Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
In two days more than 1,200 visitors from the entire Adriatic region will gather at the jubilee conference SEMPL, organised by Media Pool, listening to more than 20 speakers from all over the world and attending 14 workshops and seminars. They got to know the current trends in the media and marketing world, which are increasingly intertwined with advanced technological tools.
What will the media look like in 2030?
The SEMPL conference, hosted by English actor and producer Julian Rhind-Tutt, was opened by Dean Donaldson, Co-Founder and Director of Kaleidoko, UK, who talked about the media opportunities in 2030 when the world may be explosively different. But there are already fissures revealing how AI, blockchain and genetics are about to radically transform everything over the next 10 years. Luckily, humanity will be deeply rooted at the core, but a radical rethinking in contextually relevant creativity will be required.
Emma Winchurch-Beale, International Sales Director at The Washington Post and President of World Media Group (WMG), which unites the world’s largest media outlets, presented the results of a survey of their readers. WMG readers are early adopters who are the first to have technologically innovative products, are more likely to buy brands, which are advertised in international media and are always interested in new products. They are influencers in technology, finance/investment and fashion. Ads published in credible and quality media are therefore much more noticeable and effective, said Winchurch-Beale.
Dr. Andrea Malgara, Managing Partner of MediaPuls Group, Germany, focused on the effectiveness of video ads, pointing out that TV ads are still the most effective, followed by ads on YouTube, both on the desktop and on mobile platforms, and the least effective are video posts on Facebook.
The story of Robert Čoban, Owner and Director of Color Press Group, Serbia, is also inspiring. Based on his own experience, he talked about how the media industry in the region responded to the economic crisis and the arrival of iPhone – both of them came in 2007. In Serbia, for example, the circulation of daily newspaper has dropped dramatically in 2008-2018, from 910,000 to 310,000. Situation forced print media outlets to search for new sources of revenue, such as the organization of various conferences and festivals, book publishing, which is prospering in the Serbian market, special issues of print magazines, and tourism.
What’s killing your brand?
Brands should avoid clichés as they are their biggest enemy, according to David Brier, American design and branding expert. For him, branding is the art of differentiation that breathes life into the product and gives it meaning. “If you are just blending in with your competitors, and you are not being seen as distinct, you do not have a unique voice and your story is unclear, you will just be another product on the shelf,” he warned.
Dennis Yuscavitch, VP of Global Product Marketing at Outbrain, believes that only brands that will learn to communicate directly with consumers will survive. The “digital-first” brands are increasingly undermining the foundations of traditional industries. And what can traditional brands learn from them? “Digital-first brands are not afraid of failures, they often make mistakes and learn a lot from them. And above all, they are directly obsessed with consumers,” stressed Yuscavitch.
Devote 10% of your time thinking about the future
One of the most popular speakers at SEMPL, Peter Hinssen, Belgian serial entrepreneur, speaker at the largest international conferences and author of bestsellers, writes about the ‘Day after Tomorrow’ in his latest book. He introduces pioneering organisations with exceptional innovations that disrupted many industries. In Portorož, he also focused on this topic, highlighting the most important insights and advice to attendees: devote 10% of your time, budget and staff on radical experiments for the ‘Day after Tomorrow’, thinking not only what would happen in a year or two, but in the next 5 or 10 years.
Rustam Ziganshin, Reseller Partner CEE at Facebook, emphasized the importance of the “mobile-first” approach, as the use of mobile devices is increasing all over the world. The video has become an actual driver of discovery, consideration and purchase, which is not surprising as people are consuming video all throughout their day. This also requires a different thinking of brands, which should focus more on mobile platform strategies.
Wes Schaefer, American entrepreneur and sales trainer with a nickname The Sales Whisperer, pointed to a mutual relationship between sales and marketing. “Great marketing makes selling easy. But great selling makes great marketing possible,” claims Schaefer. He has a simple tip for all the sales people: “Seek ways to serve people. Be empathetic. And above all, be a good listener.”
