Last month Bristol held its first ever Social Media Week. There were more than fifty events, and more than 1500 people attended or spoke at them. It was a huge operation, and largely down to our partners at Bristol Media that it happened at all. It’s no accident the partners helping us to deliver APG West are people prepared to be bold like that…
APG West had its own event, of course. Many people that we’d spoken to beforehand had our session down as the one they were most looking forward to, thanks to speakers we’d managed to secure. And afterwards, lots who attended asked whether we’d be able to share the presentations they saw on the day, so here they are.
Ian Edwards is the Head of Comms Planning for Facebook in Northern Europe. As the first planner to be employed by Facebook globally, Ian sees huge untapped potential in brands’ use of the platform. He spoke to us about Byron Sharp’s principles for marketing (mental and physical availability) and what they mean for brands using Facebook and Instagram. That means a new model combining reach and relevance, as well as making better use of the platform’s capability to use timing and physical location to make conversion seamless.
Here is Ian’s deck in full:
Jessi Langsen of H+K Strategies is a social media veteran, having worked on the Obama re-election campaign of 2012. H+K’s strengths lie in the discipline they bring to every brief – only when no corners are cut can you guarantee producing content that will fulfil your objectives and drive your business. Jessi shared a number of frameworks and ways of thinking about content development that you can adopt: audience mapping, the hero/hub/help model, and a format map to help make sure your medium fits with your intent.
This is Jessi’s deck:
Bogdana Butnar is Poke’s Head of Strategy, and her presentation was a call to arms. She thinks brands have lost sight of the full power of social, chipping away at consumers’ goodwill with too much work unworthy of their attention. Instead, Bogdana said, this short term approach should be replaced with a mindset that considers social as part of a commitment to a better and more seamless brand experience, measured with a combination of medium and long term metrics.
Here’s Bogdana’s deck:
David Wilding is Head of Planning at Twitter. He talked about how Twitter is at heart a news app – a “look at that” medium, as he described it. The platform is focused on helping people navigate the world in more curated ways, with formats that brands are increasingly using to craft more involving campaigns. He provided some useful ways of bringing focus to brand activity, as well as some case studies that illustrate the imperative that comes with social to think in a different, non-linear way.
Here’s David’s deck:
Wherever you stand, what each speaker shared was a real evangelism for social media and what it can do when harnessed effectively. We hope you felt similarly inspired by the event. If you have any thoughts then please do share them using #APGWest on Twitter, or get in touch on apgwest.uk@gmail.com.
Read more from APG West here