Four weeks ago, I moved to London to join We Are Social’s grad scheme. This was very exciting for several reasons. Apart from the obvious benefit of working in a city where a pint at lunch is almost obligatory, I’m crazy about the fact that there are so many talks, seminars and events about social media and advertising around town every single week. There is, however, always one event that dominates my calendar: Social Media Week.
Having used my Scandinavian wits and charm to sweet-talk my way to a pass for the main stage, I hopscotched back and forth between the office and the SMW London HQ all week. Here are three main themes I took away from the events.
Creativity Social media, campaigns, storytelling or any other element of the marketing mix means nothing without one thing: creativity. Fortunately, one event at SMW addressed just that. In fact, it addressed the stuff that could be inhibiting the flow of your creative juices.
According to BBH, there are three major factors that could be limiting your creative potential:
Context: If our context is always the same, we cannot avoid following the same processes every time. If we follow the same accounts on social media, work with the same team or seek inspiration from the same places, our solutions will remain the same and we won’t peak creatively.
Recommendation: Seek inspiration from the world outside your own. Hire new or unusual team members and expand the context of brainstorms.
Bias: We often fail to consider the bias of another party before beginning a process. If we do not understand a client’s discomfort with an idea, for example, we can’t make the case for our creative solution. We can never fully challenge preconceptions if we do not understand the client’s perspective.
Recommendation: Make sure you understand the bias that a client is bringing to the table. Don’t just anticipate their discomfort with the idea, but understand why they have that discomfort before preparing to fight for your idea.
Data: We always look at clusters of trends to identify insights and seek creative input, but insight with the greatest impact might not be immediately obvious. It could be in the outliers of the obvious trends. Recommendation: Look at the things everyone else is ignoring. Gather insights from these outliers and apply these in combination with the clusters of trends.
Snapchat Snapchat was the talk of the town at this year’s SMW. Whether it was to cement the platform’s world-domination or address Instagram stories, many talks put Snapchat in pole position of the current social media race.
In 2021, Snapchat active use in the UK will outweigh that of Facebook. In other words, figure out how to incorporate this platform in your strategy. Now.
There was, however, a general consensus that Instagram Stories could threaten some user segments of Snapchat, primarily those outside the millennial segment. So it’s still a matter of considering which platform caters to your target audience. The future of social No SMW would be complete without discussing the future of social media. The panel at the Social in 2020 session discussed where they saw social media heading in the next four years. One of their main points was that the role of social will continue to grow exponentially. However, social media will also morph more into becoming a part of everyone’s job.
When asked which platform the speakers would want a 10% share in, Snapchat and WhatsApp were big contenders. This, to me, makes perfect sense, primarily because of the consumer shift towards private digital spaces. According to Fortune, Facebook is experiencing a serious decline in the amount of personal updates on the platform and 70% of Snapchat users use the platform primarily for sending messages.
To finish where we began: think of how Snapchat (and other messaging apps) can be incorporated in your strategy. Now that Facebook will also begin monetising and allowing sponsored ads on Messenger, consider how you can create campaigns, strategies and content without being perceived as a blatantly obvious advertisement.
That’s all from me! See you at next year’s Social Media Week London!
