AdWeek Europe 2016: CMO.com Team Coverage
CMO.com was in London for Advertising Week Europe 2016, the fourth annual advertising conference. The topics of discussion ranged from 100% programmatic and ad blocking to diversity, risk taking, and what the future holds for the industry.
Read on for our live coverage …
AdWeek Europe: The Digital Economy Demands Hunger And Optimism From Brands
Brands need to be hungry and optimistic to take advantage of technological change. That was the advice from Nicola Mendelsohn, VP EMEA, Facebook; Matt Brittin, president of EMEA business & operations for Google; and Nigel Morris, CEO Americas & EMEA, Dentsu Aegis Network, in a session on “Transforming Brands in the Digital Economy.”
AdWeek Europe: Quality Content Vital On Mobile
Marketers looking to get the best out of mobile should be concentrating on quality content, and on integrating with other platforms, but they should also be aware of the next wave of disruption that will build on the mobile revolution. So said the panellists taking part in the “Mobile Innovation: Do or Die.”
AdWeek Europe: Native And Social Media Advertising Is The Future Of Mobile
Tejal Patel, director of digital marketing and consumer engagement at Microsoft, spoke alongside Ben Phillips, global head of mobile at MediaCom, and moderator Graham Moysey, head of international at AOL, at “Mobilising the Future” session. He said the future of mobile advertising isn’t banner advertising but contextually relevant native and social media advertising.
AdWeek Europe: Transport For London Looks For Next Stage Of Open Data
TfL marketing director Chris Macleod and Stuart Bowden, chief strategy officer of media agency MEC, talked about how the organisation’s decision to make its operations data available to app developers has already generated between £50 million and £60 million of value.
AdWeek Europe: Which Emerging Trends Should You Persuade Your Board To Worry About?
Conversational commerce, the future of value, and pressured lives are three of the key trends for business identified recently by the Future Foundation. But how do you get their importance across to your board? Future Foundation MD Meabh Quorin posed this question in the Advertising Week Europe session “Boots + Barclays: Predictions for the Boardroom.”
AdWeek Europe: Sponsored Content Needs To Understand Media Formats As Well As Audience Behaviour
At the session “The Key To Achieving Sponsored—Yet Entertaining—Content,” moderator Jim Cooper, editorial director of Adweek, began by asking panellist Ella Goldner, strategy director at IPG Mediabrands, how to start thinking about branded content. “The first thing is what’s the objective,” Goldner said.
AdWeek Europe: Five Guidelines To Create Great Customer Experiences By Using Design
David Burnand, head of marketing for Northern Europe, Adobe Marketing Cloud, set the scene at an Advertising Week Europe session on design-led business by citing Adobe’s Digital Trends research showing the top priority for marketers in 2016 is optimising the customer. And the three key areas around improving the customer experience are strategy, culture, and design.
AdWeek Europe: When Will The Future Be All-Programmatic?
In the future, all advertising that can be traded programmatically, will be. That was the message from Oli Whitten, SVP of Europe and interim head of international at online ad technology company Rubicon Project, who was moderating a session on “The Future of Automation.”
AdWeek Europe: Experiential Marketing Creates New Brand Marketing Values
At the session “Time Well Spent: Understanding Why Consumers are Seeking Experiences, Not Things,” Jenna Pelkey, director of global media & marketing strategy at GE, was asked what consumers value from experience, and why they are engaging with it more than with things that are tangible. She said: “’Having’ no longer means something physical and tangible in your hands. People now accept the transaction of living in other people’s moments, and there’s something there that is really valuable for a brand.”
AdWeek Europe: Smart Use Of Data Means Creatives Can Take More Risks
Data and creativity are not in opposition. In fact, data is liberating creatives to take more risks. And thinking about data versus creative is an outdated and potentially risky approach. These were some of the key ideas to emerge from the session “Data & Creativity: Who Holds The Power.”
AdWeek Europe: The Importance Of The ‘So What?’ Question
The session “The New Data Magicians” highlighted that the most important question to ask when using data for marketing is “so what?” Panellist Nicole Goodwin, marketing director for drinks brand Jägermeister, explained: “The key for us is not big data, but actionable data. When we’re collecting or buying data, I always ask ‘so what?’”
