Spotlight on digital advertising tricks at October Bright Day talk

Wednesday, 29 October was a gloomy day but it ended feeling a bit brighter - no pun intended - thanks to the chilled jazz background music that soothed the frazzled souls who fought through the traffic to find the seemingly unfindable Bright Day space at 354 Albert Road if you'd not been there before. If only I'd looked up! There's a helpful yellow sign right on the third floor of the building. I'll know for next time.

And next time there'll be, with the evening's line-up of creativity inspirers like Ross Chowles, founder of Bright Day as well as Carla Gontier, head of social media for Hello Computer and Tom Sykes, digital strategist at The Jupiter Drawing Room CPT. Like TED, Bright Day's Bright Talks are there to stimulate, educate and inspire. While TED topics are broad, Bright Talks will be exclusively for the marketing industry.

Chowles kicked off by explaining he created Bright Day as the world doesn't need another shopping centre, it needs a space for creativity. His decision proved accurate as feedback shows people are embracing the feeling of creativity and humanity the space invokes. The evening was all about digital and social media, with Chowles saying he started in advertising 34 years ago when Style magazine was the epitome of seeing "who's who". Now, social media has drastically changed things...

Gontier was at the podium next to speak on the future of social media based on where we were years ago, where we are today and the proposed social future. She says social media has come to shape the way we consume, share content and interact with each other. Don't forget that eight short years ago, blogs and MySpace were the main players in the social media space, and while users could post comments, there were no brands on Facebook. With the rise of Facebook in 2006, we began to like and share content. Then came Twitter with its baffling character limit. At this time, most brands started playing in this space with an intern running their social media - they didn't employ 'experts' to do so as there simply weren't any experts around from the start. Next, paid media became available on social media. Now, when something goes viral it is shared across the globe, so the internet has undoubtedly brought us closer together.

The social media numbers you need to know - more than just cat videos

Gontier quoted stats from World Wide Worx, which show that there are currently 200 million Instagram users and that one in four people globally use social media, with the typical person checking their phone 150 times per day. Gontier says this shows that social is here to stay and is not a fad, as "people love talking about themselves and their cats". Gontier then extrapolated about the future, based on what people are doing now and amplifying it. For starters, Gontier says while real-time content and dynamic content planning may seem boring, it's what's happening on social right now, as most people only have an eight-second attention span, so you have to catch them fast. How to do so? People want funny and interesting content, and not just on Facebook - we're becoming increasingly image-centric, so need to use new platforms and use shorter messages - this will lead to the rise of importance of chat messaging platforms for brands, as stated by Grant Theis, co-founder of ttrumpet.

In addition, there's a need for improved social listening, and social ROI needs to catch up with other digital platforms. We need the data to be accurate, and also need agreement from the industry on how best to calculate engagement and whether clients even care about it. Added to this, there's a need for community managers to better understand the data. Also remember that the best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour, so we need to fine-tune what we already have. Gontier predicts a rise in SoLoMo, which stands for 'social location mobile' and has been on the social agenda for years now. It brings product and content to people when they want it in the place they want to see it. SoLoMo will rise as technology becomes more accessible and cheaper to access, which means soon more stores will let you access specific deals on your phone as soon as you enter them, or add your own shopping list to your partner's and get a notification when they are in the relevant store.

Digital advertisers: Here's how to attract and hold those goldfish-like attention spans

Gontier emphasised the words that technology is taking over from content as king, because while it is content that drives the internet, there's so much content out there that people with shorter attention spans are turned off from boring content, so digital advertisers need to use technology in their social campaigns. "It would be silly not to do so", Gontier warned, as agencies win awards for things like technology, giving the example of the Samsung Galaxy #PowerOn campaign from the most recent SXSW festival, which saw attendees send a tweet with the #PowerOn hashtag, only for a community manager to cycle over to recharge and keep your phone alive during the festival. Gontier ended by advising that "pay to play" will now apply to brands, not users, as 'Facebook Zero' is fast approaching, where you will only reach 2 people even if you have 30,000 followers - you'll need to pay for the privilege of interacting with them.

Three news headlines from this week that change the digital advertising game for good

Gontier's presentation was followed by an insightful and laugh-inducing one by Tom Sykes, digital strategist for the Jupiter Drawing Room. Sykes began by relating how he interviewed a job applicant who said he was passionate about digital, especially Facebook. All went well until the candidate said he thought Facebook was the next big thing for companies... companies had already all but taken over the social network.

Next, Sykes enhances Gontier's earlier point that there is a "royal cacophony of crap out there" in an infinite universe, and the fact that there's pressure to know at all times exactly what the environment is like and for brands to try control - or at least swing in their favour - the almighty vat of information that's out there. He described this as "Getting day drunk on your own information,", and said that there's no denying that any form of advertising, whether it's above or below the line, is affected by the internet.

