Recap: Our learnings and insights from Festival of Marketing 2017
Recently, we had the chance to attend the Festival of Marketing 2017 (#FoM17) in London, the largest global event dedicated to brand marketers. We were thrilled to work and help with the interaction at this trailblazing event for the third time running.
The festival brought together an eclectic mix of over 4,000 key people and leading brands in the marketing, digital, tech and business industries. The vast array of content offered the attendees an opportunity to learn something new, whether they were brand marketers, digital evangelists or data experts.
Here are a few highlights.
Content and key themes
The festival sessions were designed around twelve main content streams.
We identified three overarching themes that echoed in some form across all the sessions throughout the festival:
· The power of influencers
· AI revolution
· Personalization through data
For more insights and quotes, follow @FestofMarketing
We have already written about the final headline session, an expert debate as an effective alternative to a traditional keynote session, in another blog.
Interactive session idea that caught our eye
Out of nearly 150 inspiring sessions to choose from, we had the opportunity to attend some truly engaging discussions.
The session titled “We know you’re pregnant before you do: Personalized programmatic” particularly stood out for us due to its interactive, conversational format. The speaker delivered his key messages in a very original way, actively involving the audience through an activity and a number of interaction points.
Here is a step-by-step summary of the session to give you some inspiration for your next presentation.
“We know you’re pregnant before you do”
As the title suggests, this session led by Dan Gilbert from Brainlabs focused on the increasing use of sophisticated personalized ads in marketing strategies, and how to get them right.
Dan started the session with an intersecting story, which gave it an overarching structure. It was the story of Target, the general merchandise stores operator. He used it to set the scene and make the point that marketers need to get the personalization right to avoid their ads being perceived as intrusive and creepy.
Note: The Target story goes that by gathering data from customers and analyzing their purchase patterns, Target was able to tell a customer’s high-school-aged daughter was pregnant before the father knew. The truth came to light when the customer received personalized coupons for pregnant women addressed to his daughter.
“The Creepometer”
After setting out the topic, Dan appointed a volunteer from the audience to assist him with his “Creepometer”. It was a physical whiteboard placed on the stage, covered with a blanket at the start. When Dan revealed it, he explained the board was designed to measure the creepiness level of the ads that were to be presented.
The “creepiness scale” was inspired by the characters from The Simpsons, with little Maggie Simpson as the least creepy on one end and Mr. Burns as the creepiest on the other. Lisa Simpson, Ned Flanders and Krusty the Clown were somewhere in the middle.
Dan showed the audience 10–12 images of personalized ads that targeted people based on previously captured data. After seeing each ad, the participants were asked to shout either positive “wheeey” or terrified “aaargh” to place it on the Creepometer scale, depending on how intrusive and privacy-invading they found it. The volunteer noted down the general feeling in the room on the Creepometer board.
Dan did a great job of linking this interactive activity with his dos and don’ts in personalized advertising and sharing it with the audience. At the end, he came back to Target’s story and closed the session with the possible learnings the company might have taken from this experience.
The audience was actively engaged throughout the session until the very end. And it was fun!
You can read more about the session in Dan’s blog.
Slido team at #FoM17
With nearly 2,000 questions fielded during the two days, this year’s Festival of Marketing was one of the most interactive Slido events in the UK.
A big part of the event’s success was the fantastic teamwork that we saw behind the scenes. We were honored to work with a group of such distinguished event professionals! Everyone did their best to make the event a success.
- The organizers did an excellent job of planning the event and finding inspiring expert speakers to deliver timely and relevant content.
- The room managers who were in charge of operating Slido efficiently moderated live audience questions and activated feedback polls after each session.
- The Slido team was onsite during the whole festival to provide support to the FOM team, making sure that Slido was running smoothly during all the sessions.
Everything fell into place and the outcome was a fascinating two-day event that we were proud and grateful to be a part of.
Below are a few snaps from behind the scenes:
Great ride, Festival of Marketing! We can’t wait to see what you’re already working on for next year. It’s sure to be exciting!
