Now in its second year in Scotland, the Marketing Society Changemakers Conference is fast becoming the hottest ticket in town, a chance to bring together brilliant minds from different industries to share best practice, insightful thinking and inspiration all under one umbrella theme.
This year, that theme was ‘challenge’. And the agenda was certainly there to challenge those in the audience. Among them was Smarts Scotland’s General Manager, Emma Falvey. Here, Emma picks out 10 provocations she particularly loved…
1. Challenges in Conversation
David Kean from Catalyst opened the day with great advice on how to manage the body’s temptation to go into fight or flight mode in high-stakes conversations, describing the secret of negotiation being an outcome where everyone wins. He reminded us all to be curious, to be childlike, and ask the perpetual ‘but whyyyyyyy?’ to interrogate what people actually mean. To do this authentically, he encouraged us all to find out what ‘colour’ we are – if you haven’t already read Thomas Erikson’s book and explored your personality trait, do this immediately (spoken like a true ‘red!’)
2. Challenges in Representation
We heard from filmmaker Ella Greenwood about Broken Flames Productions on the importance of positively portraying mental health narratives in film, and more broadly in our storytelling. Whether through nuanced language or better representation, her session was there to give marketers a wake-up call: that we need to be more considered in our storytelling, putting more precedence on authenticity to improve our credibility.
3. Challenges in PR
In my favourite session – and session title (launching an airline on a wing and a prayer!) – of the day. Tony Anderson, the first ever Marketing Director of easyJet, recalled some of the brand’s epic PR stunts from the late 90s and really reminded me why I got into this industry. From red white & blue branding at Aberdeen Airport (next to BA’s baggage drop) to x10 orange boiler suited easyJet staff taking 10 seats on a BA flight with the police being called to remove them – this is the kinda stuff that gets folk talking.
On a serious note, Tony also talked about easyJet’s role as the first airline selling direct to consumer – pre-internet, the customer booking phone number was on the side of their aircrafts! They hit off stiff competition by showing how price came first – HQ’ing their flights in Luton, removing in-flight meals in favour of menus and cutting out the travel agent. It’s why they made a success of regional routes, most favourably – London to Scotland for £29 – a deal I’ve taken advantage of many a time! Most notably, Tony told us that timing was imperative for easyJet – he was brutally honest in saying that some of their activity may have not been nearly as successful as it was if it was run either side of when it did. Timing is everything.
4. Challenges in Building your Personal Brand
Alicia Teltz left LinkedIn earlier this year to forge a career in how to use LinkedIn better – a smart move and a smart gal. She shamed a room full of marketers by telling us that only 1% of LinkedIn users are posting more than once a week – which felt at odds with what we encourage our clients to do to build their personal brands. Alicia has created a fascinating tool that reviews and scores your LinkedIn profile, and shared a brilliant funnel strategy to drive better engagement:
- 70% – Top of funnel: industry news, broad topics, inspiration
- 25% – Middle of funnel: case studies and niche client related content
- 5% – Bottom of funnel: call to action, personal updates (because no one cares if you ran that marathon for charity)
She told us to all get over ourselves and tackle ‘cringe mountain’ – just post. It reminded me of the wonderfully wise words from our Smarts Growth Director, Katie Bannon, when she’s encouraged us to boost our LinkedIn engagement – ‘Just f***ing do it’. A motto I can get on board with!
5. Challenges in Personalisation
BUPA is a fascinating business, and I loved its Proposition and Product Director Dan Sullivan’s discussion on the launch of their latest campaign, rooted in the insight that when businesses invest in the health of their teams, they drive growth.
Dan was honest in saying that it would have been easy just to put a broad campaign lens on top of their product – which is something that so many brands are guilty of. Instead, BUPA tailor the insights they get from customers to create work for the specific services they offer – from cancer diagnosis to anxiety and depression in children. This empowers consumers to be more in control of their health, and shows that personalisation goes far beyond product.