AdWeek Europe: When Creative, Media, And Technology Come Together
In his Advertising Week Europe session “Creativity Meets Technology,” Matthew Dearden, president of out-of-home media owner Clear Channel, explored whether the rise of ad blocking obliterated the need for creativity in online advertising, making it a technological battle instead.
AdWeek Europe: Data And Human Emotions Together Make A Better Team In Sport
Data shouldn’t take away from your ability to make decisions in the moment, but it should give you confidence in yourself and your plan. This is not the view of a marketer or an agency, but of triple Tour De France-winning Team Sky. Hussein Fahmy, head of legal and commercial affairs for Team Sky, was talking at the RadiumOne Leadership Breakfast on “The Olympics & Data: Running Rings around the Competition.”
AdWeek Europe: Five Tips From An FMCG Marketer Turned Retailer
Move fast, fail fast, live the brand, connect with customers, and make time to think. Nathan Ansell, global director—loyalty, customer insights & analytics at M&S, shared the five lessons in his Advertising Week Europe session “Poacher Turned Gamekeeper.” The session title, Ansell explained, came from his move into retail following a career at FMCG brands including Heinz, Bird’s Eye, and Red Bull.
AdWeek Europe: How Not To Do Marketing
In the session “The Uncomfortable Truth about Marketing,” led by Mark Earls of Herd Consultancy, four senior marketers discussed the issues that no one talks about: how marketers rely too much on data, produce content that nobody watches, have to work with agencies that can’t work with each other, and can’t recruit the young people the industry is going to need in the future.
AdWeek Europe: Moving From A Customer-Centric Culture To A People-Centric One
People don’t care about brands anymore, so in order to engage with consumers, brands need to champion things people care about. That was the idea at the heart of the Advertising Week Europe session “How Culturally Connected Brands Engage Customers.”
AdWeek Europe: Native Advertising Has To Be ‘Less About Advertising’
The session “The Value of Trust” on the final day of Advertising Week Europe delivered a clear message—the rise in native advertising places an even greater emphasis on the trust not only between media owners and brands, but also between both of them and consumers. Ian Wright, joint managing director from Tapestry Research, was adamant that for native advertising to be effective, it has to be as “native as possible and less about advertising.”
The Post Office is a British institution. It’s the U.K.’s second most trusted brand, serving 18 million customers a week. It’s also 370 years old, and with that comes a lot of challenges. That was the starting point for Post Office CMO Pete Markey’s session on “Putting the Customer Experience Centre Stage.”
AdWeek Europe: Declining Trust In Advertising Creates Opportunities For Brands To Be Authentic
Richard Eyre, chairman of the IAB UK, said “being trusted is the most important thing for any brand.” But panellists at the session “Trust: Digital’s New Currency” emphasised that trust is in decline—trust in institutions, trust in advertising. While this is causing problems for some companies and industries, it’s an opportunity for those brands that are authentic and stand for something in consumers’ eyes.
AdWeek Europe: Four Guidelines For Brands Interested In Experimenting With The Internet Of Things
Marketers shouldn’t see the Internet of Things as a sales driver, but as a way for their brands to behave better and more intelligently towards consumers. Cameron Worth, founder of specialist IoT agency SharpEnd, delivered this message in a session about “The Role of Brands in a Connected World.”
AdWeek Europe: Max Factor Aims To Offer Customers A Seamless Online And Offline Experience
Cosmetics giant Max Factor has teamed up with visual discovery app Blippar to make all its products and content searchable through the Blippar app. Announcing the partnership at Advertising Week Europe, Laure Murciano, global marketing, Max Factor, said the brand was aiming to offer a seamless online and offline experience for shoppers.
AdWeek Europe: The Year Of VR (From A Technology Perspective)
This is the year VR technology becomes good enough to start meeting marketing and business challenges, even if mass consumer uptake is some way off. Natalie Bell, MD of media agency Manning Gottlieb OMD, expressed this view in a session at Advertising Week Europe entitled “New Realities for Marketing.”
AdWeek Europe: Last Mile Touch Points Offer Disruptive Opportunities
Panellists at an Advertising Week session called “The Last Mile Reimagined” stressed the pressing need for companies to transform and break free of their legacy structures. Businesses need to shift their mindset, disrupt their legacy industry structures, and create brand experiences around the last mile if they want to remain relevant in today’s fast-changing world.