The media trends
conference SEMPL in Portorož closed its door in the afternoon. It attracted more
than 900 participants. In line with the slogan “Awake. Aware. Award. Awesome.”
More than twenty international speakers focused on the latest developments in
media and communications industry driven by new digital technologies and solutions.
The media trends conference SEMPL in
Portorož, organised by Media Pool for the 17th time, came to its
close this afternoon. In two days, more than 900 participants followed the
event, of which approximately a third came from other countries in the Adriatic
region, mainly Serbia and Croatia. Through the lectures and workshops, more than
twenty international speakers revealed the trends prevailing in the media and
communications industry, in large part driven by new digital technologies and
solutions.
In her opening keynote, the US expert marketing
strategist Cathey Armillas stressed
that despite all the profound changes in the last decade, marketing in its
essence remained the same. She presented 9 ½ eternal rules of marketing,
described in detail in her best-seller The
Unbreakable Rules of Marketing: 9 ½ Ways to Get People to Love You where
she advises advertisers to stop selling and start loving.
Les
Binet from an award winning London creative agency
Adam&EveDDB (it has just become the Agency of the Year at the Epica Awards
competition) where he is responsible for the advertising effectiveness, talked
about some lessons learned from his extensive analysis of hundreds of marketing
campaigns. Although short-term effects of advertising primarily focused to the
increase in sales should not be neglected, the long-term effects are the ones
that are important in brand building. Binet underlined that a long-term emotional
connection of brands with consumers is the only thing that brings the company
greater revenues and profits.
“Change is inevitable, progress is not,” says dr. Max Mckeown, British strategy and
innovation expert, writer, consultant and researcher, having in mind the
importance of continuous innovation, which cannot be achieved without great
strategy. “The strategy is not a document or a spread sheet. It is a long-term
commitment of the company and every employee should strive to achieve it,” said
Mckeown who enthused the audience with an unusual presentation method as he
sketched his insights and ideas on an enormous white board. He stressed that
innovation is about making new ideas useful. “Everyone can have great ideas but
if they are not realised and useful for people, you have not done anything yet,”
says McKeown.
Mats
Persson, COO of Adform from Denmark, underlined the
challenges brands face in the era of programmatic advertising. He warned the
online publishers that they too would have to adjust to the digital reality as
brand advertisers are becoming increasingly demanding in terms of actionable
data and creative advertising solutions. “Brand advertisers do not want banners
that are not even viewable. They do not demand only big data, but actionable
data,” says Persson. Mike Bevans, Director of Advertiser Product
Marketing at Yahoo UK, stressed the importance of actionable data as well,
which can only be seized by understanding consumer behaviour, audience
discovery and engagement, personalization and optimization of marketing
channels. He noted that users install the ad-blockers because they do not know
what will happen to their data. Thus, the advertising industry should address
this issue and ensure greater transparency.
Robert
Čoban, co-founder and president of Color Press Group from
Serbia, and Marjan Novak,
editor-in-chief of Marketing Magazin, discussed whether advertisers expect too
much from the media. In some cases, advertisers are confident that they can get
everything for free from the media, like promotional texts or strictly positive
news about them. Čoban acknowledges that since journalists are underpaid for
their work and consequently unmotivated, they often accept such demands from
advertisers. He also addressed the role of media agencies in the relationship
between the media and advertisers. “If they are only intermediary between the
two, this does not serve anyone. Of course, there are also agencies that are trying
much harder with the media and advertisers. The reason for this is less money,
but more competition both on the media and agency market,” said Čoban.
Maximilian
Münch, social media strategist, presented how to build
community on Instagram and which are the opportunities for brands. “On
Instagram, community is the most important thing. To engage followers, you
should be fun, cute, provocative, beautiful, creative and surprising,” Münch
summed up. Matt Longstaff, associate creative director at AKQA
UK, closed up SEMPL with his thoughts about creativity on the edge of
possible. “The future is an invisible playground where changing the rules makes
the game fun again. In order for brands to predict the future, they must become
the future,” said Longstaff.
Workshops on effective advertising
The
main program of SEMPL was accompanied by five workshops. Saša Stanković, Digital Strategy Expert at Pro Media Group from
Croatia, show-cased how to set up an effective mobile advertising campaign, Zorin Radovančević, Marketing and
E-Commerce Project Manager at Escape from Croatia, conducted a workshop about
Google Tag Manager, while Nika Papić andTilen Šali, Founders of the
Slovenian digital agency Ideaz, had a workshop on advanced Facebook advertising for brand managers. The lecturer and consultant Brigita Lazar Lunder and Tadej Rovtar, Senior Account Manager at
Httpool, held a workshop on how to become a LinkedIn's All Star, and Phil Shaw, Head of Digital & Innovation at Ipsos Connect UK, presented
10 rules of effective TV advertising.