Future Marketing Summit Day Two - Part 4

Day Two continued:

Next was the Entertainment panel. Here are some of the key points:

This discussed the need for a reason for people to watch content, and the empowerment of new models of viewing.

40 thousand videos are uploaded to You Tube every single day, and 90% of it is crap. However, we have to remember that most of that 90% is not designed for everybody, its things for a small circle of friends.

Clients are starting to see the need for quality, and the need for entertainment. Though someone in the audience made a great point that sometimes content can be informative rather than entertaining.

Is engagement more important than entertainment?

There is apparently a huge difficulty in finding people who don’t think in terms of print or tv ads. Shall I wave?

Clients have to accept that control of their brands has slipped through their hands.

Another good point is how the system of peer to peer sending that drove much online/viral content is moving to a model of discussion. For example: One of the key things about You Tube is that each video has a discussion area below it, allowing debate to spark.

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Next up was Matt Smith of The Viral Factory. Here are some of his key points:

The internet is now a consumer channel just as much as it is a brand channel.

The ratio of good user generated content to shit is huge.

He spoke about the issue of brands wanting “to do viral” but having no understanding of how it works. The odds are for many brands that if people do care, they care in a negative way.

One problem of asking people to do UGC is that you can end up disappointing people who (despite putting effort in) produce crap content by not using it.

Don’t stake your campaign on viral, as he rightly points out; many people expect to put a video on You Tube and have it automatically get seen by 2 million people, but it simply doesn’t work like that.

Respect creators and consumers, they gave a good example of a great Samsung viral they did, and when someone created their own version they worked with them.


Viral Factory Samsung Viral



Consumer Generated Version

Future Marketing Summit Day Two

The first item of the day was a talk from Mike Bennett, Creative Director of Digit.

He spoke about the importance of moments, what happens at the point the customer meets your brand or product. Emphasising that communication is about people not technology.

Moments of interaction matter just as much as a big idea or strategy.

The battle of form and function vs the experience, with the good example of the iPod. The wheel is not the most useful way of navigating the system, but it provides a great experience.

A great point was about websites not being as lateral as people think they, most people search – find – view – and go.

Another good point is that digital is not just about the office or indoors on your pc.

He also spoke of how flawed manuals are, people don’t read them; maybe they could follow the route of video games, taking you through the product gradually.