12 things I learned at Social Media Week

Week-long industry events are like Marmite — you either love ’em or hate ’em. Me? I fall into the love camp. I get excited by who I might meet, what I might learn, what inspiration I might take into my ‘real life’.

Last week, I was fortunate enough to attend Social Media Week at the BFI Southbank.

Here are 12 things I learned …

1. The first ever selfie was taken 37000 bc at the El Castillo Cave in Spain. They were hand stencils and are the oldest cave paintings in Europe. The desire to leave a record of ourselves is innately human and not new. It’s a basic human impulse to say, ‘this is me, I’m here, this is what I did.’ https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/20336635787907781/?lp=true
2. Ladbible is forming its own country to tackle the environmental epidemic called Trash Isle, which means they’ll get a seat at the UN — Al Gore was the first citizen, Judy Dench wants to be the Queen, Mo Farah wants to be the Minister of Sport. http://www.ladbiblegroup.com/Press/trash-isles/
3. Influencer chatbots are a thing. Think you’re tweeting your favorite celebrity? Think again. More and more brands are building the digital derivatives of people you love so ‘they’ can speak back to their 3.5m followers on a one-to-one basis.
4. Audio controlled devices give brands a chance to talk back for the first time. Johnnie Walker did this well creating a new business model which took whisky tasting to scale through Alexa. https://youtu.be/IxVoAE3vRSc
5. National Geographic photographer, Stephen Alvarez, shot all seven Natural Wonders of the world using only a smartphone. Even the Great Barrier Reef. https://blogs.windows.com/devices/2016/03/02/microsoft-x-nat-geo-shooting-the-aurora-with-lumia-950/
6. Virtual reality headset shipments are in triple digit growth in 2017, up 70% from last year. Oculus Rift can be purchased for half the cost of the new iPhone. This is not the future. This is now.
7. 94% of smartphone hits are in a vertical orientation. 70% of people won’t turn their phone to view a horizontal video. Particularly when it comes to ads. Make your videos vertical friendly.
8. Content still reigns — Apple is said to be spending $1bn on original content in 2018 http://www.investors.com/news/technology/cash-rich-apple-ramps-up-original-content-spend-vs-netflix-amazon/
9. Two seconds is a long time in social media. 38% of brand recall, 25% of purchase intent, 23% of brand awareness is driven by video impressions shorter than 2 seconds.
10. Advertising is the biggest revolt in human history with 8bn people blocking ads (60% on mobile devices) and an estimated cost to global publishers of over $27bn by 2020 through lost revenues. Let’s make branded content people want.
11. 43% of Britons feel their privacy is at risk because of automation and AI.
12. Britons feel that humans, not robots, should make decisions about: health (79%), finances (60%), food (56%) and music (53%). But within the next 10 years they feel robots should be trusted to aid with: driving and delivery (80%), grocery shopping (72%), teaching kids in class (69%), diagnosing disease (64%) and surgery (54%).

For more articles like this, follow Fluxx on Medium. And if you’d like to share your thoughts on how algorithms are shaping human communication, email me: jenn.torry@fluxx.uk.com