This week alone, three headlines were releases that change the digital advertising landscape entirely.

The first is that Facebook broke its own estimates, by announcing it had made almost $3bn the previous quarter, mostly from ad sales. The second is that iPhone sales are adding up to a third of a percentage point to US GDP, which affects how we should be developing campaigns. Lastly, for a limited period US residents could purchase Taylor Swift's 1989 album for just US 99c through Microsoft's platforms. Sykes explains this isn't just a problem for music retailers as the online shopping trend means traditional shopping malls are missing out on side purchases, like the coffee on your way to the music store and ice cream treat after.

How to know everything or trick ad agencies into paying you a salary: Let others be your information lemmings

In general, we're missing out. Sykes points out there is a crazy amount of information out there affecting how we interact and that we need to be on top of. But because there's so much, it's impossible to digest it all. Sykes says marketers either go into the fray and try absorb it all, hoping something sticks, or they turn a blind eye, which is symptomatic of agencies that say "I just don't get it," about digital.

Sykes then used the sirens from Homer's Odyssey as a metaphor for the fact that we only have a finite amount of energy each day to make all our decisions, so we need to figure out own routine for collecting information, stick to it and then say 'no more'. If you don't, you stay in a state of gorging, with Facebook and Twitter open all day and we click on all the links that are sent on to us, effectively using up our attention on things that don't matter. It's wiser to go for an economy of knowledge, especially as you're only as good as how much you know of yesterday's news. We need a system of knowing everything important at lightning speed and focusing on the one thing that matters in your context.

Sykes then revealed his rather tongue-in-cheek system of doing so, based on Tim Ferris' idea of the selective ignorance and low-information diet. It's simple - don't read any news, at all, ever (provided you don't work in the media industry, where being ignorant can get you fired). Just glance at newspaper headlines then form opinions on them. Then, when some asks you about the newest thing, give an opinion instead of a yes or no answer. This leads on the fact that you need to have an opinion on everything when you wake up in morning, whether you know the facts or not. This way, the truly important pieces of news around you, like the latest viral video, will bubble to the top as the lemmings trying to focus on absolutely everything will bring you the news when they ask you about it. This way, the details and fluff that rule the internet will fade away. It's simple, says Sykes - all you need to do is pay attention to people and what they say about stuff rather than following everything that appears on internet. Sykes ended by quoting rapper Lil Wayne, famous for his lyrics, "I tried to pay attention but attention paid me."

Follow Sykes' advice to prevent the attention deficit that comes from aimlessly crawling the web all day - you will be richer for that conversation.

The futility of prediction and the future of social media, explained network by network

Chowles ended the evening's information-sharing by stating that everybody in the grandstand knows what to do with the ball more than those on the field. He added that five years is a hell of a long time in social media. Just think back five years to when the Motorola Razr was the hottest thing, or think back ten years to Facebook launching. Based on that, he says we actually have no idea what to expect from the future, but feels the social media future looks bright if you're smart about it.

Ross Chowles of @BrightTalks says social media is desensitising us, would never wear a t-shirt emblazoned with phrase 'pornstar' in 70s

- Rambling Litchi (@Leigh_Andrews) October 29, 2014

It has all become a bit of a blur, with all copying each other and even integrating their functionality. Chowles does predict an issue for privacy though, especially for those who worry what people know about them. He also highlighted our irritation of people posting holiday pics on Facebook as it pushes the 'my life vs your life' agenda, where we constantly post stats and rank our lives against others, so it really is about being better than the Jones'. We push to have the better holiday, better husband, better life. Twitter, on the other hand, is about opinion, so Chowles thinks it would be awesome to use it to vote and actually affect corporate behaviour. Pinterest was next on his list, and suggests in future we use it to pin the stuff we like, then incorporate technology so it's not just static picture but by making it like Second Life or the Sims, to build the house and world you wish you had in 3D. Next was Instagram, with Chowles saying we use it to say "I'm cool" - it's turned everyone into a photographer though, so perhaps its future is actually to turn it into an online commercial gallery for artists. Chowles likened Youtube to the Warholism that everyone will be famous for 15 minutes - but with less of the "fails and falling off things", and more of the stage being yours for creating movies. "All the weird stuff is left for Snapchat - the stupid, the weird, the wrong, the WTF."

Chowles concluded by saying, "The great thing is I'll be wrong." He gave the example of Big Brother, saying when he first heard the premise that it would be about sitting and watching people eat and sleep he had no idea it would be as popular as it is. And don't forget that trends come back, with music stores now selling LPs again. We spend so much time trying to predict life that life sideswipes us. As we have no real idea what the future holds, it's foolish to apply traditional expectations on this bizarre medium of digital - it's all about experimentation.

New speakers and topics welcome for future Bright Day Talks, and don't miss the December Art Sale - what better gift for someone who already has everything digital from Canal Walk?