Social Media Week in a Playdough nutshell

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As we bid farewell to Social Media Week London for another year, we take a fond look back at our events over the week…

We kicked off our trio of events with The Greatest Social Media Pub Quiz Ever to grace Social Media Week. Partnering up with the amazing Ticketmaster at their HQ in Angel, we challenged our teams to test their social media knowledge to the limit. Our winners, The One Eyed Smurfs, emerged victorious by proving their knowledge in all things from Lenny Kravitz’s costume malfunction (#penisgate), to knowing which delicious pizza brand allowed Twitter users to order their food using emojis in a campaign.

Emojis were the hot topic at the quiz, with teams being challenged to create a new emoji, out of playdough, glitter and pipe cleaner. Art Attack eat your heart out! The winning team’s creation was a beautiful electric blue unicorn, we can only assume that Emoji saw this beautiful creation, as recent news has just suggested they are in fact creating a unicorn emoji!

Thank you to our partner in crime, Ticketmaster for helping us host a fantastic evening!

The meaty filling in our Social Media Week sandwich of events was Live Tweeting 101, led by our brilliant Senior Editor, Sarah Hecks.

Sarah took the SMW audience on a whistle-stop tour through the world of Live Tweeting. Offering insight into how to spot live event opportunities relevant to your brand, how to engage with your audience, and when your event has ended, how to keep the social buzz going.

Read more of Sarah’s live tweeting tips here.

Lastly, we drew our events at Social Media Week to a close with Innovate or Die, a practical guide on how to approach innovation. The session was kicked off by our very own Writer, Charlotte Miller, who took us through examples of innovative social thinking from our latest edition of The Curiosity Stop.

Charlotte showed us how using emojis to express your road rage can bring something new to your audience, and what an ear embedded in an arm can teach us about engaging with industry extremes.

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The next chapter in our innovation session was looking at how to hack social with our Marketing and Innovation Director, Tom Ollerton. Tom gave insight into how We Are Social approaches innovation and revealed the secrets behind our most successful hack days. Tom finished the hack insight by showcasing our newest hack, built in a day for one day only, Humper. Real Time Communication allows people to play a SIMMs type game, involving randy rabbits, online in real time, through a browser – without downloading anything. This is a contemporary technology that hasn’t been used by many marketers.

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Saving the big guns until last, we had Jeremy Basset from Unilever Foundry, and Mark Adams from Vice, talking about how innovation can make an impact in their businesses. Jeremy showed us behind the scenes at how Unilever partner with start ups to ensure that the 86 year old company stays at the forefront of disruptive thinking and technology. Mark gave a no holds barred presentation on some of the biggest social media myths, and how Vice innovate with content in previously busy sectors like women’s publishing. Mark described social paid content as zombie content that was never really alive, and how great social media should nourish a community not interrupt it.

We’ve had a blast at Social Media Week and can’t wait for this time next year. If you’re from a brand and are interested in attending any of our events, we host events every month so keep an eye on our blog for more details.