Day Two at DMEXCO
14 Sep 2018
It took me a fair while to even find the beginning of my notes from today, so let’s go in…
Influencers
Well, today went full circle! Started with influencer talks, loads of them. But all good, typically influencer marketing, in my opinion, and my summary of the day can be wrapped up in:
Pick the channel to match your objectives and KPIs. Something we at Altair have been saying for a while.
It is all perfectly logical. The channels have different strengths, Snapchat to YouTube, Facebook to Twitter. So match their strength to your need. Twitter, in our experience, is very tactical, whereas Facebook is more ‘always on ROI’ media. Snapchat is a mashup of media and creativity, hot in that moment. Think it through in your planning, don’t go crazy and try everything. Especially don’t try it with the same messaging!
Be native, your campaign and product should sit happily with the influencer(s) you choose. It should be authentic (got to be in the top media words of the year? Love authenticity). The influencer should be genuinely excited to be working with the campaign, not because of the money you will be paying them, but because they love the brand, the idea, the premise. It should be valuable to them and it should, therefore, be valuable to their followers.
Strangely enough, not a single talk mentioned all of the massive issues in influencer marketing such:
Brands are losing A LOT of money reaching bots and are increasingly frustrated.
Many Influencers are not following advertising regulations. Potentially 93% are not complaint.
http://mediakix.com/2017/05/celebrity-social-media-endorsements-violate-ftc-instagram/#gs.oBkR_mU
Once regulators crack down on these influencers, it will negatively impact a brand’s reputation.
But they did talk about how influencers can work across the whole buying journey, which was great. There were even influencers up on stage, giving their views on content creation and how brands should engage with them.
VR
For now, we make the leap from one stage to another. This is now all about augmented reality and virtual reality and even cross reality!
Some great points were mentioned. My two favourite:
Funding models for VR need to change. Completely agree, as the speaker put it, VR needs its own House of Cards moment. Budget to produce content specifically for VR and then wait for something to hit the nerve of the masses to push it mainstream and encourage people to jump in.
Apparently, chances are your first experience with this generation of VR will be via an advert, it’s just whether you know it or not.
My second favourite point was that VR budgets should be coming from experiential pots, rather than advertising pots. The metrics and mind space match in my view. Putting VR and AR into the world of ROI and last click is not going to work.
Think differently.
AI
Next up we jumped from the augmented and virtual world to artificial intelligence.
There was a lot of chat about AI today. From what it means to be a human and how will AI effect that to voice search, chatbots, and digital assistants.
When building AI, these are the things I learned today.
It must have a purpose, it must be intuitive and must make someone’s life easier. It should have a personality that fits with its user. It should also have empathy and understand its user.
We are now entering an age, with blockchain, that when tech is released into the world it cannot be brought back. It’s released into the wild, it has been programmed, it is supported by millions of people out there, but it will never return home to be reprogrammed or retired. Deep stuff, I am sure you’ll agree.
The last AI talk finished with the advice:
If you are going to build AI, if that’s what your company is going to do, make sure you hire philosophers to help you guide that AI ethically for the greater good and not for shareholders or for the cash, as it could change everything.
It was deep, so I jumped out and went to ESports and gaming.
Esports
It was brilliant. Not a world where I have a lot of experience, which made it cool to be a part of, to learn about.
I remember about 15 years ago, working in TV and seeing new channels rising, where you could watch others play games. I remember thinking, that’s probably going to be massive, but is definitely not my idea of entertainment.
But it is entertainment, that’s exactly what it is. People pay a lot of money to watch people play football, rugby or even cook on TV. Why not games?
It’s the same as football. You can see the passion, the pain, the overwhelming joy. Amazing.
It may not be my cup of tea, but it is epic and people love it. A lot of people love it and you can see the sheer scale and the potential, it still has far to go, and I think it will go much further than we would imagine.
But let’s wrap up:
Influencers:
We can all see advertising a mile off, we are exposed so many times a day it is insane. Trying to get to an audience, that are blocking ads, via other means, you will get seen and you will get instinctively tuned out if you are throwing ads at them.
People know influencers are taking cash, whether they admit it properly or not.
Going back to the advice above, if it is not authentic and the influencer is feigning excitement, that doesn’t work for anyone. The influencer no longer influences, the brand doesn’t sell its products, the brand doesn’t pay influencers anymore.
In my opinion, all advertising comes down to the same thing. The thing so many advertisers ignore chasing an ROI. Quality. There are far too many terrible ads out there, stalking people online, on their way to work, when they are relaxing at home or out with friends. Terrible ads are everywhere. Stop it.
You want advertising to work? Then put some effort in. Offer something of value. Offer something that brings some usefulness or joy to someone’s life.
About Altair Media
We are Altair Media and we are an independent media agency that is here to make our clients famous to the people that matter.
We believe…
Independent agencies are the lifeblood of the creative industries.
We are the antidote to the large agency networks, we will challenge you and we want you to challenge us. We are nimble and flexible to ensure we can keep up with your consumers or clients.
We believe in transparency; every decision we make will be in the best interests of your brand.
We believe that quality of work should never come second to income. Regardless of your scale, you deserve amazing work.
Altair is privileged to work on some of the world’s greatest brands and some of the most exciting start-ups out there.
You should never stop, never settle, always improve. Be amazing
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