6. Challenges in AI (part one)
We couldn’t get too far into the day without a session on AI, and here we had Barry Fearn and Ian Duncan from the Lane hosting Kathryn Strachan for a live podcast recording. It was really reassuring to know that as marketers we collectively feel that there’s an expectation that we all know how to use and train AI (!)… and it was emphasised that as leaders we must put guidelines in place to ensure we can govern AI as much as we can whilst everyone keeps learning – in a place that currently feels a little bit like the Wild West.
The panel discussed how AI has flaws – as do humans (some more than others!) – so it’s essential that we strike the balance between human and AI because we shouldn’t be 100% of either of these anymore.
We should be curious, we should share our learnings and we should be open. Safe in the knowledge that AI isn’t always the right solution for everything and that human critical human thinking still plays a key role. Which led us into the nice lunchtime slot all feeling a bit more assured that our jobs are safe – for the time being!
7. Challenges in Humour
We’ve all seen when humour is applied to marketing campaigns, sometimes, it just doesn’t work. Enter: Beth Sherman, comedy genius.
In amongst a number of celeb stories and Oscar speech writing accolades (which she was quick to add she was asked to share!), Beth taught us the BETH process, in only a way Beth could…
Brevity – set up & punchline: anything more affects the purpose of the story. ‘Less words better’.
Elephant – address the elephant in the room and you’ll instantly get the audience on side.
Truth – be self aware and honest.
Humanity – humour is a love language, be sure to stir human emotion.
8. Challenges in Partnerships
Petra Cameron from NatWest took to the stage with Olympic BMX Racer Beth Shriever from Team GB to have a conversation about the importance of aligning values in winning partnerships.
It was great to hear from Beth particularly around about the importance that a brand plays in an athlete’s career – opening doors to public speaking opportunities (like this event!), creating compelling content and driving storytelling at the heart of each part of the collaboration.
For me, this was a masterclass in brand collaboration. Through NatWest, Beth has been reassured that it’s not about the winning or the points in your sport, it’s about the personality and authenticity and how athletes resonate with their target audiences.
9. Challenges in Brand Endurance
It’s easy for a brand to brief you to be ‘part of a cultural moment’. I’m sure we all know the brands that came to us and asked how they could play in BRAT Summer! But as marketers, our job is to educate brands on long-term and short-term goals and have clarity on the form of content that will help deliver those.
That was the theme of a wonderful debate where Jennie Elmslie from Sunshine hosted content creator Yvette Webster and Shaka Social’s Al Olivier to talk short form vs long form content.
We need to remember that brands aren’t invited to participate in cultural moments, so to play uninvited you need to have the authenticity to back it up. This session particularly resonated – at Smarts that’s something that we call cultural endurance, finding the red thread, building our narratives and finding the right cultural springboards to jump off – and doing this consistently over time.
10. Challenges in AI (part two)
Well it is the hot topic of the moment, so we couldn’t just do one point on it. Closing the day, author and activist Laura Bates talked about AI in a completely different light, highlighting the dangers and the risks that AI can poise on today’s society and ultimately, the audiences that we are trying to reach .
Unfortunately the data that is being fed into AI tools is systemic and biased, Laura pointed out, so the algorithm shows results that are often discriminatory against women and marginalised groups.
Consent is actually redundant in AI. We need clean data sets to avoid bias and companies need to be responsible for the use of AI labelling and acknowledging what and how it is being used.
The role of human intelligence and empathy is more prevalent in this space, now more than ever, forcing us to make decisions about what is appropriate in our use of it.
I’m sure like many did, I left the conference with a feeling of responsibility that, together, we need to shape what the future of AI looks like and its responsible usage in marketing.
Indeed, that sense of unity and responsibility was an overriding theme of the whole day. There must be a sense of immediacy to take action, and a need to work together to drive our industry forward (in Scotland and beyond). Take learnings from other markets, from other organisations, from other agencies and most importantly from culture, to rise to the challenges posed now and whatever comes next.