Early days in our brave new Social Media World. A very personal look back at the most recent Media140 gig

A key conclusion from this week’s Media140 Brands event in London was that we are all still learning pretty much as we are going along and that our brave new digital world is still evolving – and fast. “It’s still very early days” was a mantra we heard more than once, both from the podium and from the lively discussions among the attendees.

Below, Wonderful’s very own Will Moore, gives his own take on the day from the privileged perspective, being both insider and outsider, as the day progressed.

Media140 Brands on Monday 26th October attracted a very full house with RIBA, the central London venue, thronging with more than 220 social media-ites, techies, journos and agency bods.

In the interests of one of the event’s key buzz words – transparency, I should say that I was there, both as a member of the Media140 blog team and, additionally, in a professional capacity as part of Wonderful Creative – to oversee the recording of the day’s events, alongside trusty colleague, Chris Higgins – our head of multi-media.

Sadly, I was more or less stuck at my laptop, tweeting a lot and fighting with the troublesome internet connection to get the live stream up and running, while Chris valiantly stood stock still for the best part of eight hours recording the day.

We arrived at the venue hours before official kick-off to set up; but it soon became clear that the in-house WiFi was not going to play ball. As far as we could surmise, the entire building was down and, despite the valiant attempts of the RIBA IT team, the real time internet was clearly out of action.

For a social media conference this could have been instant social exclusion. Luckily, I had my trusty MiFi up and running in about a minute and was thus able to provide net access for a few key people throughout the day. Media140 guest blogger Dan Martin has already written an intriguing post about the WiFail at the event which you can read here.

In desperation, I thought I would tweet @BTCare – just to see if I even got a response. In the event, we had no meaningful connection back up until the very last sessions at around four pm GMT. However, I was kept informed by a very helpful BT tweeter throughout the day.

So? Do I feel that the connection came on quicker due to my tweets? Err, no. But… Do I feel happier that, despite being disconnected through most of the day, I was nevertheless being kept in the loop as to what BT were doing to rectify our plight? Very much so. (Might this be a lesson for @BTCare to learn?)

Salient points of the day included the vital issues regarding transparency in communications, the pitfalls of a badly managed social media account and tone of voice/personality, as expressed through Twitter.

The day started of with AKQA CEO Tom Bedecarre talking about whether marketers need to pay attention to Twitter. The answer was a resounding yes. Tom spoke well and with a humility that is usually not seen in a man with his level of influence.

The presentation on crowd sourcing by Nic Ray of Quirk started off feeling a little bit like a ‘look, we worked with Unilever’, pitch but some great points were made and I ended up knowing a lot more about the specifics of crowd sourcing and the situations where it can work well.

Ciaran Norris of Mindshare spoke on listening and about the different ways brands can and should listen. Great content, and Ciaran himself was as much stand up comedian as new media specialist. Kudos where due. John Beasley’s comprehensive case study of Red Bull’s marketing strategy included heady shots of motor bikes jumping Tower Bridge.

The subsequent panel was hosted by Jess Greenwood, of Contagious Magazine, with panelists Amelia Torode of VCCP, James Hart of ASOS, Nicola Davis of AMV BBDO and Ted Hunt of Innocent Drinks. The title of this panel was ‘The survivors club’, and I imagine poor Ted of Innocent truly felt like a survivor after the Twitter Wall berating he received for his choice of shirt!

The next panel was Who’s your brand?, chaired by Gordon MacMillan of Haymarket. Interesting points were made on who is tweeting for your brand, is it the brand voice or an individual and the dangers of both scenarios.

The afternoon finished with ‘Media140 Labs’ mini presentations from David McCandless of Information is Beautiful, Mark Rock of Audioboo and Utku Can Akyuz of Mint Digital; three guys doing some very exciting things with evolving tech. Hemlock was my personal favorite and I am going to attempt to use it for some future projects.

A good day then, but it did leave me with some questions.

Part of my own role at Wonderful is to advise brands on how to use social media, and I felt that the speakers were missing one key point. Surely, it is not simply about how you use social media but why? As far as I can recall, only one of the speakers touched on this subject.

If the correct policies and rules of conduct are set in place to begin with, then situations such as the now notorious case of the putative HabitatUK intern would simply never happen.

2 Responses to “Early days in our brave new Social Media World. A very personal look back at the most recent Media140 gig”

1. Ciarán says:

   October 30, 2009 at 1:23 pm

   Thanks for the kind words – maybe, if the whole social media bubble bursts, I’ll take up a life on the stage!

   I agree totally with your final point about the why before the how: I hope that I was the speaker you were referring to who mentioned this – if not, I must have slipped up as for me it’s the essential thing to consider.

   You need to choose the tool for the job, not the job for the tool.
2. Oscar Del Santo says:

   November 1, 2009 at 12:56 pm

   If you are interested in the philosophical implications of the social media world, I would reccommend becoming acquainted with the integral philosophy of Ken Wilber, which provide a framework into which to integrated the social media with other phenomena like the evolution of our consciousness, etc.

   I hope this helps.