While 75% of the panel discussions concentrated on analyzing digital trends, the remainder elongated our ideas by swerving the topics towards forecasting. And the difference between both was noteworthy. While one brought in the big-brother watch-everything-control-everything perspective, the other talked about radical communication, taking risks and transparency.
Panel Speakers
The nine-hour conference accommodated only one female speaker for twenty-three minutes. I am very disturbed by this kind of myopic representation of the media industry. The ratio of male to female speakers at the conference was 65:1. Let me repeat that, and bold it and highlight it: 65:1. I hope that there is a sound explanation to this narrowed selection. I hope that all the female speakers on the organizers’ list were unavailable through phone, email, twitter, facebook, mail.
With the panelists in general, some were great while some lacked the luster. And I say that only because they referred to consumers as ‘people who have no names their jobs entail to only wait to be targeted by advertising messages’. They referred to social media as the problem child. Such a troublemaker, this Twitter!
Someone aptly said, “Wow, we don’t have anything to criticize about this guy. He ought to be good.” We are not imminent critiques. I don’t want to sound arrogant but I don’t know how else to put this; We just know the good versus the bad. For over half of the panel discussions, we sat there with scorecards on our minds wherein we evaluated them on the basis of thought-leadership, non-redundancy, thought provoking and awareness.
Key Takeaways
The Idea Of ‘Free’
One particular panel pondered at the idea of ‘free’. They said that any application, tool, entertainment service and music should not be free. The panelists’ consensus was that mobile phone service providers or the gadget providers should charge people for downloading ringtones or music.
But really free is how you define it. Because one of the misnomers that surround social media is that the tools are free. They are clearly not free. They require immense amount of time, thought and planning to make a brand successful in the social media space.
‘Ownership’ Culture
We all still reclaim the idea of “we are what we own”. Hence, we collect. Everyday on the internet, we find cool things and we save them. We buy music, we buy clothes, we buy cars. We own things. Brands must learn to create an experience and then let it go. Don’t give consumers something and then take it back. Now that the communications model has flipped upside down where we go to the consumers rather than waiting for them to come to us, we need to be more equipped with ideas and services that we can hand over to them. ‘Hi, we don’t just make products, we make experiences and we make them count.’
Cross-Platform Effectiveness
With the emergence of new platforms that facilitate accessibility to the internet, how can brands utilize various fragments of media to tell one cohesive story? The panelists predicted that the future lies in further fragmentation of media into smaller but incredibly useful and personalized tools for people, which will all live in each individuals one-stop consumer-generated media space. How can we as marketers be a part of this journey and ensure that we aid this forecast and enable a richer and more valuable experience for people?
Virtual Versus Real
A few years back, we all placed our bets on the virtual. Second Life sprung up. Myspace was the number 1 social networking site. And then everything changed. People thought that the experience in virtual was just not the way to go. Real was rewarded. Now, who you really are is prominent on the web. We are not afraid of being real. MySpace and Second Life are suffering because they predicted otherwise. People prefer Tweetups over meeting on Second Life. Real
The Next
“I don’t want to predict the next. Because I hope that whatever it is in the future is something we can’t even imagine right now” said a panelist when asked what future looked like in digital. But here are a few future trends spotted by the panelists:
Walls will be broken down: The consumer will own the media channels. And will help form your brand message.
Mobile: Anything and everything will have a presence on mobile. Mobile is the next social media.
Open Source: User-generated platforms will emerge. More and more sites and companies will open up their APIs and allow for personalizations and modifications
Mainstream Media: Mainstream media will emulate the web. More interaction, more targeted messages and more fun!
Examples/Brands Mentioned
• Gossip Girl Mobile Application
• Google Wave
• National Geography Mobile Games
• XP Touchscreen Printer that is not attached to a computer
• Lowe’s created viral campaign: Earth Hour
• Hulu, YouTube Geo-targeting
• Yammer as a great communication tool for organizations
• Whirlpool donated a fridge per home. 9 homes were donated to 1 block/ week. They partnered with Yahoo to broadcast 2-way video on “Building Blocks” site
Key Statistics and Points:
• Less than 2% of downloaded apps go on to be long term users.
• 80 percent of CEOs believe their brand represent superior product. 8% of consumers agree
• ”Click here to interact” can very effective when it comes to banner ads.
• To succeed digitally “live where people live” – don’t change their habits.
• Mark Renshaw from Leo Burnett on 70/20/10 rule. 70% of digital marketing budget for the basics (video, search marketing), 20% on Digital media (engagement, gaming etc) and 10% on marketing insurance
Best Speakers
Scott Ferber, Chairman, TidalTV
Ross McNab, Director of digital solutions, Eyeblaster
Ali Partov, CEO & Co-founder, iLike
Haroon Mokhtarzada, CEO and Founder, Webs.com
Bill Bradford, Chief Product Officer, Fox Digital Media
Adam Kasper, Havas Digital
4 Comments
Hi Mansi – I enjoyed your coverage of Digital Media Conference. Since I am one of the organizers, I wanted to respond to your comment about the small number of female speakers this year. You raise an important question asking why there were not more females speaking at the event. To respond, this was certainly not by design or even oversight. In fact, our speaker invites went out approxiametly 60/40 men/women this year. Unfortunately, several high profile women who we invited to keynote were not available and many invited for panels did not respond or were not available. Also, two women who confirmed cancelled in the weeks leading up to the event. Of course this didn’t anything to do with their gender, but it was unfortunate for the event. We also select speakers from submissions – which means that companies send us names and bios for execs who they are pitching to speak at the event. This year, the submissions were heavily male, which was another factor. This event notwithstanding, we are seeing a noticebale increase in the number of women execs at digital media companies and many more as speakers at our events (we produce 8 other events each year). The biggest change has been in the games space where it was very rare to see a women executive 9 years ago when we started covering the space. Today, we are seeing a lot of women in senior positions at games companies and game-related start-ups. I hope that this trend will continue throughout digital media. Thanks for raising the issue. We will certainly be more aware of this and strive for more female respresentation as we book speakers for our future events. Best, Ned
Good capture of the key takeaways. I think the biggest challenge that media faces in the digital realm is the fear of “free”.In the real world,we have been trying to make money forever in every possible way. In the digital: No one knows how to make money out of “free” or even whether you could make money out if it. If you could, how much? This fear may accelerate the end of the free internet as we know it!
Thanks, Ned. I am glad that this issue is on your radar and your group is taking the needful steps to drive that the industry desperately needs.
I did get out of the conference with good insights. I look forward to more female speakers!
Thanks, San. I think we all have been functioned to measure everything with our ROI scales. With the advent of social media, we changed our tactics but forgot to change our lenses. We need to start measuring using our ROE scales (Return on engagement).
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