Social Media Week, New York City, February 22-26, is a globe-trotting conference that curates the best ideas, innovations, and insights into how social media and technology are changing business, society, and culture. With about a dozen presentations daily in two mid-town locations, it’s impossible to cover the SMW waterfront; the following gleanings were drawn from sessions, which struck me as offering promising insights.
Leveraging Creativity, Technology, Culture: Reality Through VR-Tinted Goggles
“Cardboard” is popping up all over the brand space, from The New York Times, which is using VR films to enhance it’s global reporting, to international conglomerates like GE and Google, which are using VR to redefine the brand experience.
If you want to grasp the importance of virtual reality production, read theses sci-fi novels – Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crush, and Ernest Cline’s Ready, Player One,” advised Katrina Craigwell, Director of Global Content & Programming, General Electric. “It isn’t just about telling a brand story or solving a business problem,” said Meredith Kopit Levien, Chief Revenue Officer, The New York Times, “It’s about creating a whole new world.”
VR promises to take us well beyond social sharing and the individual headset to a space where people will have control over their virtual environments. GE for one is beginning to produce environments, complete worlds that sell their culture.
Why Content Is Your Brand’s Most Essential Resource
Content is rapidly emerging as the primary differentiator among brands, which are beginning to understand the power of content marketing to connect with consumers and form authentic relationships. Brands including The Atlantic, The New York Times, Netflix, IBM, Intel, and GE are forging new paths in content production and distribution.
Digital content is just as important to a company’s brand today as is water to sustaining human life, according to a newly released global survey by Accenture entitled, “Content: the H2O of Marketing.” But serious challenges lie ahead, from issues of attribution and transparency of ‘branded’ content to the ever-accelerating disruptive media environment, where today’s Snapchat may become yesterday’s MySpace almost overnight.
RELATED: How B2B CMOs Can Overcome the Content Challenge
How should brands navigate these turbulent waters? Key advice includes: embed the brand into the content strategy upfront, integrate the voice of the consumer into the creative process, foster brand / publisher partnerships to produce authentic journalism, and build separate creative teams to manage key distribution channels, i.e. Pinterest, Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.
For Brands Creating Engaging Content, The Stakes Have Never Been Higher
For brands, agencies, and publishers, the shifting content marketing environment has seen a significant blending of roles between the three parties. While leading brands are building deeper in-house teams, the role of agencies becomes increasingly nebulous as content creation becomes democratized across the industry.
“Content marketing can take numerous forms. Video in particular has gained significant traction recently, but in the world of content marketing it seems the full story is more important than any one part and ‘shares’ matter more than quality,” Marcus Collins, SVP of Social Engagement, Doner Advertising.
Measurement of the impact of digital channels is a growing challenge. Consumers can access more information on a given product from multiple channels, hopping around, leaving, coming back, and eventually, perhaps, making a purchase, attribution to sales and loyalty of each channel becomes increasingly difficult.
The New Generation Of Social Influencers Are Engaging Audiences In Meaningful Ways
The strategies of how a brand or company reaches an audience have fundamentally changed. “Increasingly audiences online are looking to people they trust,” states Rahul Chopra, CEO, Storyful, making the key to reaching and retaining audiences authenticity.”
Product reviews are becoming increasingly important to the point that if a product gets below four stars, it won’t sell. In a time where marketing can be out of a brand’s control, making sure that brands publish authentic, relevant content is the best way to influence this digital audience,” Lucie Greene, Worldwide Director of Innovation, J, Walter Thompson,
When creating content, context should be on the forefront. This means “the art meeting the science.” Is this the right time and place? What do the data trends say for this time and medium? Does every piece of the campaign feel right? Does it all feel authentic? If not, there’s trouble ahead.
SEE ALSO: How to Create a Content Brand: Branding Roundtable #10
The Power Of Storytelling In A Fragmented Media Environment – How National Geographic’s 128 Year-Old History Helped Pioneer The Media Landscape
National Geographic is a global leader in visual-factual storytelling, reaching 730mm people monthly across all platforms, posting especially strong Instagram numbers, and always focusing on how to captivate, elevate, and educate the world by exploiting emerging channels like Snapchat.
“National Geographic is a true Millennial Brand, that provides relevant, relatable, and timely content,” said Claudia Malley, Chief Marketing Brand Officer, who then offered five keys to successful storytelling:
- Visual First: National Geographic enables its’ leading photographers to post directly to its social platforms, including Instagram, where it is the highest ranking non-celebrity property.
- Invest in Storytelling: Nat Geo is involved is some 350 scientific expeditions, all of which are covered by the world’s best visual storytellers.
- Be there for Consumers: When, Wherem and How they want Content — there is no set distribution formula; one must constantly experiment with social distribution channels to meet consumers’ needs.
- Be Flexible, Always Adaptable: This ranges form story formatting to the use of new technology to capture never before seen stories.
- Lean In: Have a purpose and pursue meaningful goals. Nat’l Geographic’s recent Big Cats initiative (#5forBigCats) created a worldwide virtual high-five chain in support of World Lion Day. And, stay tuned for Photo Ark, a project to photograph the world’s animals to help stop the extinction crisis, coming in March.
Social Media Week presents an overwhelming selection of top-tier programming. One must carefully edit which panels to attend, however many worthwhile offerings were missed. But, happily, the management posts snapshot summaries of every session. Access them at Social Media Week News.
Image via Flickr