t do you any harm as a brand or an agency, but when evaluating a marketing activity I’m more interested in understanding four aspects:

• Will the activity live after the first or second  push (is it built to live, or built to die?), or are we just thinking about separate, ephemeral campaigns?
• Are we measuring impact, and what were the results? Are we focused enough on ROI instead of bells and whistles?
• Are we prepared to engage with our audiences once they come across this?
• How is this communication adding value to our audience? Why should they care other than because it’s really cool?

As mentioned, I was not the only attendee thinking about these topics after hearing the panel, and we had an interesting chat later on.  Funnily enough I found a very relevant presentation of his on this topic below:

Warning: this is quite a long post about marketing. If you’re interested, get a big cup of coffee and a comfortable seat

I was fortunate enough to be invited to the Scandinavian Interactive Media Event, SIME Helsinki for short. You can follow the real-time notes of the attendees in Twitter.While there was no streaming of it, I did take quite a few notes I’ll share with you below.

Introduction – Business as unusual (Ola Ahlvarsson)

• Evolution of digital from Windows 98 & Wolfenstein 3D to MacOS & blogs to… the Matrix 😉
• Facebook is the big opium of the people, growing faster than any web service ver.
• Google branching its business into physical, mobile
• Rise of apps
• Traditional media mixing with new platforms: BBC on the PS3
• Listening is more important than ever
• Vision-based augmented reality emerging as a trend
• Cloud computing
• Cheap iteration
• Easier access to international markets
• Internet of things: robotic internet
• Old industries (books, records) totally disrupted, but content is more alive than ever in the digital world
• Games going social (sharing gameplay clips an emerging activity)
• Branding is dead, or isn’t it? Originality more appreciated than ever.
• Owned, bought, earned media model intro.
• B2B going B2C

Measurement panel

• What to measure, what not to measure, how they combine: good discussion but inconclusive.

Voddler presentation:

• Free movies online.
• Disruption on three fronts: Business model, film industry, technology.

Rovio presentation

• Discussion of the Angry Birds case. Best sold app ever, growing to other platforms as well.
• Best quote of the whole conference:

Because we’re from Finland, we’re so good at branding and marketing.

Social Media panel

• Intra-organisation Social Media opportunities
• Forget tools (Facebook, Twitter), identify goals and practices first.
• Think which ecosystem you want to target: reach out where your audience is.
• Don’t lie, you can’t shine shit.
• Know how to engage your audience and channel the energy of your fans.
• Claim your space

Performance-based marketing

• Automatically retargeted banners.
• Relevance is king: ka-ching!
• Getting numbers are not a problem, making sense of them is.

Blocket (Tori.fi)

• Classifieds & Marketplaces
• Expanding globally by challenging Ebay. Growing also in Finland.
• Measurement based on community interaction.
• Relevance to community is king (again).

Contagious magazine trends

• Campaigns need to be useful, relevant or entertaining
• Entertaining: Durex campaign vs. Old Spice: one-time virals vs. engagement with the campaign reaction (responding to user suggestions)
• Useful: Carlsberg where’s the party. Find & Share.
• Useful: Best Buy customer care via Twitter. They archive the request for help for further reference.
• Relevant: Dentsu iButterfly (augmented reality coupons)
• Relevant: Ikea Facebook photo tagging
• Convergenc: Remember what you develop is for real people. Be brave and willing to make mistakes to learn from them.

Mobile marketing panel

• From ringtones to apps & video ads.
• Mobile CRM shall not equal spamming.
• Ingredients for mobile take off are there, ready to get going.
• Mobile gives timing and location to the relationship.
• Mobile is intimate.

Qualcomm innovations

• 5 billion wireless subscribers worldwide.
• 1 billion are 3G users, will be 2.8 billion by 2014.
• Chips developed on two dimensions: integration and/or size.
• New displays: reflective technology with low power consumption and great viewing.
• Health sensors: pulse, blood pressure, glucometre, ECG, temperature, posture.
• Visual-based augmented reality: games, toys, promotions.

Hitlantis

• 70% of teenagers would rather go without sex than music.
• Bring together music & lovers.
• New bands sign in, get listeners and fans.

Social media workshop

• Social media is a diffuse, container term
• Engaging with as many people as possible… really?
• Mass communication coming to an end.
  • Quality, not quantity communications
• Number of communication messages everyday increasing times 10.
• Internalise social media practices in your organisation.
  • Keep on developing, things never get out of beta.
  • Participate, don’t just enable if possible.
  • Sociology know-how important.
• Aggregate & summarize (widgets, RSS, etc)
  • Package but allow unpackaging.
  • Data is owned by users, make it portable.
  • Absolute clarity for licenses and permissions is vital.
• Monetisation is possible & can be planned for: make it free first, charge for additional services later. Made me think of the growth of SMS in the Philippines.
  • Segment product on different layers: Spotify basic vs. premium
• Presence / status update important, becomes social currency.
• The combination of social media and mobile has the potential of becoming very powerful, especially with its links to location (& even more, proximity).
• Recommendations for companies getting started:
  • Start with content calendar.
  • Basic listening tools (Tweetdeck, Google Alerts).
  • Authenticity crucial: you have to be close to the essence of your brand/service proposition.
  • Customer care can be a great way of getting started if you do a good job.  Look at it as cost vs. opportunity.
  • Don’t do external-facing communications if too stiff, but internal blogging/comms are also a great opportunity.
  • Don’t experiment, commit to do it well.

Marketing communications workshop: From one-night stands to meaningful relationships in marketing

• The full talk from Hasan & Partners. Please make sure to check it first before reading the rest.
• Heineken Milan Champions League case: One night stand using earned & paid media
• Gatorade replay: Huge ROI, much more than a one night stand. Concept can be scaled up or down, and continue even if the brand is no longer behind it.
• Livestrong, Nike Chalkbout: Post-digital executions. It’s all about you (reminds me of that Time cover)

Wrap-up and Conclusions

• Change is not a choice, it’s a necessity.
• All marketing is performance based.
• Social media must be entertaining, useful and/or relevant.
• Finns can make world-beating services if their vision is big enough.
• E-health will be close to your heart 😉 .
• Innovation is definitely accelerating.
• Creativity in communication is more important than ever.
• The ones who can connect the dots will win!