The importance of co-operation in an omni-connected world
The SEMPL attendees could also visit many workshops and seminars today. First, the Slovenian fashion designer Nina Šušnjara presented her creative partnerships with renowned Slovenian and global brands, Andraž Zorko (Valicon), Roman Zatler (Delo) and Aleksander Bratina (Večer Group) presented the results of a new Slovenian research on reading and readers (RBB), Vera Lloyd-Thomas (Kreativa New Formula) has removed the veil from mysterious big data and provided some tips on how to manage them. Urban Cvek and Sebastjan Novinšek Jelovšek (Influee) focused on influencer marketing, Damjan Planinc (Get Interactive) talked about how artificial intelligence and interactivity enable more effective mobile advertising, Robert Petković (Bruketa & Žinić & Gray) presented how to use some metrics in your next marketing reports, and Anja Rus (Red Orbit) shed a light on how to build optimized post-click experiences when the marketer’s most valuable asset is a targeted landing page.
Great creative solutions still attract attention
The second day of the conference started with a presentation by David Bassett, Director of Analytics at Lumen Research, UK. In his words as much as 80 percent of ads are overlooked. “With the right mix of eye-catching and engaging creative and high attention media, advertisers can get their brands seen more and achieve strong ROIs. This involves turning much of digital advertising practice on its head, by investing more in creative development and putting a value back on context,” says Bassett.
The skills of the new marketer
Neuromarketing expert Dr. Nikolaos Dimitriadis believes that the time has come time for marketers to perform the company-wide role they deserve: the role of the Transformational Leader. The new or “transformational marketer” has to adopt four essential skills: neuroscience, predictive analytics, innovation, and decision-making. “A new marketer must have predictive skills and has to be very proficient with the data. He has to have great creative problem-solving and decision-making skills,” he says.
American innovator and inventor Lon Safko also talked about a newway of doing marketing and introduced the Fusion Marketing. “Fusion Marketing is much more than integration; it’s such a totally new concept of “Interconnecting” all of your traditional and digital tools, which allows you to look at everything you do in marketing in a completely different way,” told Safko and added: “You are already using all the media – traditional, digital and social – for marketing. But the problem is that you look at them as separate tools that are never connected.” It is their connecting that is the key to marketing success.
Digital bonding in the era of flux
How important it is to listen to customers, the attendees could also hear from Ahti Laväaho, Chief Marketing Director at Smartcart, Finland, who took attendees to an in-depth journey of changes in consumer behaviour in a digitalised shop environment. In the retail grocery, up to 75% of the final purchasing decisions are made during the shopping run. “If you go to a supermarket, you pay attention to approximately 0.3% of all the products. Although you actively interact with them, only 25% of these products you pay attention to will be going into you shopping cart. The challenge for brands is how to increase probability of being visible and how to communicate with the customer when he or she notices only a quarter of the products,” says Leväaho. Smartcart offers an answer to this challenge as it develops smart shopping carts that make purchasing a lot easier.
Atanas Raykov, Director Business Development CIS & CEE at Viber, talked about the importance of communities, which this mobile app for calls and short messages inspires. “Messaging is no longer only about exchanging text messages with friends and family, but having more immediate, secure and personal communication with larger groups formed by common interest, belief or need,” he stated. And this is definitely something that brings new opportunities and challenges for advertisers as well.
Some tips for start-up
Daniela Bervar Kotolenko and Matej Golob, partners at CorpoHub, Slovenia, talked about how to “nail it” and addreesed the following questions: how to team up and deliver the right swing for your customer, how to function in times of rapid change, how to minimise creative flops by putting together the right process/idea prototype, and how to do the magic of team co-creation with your customer or business partner. Dutch serial entrepreneur Jurgen Appelo, an advocate for agile and lean organisations, highlighted how start-ups come up with the right idea that would fit the market, and then make sure that they not only survive, but bloom in the long run. According to him, all successful companies are constantly experimenting. “They are not afraid to fail but they keep all failures very small, so they can survive each and every one,” he said.
The truths and misconceptions about the digital world
The first workshop was held by Sanja Lalević-Cvetković (Direct Media Serbia) and Mitja Tuškej (Direct Media Slovenija) who revealed “the truth, lies and misconceptions” in the world of digital communications, chief happiness officers Petra Božič Blagajac and Maja Lončar gave tips on how to become a happy employee or how to lead a happy team/company, while public affairs consultant Barbara Krajnc presented LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® for more effective group work. “The Sales Whisperer” Wes Schaeffer who talked about the sales tricks on the main stage yesterday, held a workshop today and revealed 5 timeless steps for successful sales, while Manca Korelc, social media expert, and Jurgen Appelo, talked about how to become a professional speaker.