Econsultancy – the future of digital marketing

Don’t get lost in technology –

How do we measure the byproducts we’re creating
Complex problem solving
Critical thinking
Creativity
People management
Thought leadership
Humanity
Innovation
Negotiation
“Efficiency isn’t the purpose of life, it’s the purpose of machines – be human”
Quite similar to Dan Pollatta’s talk on the ‘dream we haven’t dared to dream’
His biggest fear is AI’s ability to simulate reality, that we’ll decide simulated humanity is good enough and trust something that has no awareness of trust

He predicts we’ll refer people to our bots, and our bots to each other, when sorting out meetings etc

“The future is all around us, it’s just not evenly distributed” (William Gibson)
MIT used social listening to look for censorship patterns and identify what the Chinese government were most worried about
Solve a problem for an existing customer base, e.g. PayPal for eBay, Instagram for Facebook
Growth hacking is a mindset and a process
Don’t work on more than 5 things at any one time, you won’t be doing them well
Be honest when you’re wrong, learn from it and create a space for others to be wrong too
Design experiments that help you answer the questions you need answers to
Good growth hackers are:
Humble
Tenacious
Scientific / systematic
It’s an art
Diverse
Relationship builders
Rapid testing and iteration
Agility
Customer focused
Measure everything

BBC and Buzzed get people to WhatsApp stories
Scientifically, people react to emojis in the same way they do visible human expression
More photos taken in two minutes today than in the whole of the nineteenth century
WWF #lastselfie use of Snapchat
Snapchat understands the relationship between the personal and the brand – we can pull in what we want, much more personal and permission based

Atom Bank
Mobile only
Want to make people feel good when they do their banking
“Every time you interact with Atom, we want to make you smile”
Voice and facial recognition to avoid multi step verification codes
Makes predictions about your spending and offers advice
“When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotion”
They have 56 colours in their brand palette
They give reach customer a unique logo colour-way
Interestingly, reviews are mixed

The better we are, the better were expected to be
It now takes one bad email to cue an unsubscribe
He says “Some of us should really stop email marketing altogether – we do it so badly, all we’re doing is eroding our supporter base”
Be data driven
Ran ultra personal campaigns, e.g. get your partner to buy you a car, then tracked and emailed people’s partners

70% of the BBC’s traffic comes from mobile
Max 1 minute videos
80% don’t watch with sound
Use Instagram, tell a story in 15 seconds
Authenticity
Immediacy
Disruptive
Timely
Augmented reality to exentuate what’s happening in screen
Also longform opportunities as a gift to the super engaged
Guardian great VR example, showing people what it’s like to be in solitary confinement
FB counts a view at 3 seconds

Takeaway a £5bn industry in the UK
Average household spend £6.50 per week
70% of orders take place on mobile
Used disruptive marketing to initially cut through
Have a continuous journey funnel to keep people coming back
Heavy use of paid social
Lots of experimentation
Strategy = objective, channel, messaging, tone, format, distribution, testing, measurement, resource
Tie content creation with main events, calander hooks etc
Realised a lot of their audience were men who liked music, they created a man band parody mimicking the rise and fall of bands
Ran a ugc competition to name the band
Then adapted well known-album covers with the parody band they created
PR and experiential marketing opportunities all the way along, tied to the campaign and linked to big events like Euro 2016
Hyperlocal opportunities e.g. London food festival
More people use Facebook messenger than Facebook itself

Mobile search outranks desktop
Personal assistants can be anticipatory
They know who you are, who you like, what you’re doing
Can interrupt you with notifications, whatever you’re doing that day
E.g. Google Now
Google track and aggregate context, e.g. whether you’re planning a holiday or a wedding, how long you’re likely to be doing that, what you’re likely to be looking for and in what order
Natural language search native for <10s
Needs to be answered right there, no linking to sites
E.g. buying a cinema ticket or e-book without going to alternative apps or sites